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Camping in Illinois Beach State Park.
[This piece also ran in Newcity magazine.]
There’s a bunch of state parks near Chicago accessible by commuter rail and/or bicycle including Indiana Dunes, Chain O’ Lakes and Kettle Moraine. But the easiest, oddest camping trip you can take without a car is a weekend excursion to Illinois Beach State Park in Zion, hometown of the band Local H, near the northeast corner of the state. Continue reading A car-free exodus to Zion
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Photo by Joshua Koonce.
I was recently quoted in the Chicago News Cooperative and The New York Times about protected bike lanes. I said, “There’s been zero public outreach on where the bike lanes should go“. I think it’s a powerful statement.
I will describe how that’s true now and how that’s expected to change in the near future. Continue reading After zero public input on protected lanes so far, community meetings are on the horizon
When I saw this fisheye photo from Clark Maxwell of the Ogilvie Transportation Center (500 W Madison St) interior, I knew the next Grid Shots topic.
[flickr]photo:4566250267[/flickr] Continue reading Grid Shots: Inside the train stations
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What the podcast with Dottie didn’t look like.
In September, John and I sat down with Dottie Brackett in Logan Square for 90 minutes discussing our personal history of urban biking and opinions on what’s happening now in Chicago with protected bike lanes (among other topics). Thankfully, Dottie cut that down to 27 minutes so you can listen to us converse while you walk the dog this morning.
Or listen here!
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Neufeld at the Kinzie protected bike lane, at Kinzie and Clinton
[This piece also runs in the Active Transportation Alliance’s newsletter, Modeshift.]
Last night Active Transportation Alliance (originally Chicagoland Bicycle Federation) marked 25 years of sustainable transportation advocacy with a gala on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus. Suzanne C. and Ben H. generously offered Steven and me seats at their tables so we could report on the event. We’ll soon give you the skinny on what went down at this gathering of some of the key figures in the local and national green transportation scene.
In the mean time, check out this interview I did last year with Randy Neufeld, Active Trans’s first executive director, looking back at the nonprofit’s quarter century of pushing pedaling, and other green modes. In 1987 Neufeld, a former political organizer approached the fledgling organization with an unusual proposal: he would work as the group’s first staff member for free until he could raise funds to pay himself. Continue reading Randy Neufeld looks back at 25 years of Chicagoland Bicycle Federation / Active Transportation Alliance
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Madison, Wisconsin, has a B-Cycle bike sharing system. B-Cycle is likely to submit a proposal. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
Updated October 16, 2011, to add more information about the station selection task order and provide it for download.
Proposals for Chicago’s large scale bike sharing system are due to the City of Chicago on or before October 25 – that’s 12 days away! The request for proposals (RFP) was issued on September 21, 2011. I and 29 others attended the pre-proposal conference a week later at City Hall (121 N LaSalle St) on September 28 to meet with Jacoby Radford, contract negotiator with the Department of Procurement Services (DPS), Scott Kubly, the head of the bike sharing project at the Department of Transportation (CDOT), and Ben Gomberg, Bicycle Program coordinator (CDOT).
It seemed that the purpose of the meeting was to get know who vendors would be working with at the City and who they would be up against in the proposal process. Some new information was provided, and Scott explained the City’s aims in building a bike sharing system. But any answers given by the City to attendees were “not official”. Questions had to be submitted in writing after which the City would respond with an RFP addendum. Continue reading Progression of bike sharing RFP: deadline is approaching