A quick look at bicycling in Evanston

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The City of Evanston was recently awarded, for the first time, a Bicycle Friendly Community (Silver) designation by the League of American Bicyclists, based on its application (see the full list of awardees, .pdf). For reference, the City of Chicago has a Silver designation. Applications must be renewed with the organization every 5 years. The application asks questions like “How many government employees (including the Bicycle Program Manager), expressed in full-time equivalents, work on bicycle issues in your community?” and “What are the primary reasons your community has invested in bicycling?” It also asks about the mileage of different types of bikeways the city has as well as the mileage of roads (to calculate a density).

I wanted to know more about bicycling in Evanston, so I looked at the American Community Survey’s “Commuting Characteristics by Sex” table to see how people go to work; I looked at the 2006-2010 5-year estimate which asks different people each year for 5 years and is a representation of the data collected in that time period, and not for a single year. The population size for this table is 36,745 workers aged 16 and older and they can work in or outside Evanston (62.4% work the boundary).

Bicycle

  • All: 2.6% ± 0.6. In Chicago, 1.1% ± 0.1
  • Men: 4.0% ± 0.9. In Chicago, 1.6%, ±0.1
  • Women: 1.2% ± 0.6. In Chicago, 0.6% ±0.1

The shares in Evanston are significantly greater, but so are their margins of error. This is likely because the sample size in Evanston is much smaller than Chicago (1,219,311 workers aged 16 and older).

Other modes
  • Transit: 19.5% ± 1.4
  • Drive alone: 51.9% ± 1.8
  • Carpooled: 6.5% ± 1.0
  • Walked: 11.2% ± 1.4

Chicago has a higher transit share (26.6% ± 0.3), slightly lower drive alone share (50.9% ± 0.3), higher carpool share (10.0% ± 0.2), but a much lower walking share (5.8% ± 0.2)

Statistics

  • Population: 73,880
  • Bike lanes: about 6.7 miles including the new Church Street cycle track
  • Lake shore path (not including every side path): about 2.2 miles*

The Active Transportation Alliance blog notes that the award will be presented to Evanston City Council on Monday, October 22, at 7 PM.

* This data comes from my personal geodatabase, which contains information I manually digitized from the Evanston city bike map (.pdf).

Update October 21, 2012: Chicago has a silver level designation, not gold. 

Can more be done? An update on the Kenmore Green proposal

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Kenmore Avenue. Can you spot the monk in this photo?

The Chicago Department of Transportation’s Janet Attarian recently told me about DePaul University’s proposal to create a new pedestrian plaza by closing the block of Kenmore Avenue (1030 West) south of Fullerton Avenue (2400 North). Known as the Kenmore Green, it sounded like a great plan to me, but it’s turning out to be more controversial than I thought.

Allen Mellis of the Wrightwood Neighbors Association, a local community group, has been spearheading opposition to the plaza. Mellis is concerned about the loss of 47 parking spaces associated with closing the block. Also, a traffic study conducted by the firm Kenig, Lindgren, O’Hara, Aboona Incorporated found that the closure would funnel thirty percent more southbound traffic onto Sheffield Avenue (1000 West), the nearby business street. Mellis also argues that the project would create little additional green space. He also feels that, unlike the closure of Seminary Street (1100 West), which created the campus quadrangles, a popular dog walking site for neighbors, the Kenmore Green would be used almost exclusively by students.

Continue reading Can more be done? An update on the Kenmore Green proposal

A ride on Evanston’s new Church Street cycle track

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Looking west. A complementary bike lane going westbound will be built on Davis Street. 

Evanston built its first cycle track this year, on Church Street. It starts at Evanston Township High School, on Church Street and Dodge Avenue, and goes east until Chicago Avenue in the downtown. It’s an interesting and unique piece of infrastructure: a very short portion of the cycle track has a two-way section on the same side of the road, including a part on the sidewalk. It’s very interesting. The cycle track involves one-way, two-way, on-sidewalk, on-street, buffered, and protected designs. This photo tour starts at the high school; all photos are looking east unless otherwise noted.

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Two-way sidewalk portion at the high school. It was blocked by garbage bins when I visited. This will eventually connect to a bikeway through Mason Park to a one-way, westbound bike lane on Davis Street. Continue reading A ride on Evanston’s new Church Street cycle track

Introducing the traffic citations index

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Screenshot of Traffic Citations. 

It sometimes takes a long time to get the data one needs. The idea for a “citation tracker” came about a month ago. I created a list of the traffic infractions I wanted to track and then set about seeking them. The first stop was the Department of Finance. I knew they held the data for citations issued against “9-40-060”, or “parking or standing in a bike lane”, the trend on which I reported several times this year. It turns out they only had 3 of the 13 ordinances for which I requested data.

