2011, A.D. (After Dooring)

I've been called a lot of names, both affectionate and otherwise in my day, and as of a little over a week ago, I can add yet another slur: statistic. Ladies & gents, I must now claim my place among Chicago's growing legion of victims of car doors.


There I was, happily trundling along Milwaukee Avenue on my evening commute when suddenly, a car door swings open just feet ahead of me. I managed to swerve out of the way and avoid hitting the woman and her door, but the sudden jerky movement of my heavy bike that is not designed for such sudden jerky movements brought both bike and rider crashing to the pavement.


In that split second, a hyper-awareness of my surroundings kicked in, predominated by the thought, "Oh shit, there's a van right behind me on my left." To the credit of the van's driver, he managed to stop mere inches from running me over. I hate to think what might have happened had he been momentarily distracted via text message, a bad song coming on the radio or what have you.


"I didn't see you!", I was told. Yeah, no shit. Luckily for all involved, damage to human and bicycle was minimal. I walked away with a sprained finger and a pretty gnarly bruise on my right thigh. I was pretty shaken up by the event, and in all the commotion dealing with the fire crew and paramedics that arrived on the scene, I somehow managed not to notice the motorist stealthfully leave the scene. One of the firefighters took down the license plate number before she left, and this was included in the police report. So not only was I doored, but I'm now among Chicago's lucky hit-and-run victims, as well. Bravo.


I've been relying on two-wheeled transport for several years now, and this was by far the worst thing that has happened to me. It's also been remarkable how one incident can erase years' worth of confidence on a bicycle. I got my bike out of the shop on Saturday afternoon and my first time in traffic that evening (mild traffic at that, and on my own block) nearly gave me a panic attack.


Of course, this sort of crash is entirely preventable. It's also entirely foreseeable. I wrote in this very blog just a few months back about Milwaukee Avenue's narrow chasm of doom also known as the "shared lane". Since that time, I had been riding up and down that strip anyhow, in the belief that the most direct route must be the best. I put that theory to the test this morning, my first day back on the steel horse for my commute. I took my winding, all-backstreet route from Logan Square to downtown, it added...wait for it...five whole minutes to my trip. During which time I was able to roll along at my own comfortable pace, without jerky dudes passing me on the right. So I guess this is it, Milwaukee Avenue. We've had a good run, but I'm not going anywhere near you until some changes are made in your street design.


As an aside, apologies for the recent dearth of posts. I started a new job a couple months back which has been taking up my time. The dust is beginning to settle now so I hope to get back to a semi-regular thing around here.

Better Bike Routes

In discussions with Chicago friends who would like to bike in the city but do not, one thing I invariably hear is that they "don't want to ride in traffic". A lot of this has to do with non-cyclists' conceptions of safety, but still, I can't say that I blame them. In spite of what the vehicular cycling lobby would have you believe, most normal people would rather not cruise along next to several tons of careening steel. I've been on two wheels for primary transport for a few years now and often still get a little antsy when thrown into the mix against some of the most aggressive, least-forgiving drivers I've ever encountered (and I've driven in Tijuana). The city's official bike routes recognize this fact, which is why certain busy streets like Western or North Avenues are advised against. And yet a street like Milwaukee Avenue, which in it's current alignment only is wide enough for a shared lane, is a recommended route, with the highest concentration of cyclists. It is also where I have had most of my closest calls with being doored. Most of the time, Milwaukee's really not so bad. While I do subscribe to the "safety in numbers" argument, get out there during rush hour with idling cars backed up for a couple blocks in that narrow little gap between the parked ones, with a dozen or so other cyclists hot on your tail, and there's not much room for error.


I've lived in Chicago for going on eight years now, and I've resided that entire time west of Western Avenue, in various parts of the Humboldt Park, Avondale and Logan Square neighborhoods. This area easily has one of the highest rates of cycling per capita in the city, but only a fraction of the infrastructure that you would find further east. One part of the problem is the damage inflicted on the built environment by the Kennedy Expressway. Many side streets which used to have throughput now dead-end at a 300-foot-wide wall of concrete and congestion. As experience has shown, this has a deleterious effect on local traffic flows, forcing more cars onto fewer surface streets. As the traffic on those streets has gotten heavier, the conditions for cycling on them have deteriorated in hand.


So as a person who simply wishes to reach his destination without being flattened, and while breathing as little exhaust as possible, I often take to the side streets. It's easier than it sounds, what with Chicago being on a neat, tidy little grid and all. But finding quiet streets that intersect busy ones at places where it is possible to cross them is rather trickier. Illinois motorists are required by law to stop if you're in a crosswalk, but I've yet to see many people actually do so. But breathe easier, timid near-northwest side denizens! I've done the work so you don't have to. Behold, a new map to get you where you're going in one piece:

As you can see, I focused primarily on the Logan Square, Avondale and West Town community areas, as that is the section of the city I have the most familiarity with. You may also see that Lincoln Park already has a much more extensive network than the lower-income neighborhoods west of the river. 


