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A before shot of Chicago’s first bike boulevard, and facility semantics

February 5, 2012 / / 0 Comments

It looks like nothing now. It’s just a street with mixed one-way and two-way segments. The bike boulevard’s best idea is making it two-way for bicycling. One-way streets are annoying, especially to people new to the neighborhood (like when visiting friends). The route is Berteau Avenue, the site of the first bike boulevard, from Lincoln Avenue on the west to Clark Street on the east (dead ending at Graceland Cemetery).

Article updated February 6, 2012, 11:30, to add photo of Portland bioswale. 

The eastern “entrance” to the bike boulevard.

CDOT is calling it instead a “neighborhood greenway”. I don’t know what’s so “greenway” about it, even after John’s interview with Mike Amsden of CDOT for Grid Chicago. Portland and Seattle have very specific stormwater management features built into their neighborhood greenways, so the names make more sense there. Chicago has a stormwater mismanagement feature: Deep Tunnel (or TARP; see more articles I wrote), where we are trying to build ourselves out of flooding. But it’s not possible. During every major rain storm we have to open the sewers and dump untreated stormwater and sewage into Lake Michigan. Many beaches close the next day.

A bioswale in Portland, at the corner of SE Clay Street and SE 12th Avenue, collects water runoff from the street and sidewalks. The plants in the bioswale absorb the water they can; other water is cleaned and absorbed into the soil where it slowly enters the earth. The earth is probably the only underground reservoir we need. 

I understand the idea behind removing “bike” from the facility’s name, as the project is about traffic calming and making it safer and smoother for all transportation modes to maneuver on this street. That’s fine, but I’m hoping for bioswales and other features to be included in this facility.

Needs some new asphalt. 

This photo reminds me to ask CDOT if a repaving is part of the project. I presume it will be because it’s very dumb to install new pavement markings on bad pavement (but it happened at least once last year, on Armitage Avenue east of Western Avenue).

Courtenay School

I agree with the notion that streets with schools receive a higher priority than streets without, but I don’t think they should be weighted higher than streets with high bicycling volume or crashes (I don’t know exactly if there’s such a detailed weighting system in the bikeway planning section of the Chicago Bicycle Program).

Brown Line passes an office building

There’s at least one building with active businesses on the route. This one has the EveryBlock headquarters inside.

Regional rail trains pass here

Metra is rebuilding tens of viaducts on the Union Pacific North line, including this one over Berteau. Not all the streets have underpasses so Berteau was a natural choice as an east-west route in the neighborhood because of this barrier.

I took all of these photos with a Panasonic GH1, and accompanying lens, a LUMIX G 20/f1.7mm.

More discussion on this is in the comments below, on The Chainlink, on Grid Chicago, and on EveryBlock. 

Freight trains in the city: photos from Ping Tom Park

January 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The train is entering the crossing. 

If you weren’t aware, Chicago has a ridiculous number of trains passing through here. We’ve been the freight train capital of the country for over 100 years (I’m not going to verify this). And apparently it takes a train the same amount of time to pass through Chicago as it takes to travel from here to Los Angeles.

One of the interesting places they pass through in Chicago is at Ping Tom Park, in Chinatown, on the Chicago River at 18th Street. A double track part of the CN line borders the park on the east, separating the park from rowhouses in Chinatown. The Chicago Transit Authority’s Orange Line elevated viaduct shares the right of way.

I was showing the park to some visitors from Spain after we ate at Joy Yee Noodles (2159 S China Place)*. The at-grade crossing bells starting to ring, and the red lights started to flash. Then the gates came down. We were trapped! That’s the neat thing about the freight railroad here and the park: there’s a single entrance that’s blocked by a train. And this one was long.

A pagoda in Ping Tom Park. Here’s another view of the pagoda where you can also clearly see the Orange Line viaduct. 

As we just arrived, we weren’t interested in leaving. We explored the new north section of the park. This outing gave me several opportunities to test out the capabilities of my new camera, a Panasonic GH1, and accompanying lens, a LUMIX G 20/f1.7mm (that means it’s fairly wide angle and has an enormous aperture)**. It takes great photos in the dark without a flash. I was photographing the train, using the “panning” technique – this means you set the focus beforehand and then move (pan) the camera with the object to ensure it appears in focus in the resulting image. I succeeded with 50% of the photos; my issue was choosing the right speed at which to pan the camera.

This photo is one of the better panning shots I created. 

The train, as many Illinois railfans probably expect, was carrying ethanol and empty flatbed cars, but also some hydrochloric acid. I’m going to guess some of the tankers were filled with America’s favorite artificial sugar: high-fructose corn syrup.

* There are two Joy Yee Noodles restaurants in the same Chinatown Square shopping center. They are of the same company.

** I bought the body from a friend and I bought the lens separately. I paid more for the lens than the body.

The fixie-hipster index for this bike rack is near 1

January 23, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Upon leaving the Third Thursdays party at the Chrome store at 1529 N Milwaukee in Wicker Park I spotted a bike with a funny attachment on the stem. After uploading the photo, I inspected it more closely and saw that four fixed gear bikes were locked to a single bike rack.

The fixie-hipster index for this bike rack (for this block, even) is nearing 1! Or 100%. Or 1:1.

But Chicago didn’t even place in the Top 25 Hipster Places in America.

Meeting readers

January 19, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I was at the Streets for Cycling Plan 2020 meeting last night in the Garfield Park Conservatory. I was walking behind someone towards the meeting room and he turned to me and said, “Are you Grid Chicago?” (I realize he may be reading this.)

I said, “Yes,” and he immediately said “I read it every day. Thank you.”

I thanked him for reading. I like it when people tell me they read that blog and they appreciate what John Greenfield and I are writing. It definitely lets you know that (in addition to the comments that people leave) that the work we’re doing is important.

Anyway, I never know what to say to people who let me know they read Grid Chicago. I used to ask what their favorite article is and no one seemed to know how to respond so I stopped asking. To this reader, I asked, “Do you comment?” Also a lame question.

Sorry!

This photo of a bus with double articulation has nothing to do with this post. I didn’t have a relevant photo ready to go. 

Apparently Chicago needs NATO/G8 conferences to solidify itself as a world class city

January 19, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Photos of people participating in Occupy Chicago, back in October 2011. Photo by Ryan Williams. 

It wasn’t a diverse economy, a tech startup community, several well-known universities downtown, the world’s best collection of architecture, or any of that other crap that we need for others to pay attention to us. Where am I coming from?

From the Beachwood Reporter’s Steve Rhodes:

“Almost everyone agrees that having these two summits in our city is a great opportunity to solidify our rightful place as a world city,” Ald. Joe Moreno wrote on Huffington Post explaining his votes in favor of the new ordinances.

I’m not sure which part of that declaration is worse: “Almost everyone,” “great opportunity,” or “solidify our rightful place as a world city.”

It’s okay to say no to ordinances. Not every ordinance needs to pass, even with “concessions” after some “great open-mindedness” from Mayor Emanuel. Then the City Council tried to hide from the public:

“They wouldn’t let Occupiers into the council chambers. First they claimed it was a capacity. So I went up to the mezzanine and photographed empty seats and came back down to the 2nd floor. When I showed them the evidence they were lying, the cops reconvened then announced that the mayor simply refused us inside.”

This city is good enough without these two conferences. Ones that no one asked for.

My commentary on these kinds of issues is supremely bad, and I’m very mad at this city council for its endless string of rubber stamping. I didn’t start paying attention until the parking meter lease deal.