Go there now: Traffic Citations.

It has interactive charts for three violations:

  • 9-40-060: Parking or standing in a bike lane
  • 9-76-050 (b): Driving without proper headlights (or broken headlights)
  • 9-64-100 (d): Parking in a place that blocks a curb cut

The website will expand as more citation data is obtained. All datasets start in January 2011 and are aggregated monthly. I intend to update the citation index every 1-2 months. I might also use this opportunity to push City departments to open their data (#opendata).

For the moment, this tool is a proof of concept. I want to show the data and find the meaning later, but there’s a backstory: I started tracking bike lane blocking citations because I wanted to know, first of all, if citations were being issued. Then I got more curious and wondered if the “right” violations (read: dangerous, annoying, or causing traffic inefficiencies) were being enforced. An example of one that’s all three is parking in a bus stop: the bus needing to stop there discharges passengers into the street (dangerous and annoying) and possibly into the path of bicyclists, as well as delays rear traffic.

The citations that will be tracked in the future appear on the Traffic Citations website under “coming soon”, a diverse group. If you have a suggestion for a traffic citation to track, name it in the comments and why you think it’s significant to track it.

Pavement to the people: an update on CDOT’s new public space initiatives

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The People Spot at Little Black Pearl art center in Bronzeville. Photo courtesy of CDOT.

[This piece also appeared in Checkerboard City, John’s weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets in print on Thursdays.]

Local pundits like ex-Sun-Times columnist Mark Konkol and the Tribune’s John McCarron and John Kass have trashed the city’s new protected bike lanes as a waste of space on the streets. But Chicagoans tend to overlook the massive amount of room on the public way given over to moving and parking private automobiles.

A new Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) initiative called Make Way for People is dreaming up more imaginative uses of the city’s asphalt and concrete, creating new public spaces that are energizing business strips. In partnership with local community leaders, the program is taking parking spots, roadways, alleys and under-used plazas and transforming them into People Spots, People Streets, People Alleys and People Plazas, respectively, lively neighborhood hangouts.

“It’s not a top-down program where we come in and say, ‘We think you need a People Spot or a People Street,’” says Janet Attarian, head of the department’s Streetscape and Sustainable Design section. “Instead we say, ‘We want to help you build community and culture and place and, look, we just created a whole set of tools that wasn’t available before.’”

Continue reading Pavement to the people: an update on CDOT’s new public space initiatives

Chicago bike sharing suggestion map is now live, public meetings coming soon

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The Chicago Department of Transportation has made public its bike sharing station suggestion map, where you can click on a location on the map to say “this is a good place for a bike sharing station”, up-vote others’ suggestions, and see the most popular suggested locations.

Go suggest a good location now.

As of this writing, there are 116 locations suggested (and 123 additional votes for those locations), many (or most) of which were made during testing periods. Additionally, the map doesn’t show the ~150 locations that Bicycle Program Coordinator Ben Gomberg said at the September Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council meeting were already selected (the majority of which he said were at train stations). I expect there will be 1,000 suggestions within two weeks, so get crackin’.

There are five meetings on three days coming up later this month (you can see them in our calendar).

At the meetings in late October and early November, representatives from CDOT and Alta, the bicycle provider and operator, will discuss the new program and answer questions. Attendees can suggest locations to install bike stations in the proposed service area.

Monday, October 29
11:30h – 13h
Chicago Architecture Foundation
224 S Michigan Avenue

15 – 17h
Pop‐up meeting at Union Station

18:30 – 20h
Chicago Architecture Foundation
224 S Michigan Avenue

Tuesday, October 30
18:30 – 20h
Lincoln Belmont Public Library
1659 W Melrose Street

Tuesday, November 7
18:30 – 20h
Charles Hayes Center
4859 S Wabash Avenue

Tracking the rate of submissions

24 hours and 22 minutes later, on 10-17-12 at 20:50, there are now over four times as many station suggestion locations (477) and 1,963 additional votes for those locations. The most popular location is somewhere around the Polish Triangle, at Milwaukee/Ashland/Division, with 33 votes. The second most popular locations is the Logan Square CTA Blue Line station, with 28 votes (I submitted this one).

49 hours and 20 minutes after we first collected the suggestions, on 10-18-12 at 21:48, there are 578 suggested locations (an increase of only 21%) with 3,076 votes for those locations (only 5 locations lack non-submitter support, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). First place remains the same, while the Western CTA Brown Line station is tied with the Logan Square CTA Blue Line station.

On 10-22-12 at 12:14, there are 826 suggestions and 5,759 votes for those locations (only 2 locations lack non-submitter support, 1, 2). The Polish Triangle location keeps its first place crown, now with 85 votes. Logan Square Blue and Western Brown CTA stations are no longer tied: Logan Square is 1 vote ahead!