It is certainly not perfect, this is still very much a work-in-progress and subject to many future revisions. I apologize that I was unable to include labels on this version, due to it's small size. I am open to any suggestions that any of you may have. The red lines indicate current, CDOT-approved routes, the yellow ones are mine, and the orange are where they overlap. Many of the streets are one-ways, which could make a case for the city building more contraflow bike lanes (we have a grand total of ONE so far) or bike boulevards. Many of these side streets have speed humps or pretty awful potholes in some places, but that's a trade-off I'm willing to make for the sake of having the entire street to myself for blocks at a time. I have steel rims, anyhow.


Another issue is access over the Chicago River (link to Steve Vance's map of "untreated" bridges). Diversey is an official route, but personally I hate using that bridge on a bike. Webster and Kinzie are much quieter in terms of traffic, and make for good bike routes, but they are open-grate bridges which always feel like they are going to shred my steel-belted tires. Cortland is the only bridge across the North Branch with the combination of relatively low speeds and a surface safe for bikes, but that doesn't do you much good if you have to go a mile out of your way to get to it.


Much work needs to be done to provide citywide routes safe enough for people to overcome their fears and get onto bikes. Ultimately, I'd love to see separated infrastructure all over the place, but realistically it could be decades. But with this guy coming in to head Mayor Emanuel's version of CDOT, we might just get lucky.


UPDATE: 4/28 6:32pm


I've fixed the kml layer that was at the base of the map, no small feat as Google Maps constantly crashes on me. My own fault for not labeling it as I was going along. So now, a version with labels. You're welcome. Full size available here.

Five Minute Fashion

My cycling philosophy, as it were.

It's quite simple.

I don't care what you say, I think that this guy...

...looks much cooler than this guy.

Winter in America

I've been awfully quiet over the past month, I do apologize. What with holiday travel, winter ennui and appointments to keep, December is always a harsh month. Just a quick post to reassure you that I'm still here, with things on my mind. I've been seeing this commercial a lot lately:



Um, terrifying? So yeah, proof that ice is bad for cars. Or, if you watch this as somebody who walks and bikes everywhere, proof that cars are bad for people.

What Can I Do to Put You on this Bike Today?

I hate the notion of a "cycling community". People never speak about a "motoring community" or a "bus riding community", yet the idea that by hoisting yourself up onto two wheels makes you part of a confederacy. A subculture, where you're either one of the rare few who "really gets it" and was doing it "before it was cool", or one of the mass of poseurs just following the crowd. A face in a sea of tickets.

This recently manifested itself in a comment (which I replied a bit snarkily to) on a story Huffington Post Chicago ran on my friend Martha's photoblog Bike Fancy. Now, I don't mean to call out Mr. or Ms. Randomphantom (if that IS their real name) individually, this is an all-too-common attitude. Essentially, "You're not doing it right". That's pretty much how all subcultures operate, but as for me, the bike that I ride is not my identity. It's transportation, pure and simple. It's the same if I drive a car or take the El, I'm just trying to get somewhere, and to look like a normal person in the process.

Personally, I don't really care what kind of bike you want to ride, or what you want to wear when you're doing it, or how fast you want to go. If you've found what's comfortable for you, that's fantastic. I'm much more interested in the people who would ride a bike but presently do not. I have quite a number of friends who fall into this category and when asked, will invariably give one of two responses.

The number one answer is "safety". Most normal people simply do not want to ride a bike in car traffic. I am among them, I'm pretty used to it by now but some days it just sucks. Any city that is serious about increasing mode share has to install segregated cycletracks. That'll upset the vehicular cycling champions out there, but so what? That tactic will only ever appeal to a small minority of cyclists anyhow, if the goal is to get people onto bikes in the first place you have to give them a place of perceived safety. If this was pure conjecture, and the Dutch and the Danes hadn't already proven how to do it, I would say, "Well, maybe". It'll take a city leadership with a clear commitment and political will to make such a drastic infrastructural shift to disprove any naysayers, but it's the only real way. When I visit the Lakefront Trail in Chicago, I'm usually astonished by the sheer numbers of cyclists who use it for their commutes. For me, it's a destination since it's too far out of the way to make sense for commuting, and it makes me wonder how many would be lured out if the proposed trail along the North Branch of the Chicago River or the Bloomingdale Trail were ever built.

The second has to do with the bikes themselves. I've had several people tell me (especially women--an "indicator species" as I've mentioned before) that they would prefer to ride a bike which gives them an upright position on the saddle. When most of the bikes that people see on the roads are racers of one sort or another with somebody hunched over the handlebars, that alone is enough to turn many people off. Of course there are many upright bicycles on the market, but novices are usually not well-informed enough to understand the different styles of bikes, let alone the pros and cons of each. Myself, I know a thing or two, but when folks start talking about forks or cranks or the Tour d'France, I tune out. I know that I am hardly alone in this regard.

Mikael Colville-Andersen and others have written at length about the importance of normalizing bicycling, and I would firmly place myself into their camp. As much as we may hate to admit it, the United States is a solidly consumerist nation, and as such people are highly susceptible to marketing and image. And face it, the image of the self-righteous cyclist in bright safety gear and spandex will never be "cool". The proponents of vehicular cycling strike me as essentially making the argument that if more cyclists "take the road", drivers will eventually leave their cars at home out of some odd sense of self-interest. When neoclassical economists made the same assumption about consumers in our capitalist system, it more or less led to our current morass. It may be a strained analogy, but just as we need new thinking to dig us out of our economic hole, we need new thinking on how to solve the problem of getting people onto bikes.

I Won't Share You

Flickr photo by James Cridland

Chicago joined the ranks of bike-sharing cities last week to much hoopla. Da Mayor cut a ribbon, a couple of newspaper articles were written, and hooray, we have 100 bikes that cost $10 an hour. The bikes are nice, but if you don't happen to pass by one of the six stations (all in the Loop and lakefront tourist bubble), you probably wouldn't even know they were out there. Meanwhile, London launched their Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme (rolls right off the tongue) with 5,000 bikes across the center city and more to come.

I've got a real problem with the way this is rolling out, and I don't have very high hopes that this "trial" will be too successful. If the assumed goal of a bike sharing program is to get people onto bikes who haven't used one in a while, making them available only in the traffic-choked downtown core probably isn't very enticing. If the stations were in actual neighborhoods where actual Chicagoans actually live, people then might decide to try one out, and then realize that riding a bike isn't so bad. This is precisely what has occurred in Paris, since Vélib’ was introduced, sales of adult bicycles have increased.

Over at Urbanophile this week, Aaron Renn has a post on uneven development within cities, a topic which is often on my mind. This is a classic example in my opinion. Chicago's neighborhoods can't get their potholes filled or have their recycling picked up, but the corporate owners of the Willis (née Sears) Tower can get multimillion dollar tax subsidies, and the Loop can get 100 bikes (so long as the city doesn't have to pay for them).

Bike sharing in selected cities by the numbers:

May 1995 - Copenhagen City Bikes - 2,500 bikes, 110 stations (soon to be replaced by a new system)
May 2005 - Lyon Vélo'v - 3,000 bikes, 350 stations
March 2007 - Barcelona Bicing - 3,000 bikes, 400+ stations
June 2007 - Montpellier Vélomagg - 750 bikes, 59 stations
July 2007 - Paris Vélib’ - 20,600 bikes, 1,639 stations
May 2009 - Brussels Villo! - 2,500 bikes, 180 stations
June 2009 - Montreal BIXI - 3,000 bikes, 300 stations
February 2010 - Mexico City Ecobici - 1114 bikes, 84 stations
April 2010 - Denver B-Cycle - 400 bikes, 40 stations
May 2010 - Melbourne BIXI - 610 bikes, 52 stations
June 2010 - Minneapolis BIXI - 700 bikes, 65 stations
July 2010 - London Barclays Cycle Hire - 5,000 bikes, 315 stations (so far)
2011 - Toronto BIXI - 1,000 bikes
July 2010 - Chicago B-Cycle - 100 bikes, 6 stations

Chicago is the third-largest of the cities listed above in population, yet with the current numbers there is roughly one shared bike for every 28,000 residents. That oft-repeated Chicago axiom (falsely) attributed to Daniel Burnham comes to mind..."make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized". Even the much-maligned SmartBike DC program is more widespread. It may all be in vain anyhow...if the predicted Tea Party electoral gains actually materialize this November, at least Denver's system could be in jeopardy. A gubernatorial candidate in Colorado apparently believes bike-sharing is part of some devilish UN plot to subjugate Real Americans. The future looks bright, friends.

The Bicycle Commuter's Blues

Despite the complaints I leveled in my last post, riding a bike in Chicago is mostly not so bad. There are the maniac cabbies, the summer humidity, the winter ice, but 95% of the time it's a breeze. But every cyclist has their own personal donnybrooks...those spots where all rules of the road go out the window in a quest for survival. The route I follow from home to downtown and back again uses Milwaukee Avenue, possibly the most heavily trafficked street by Chicago cyclists, and as good a candidate for a cycle superhighway as ever there was one. Just because it's the street of choice connecting downtown with points northwest doesn't mean it's always optimal, however. I give you the top seven worst cycling locations from my commute.

1. Milwaukee & Kinzie/Desplaines

Let's start at the end of the line, where Milwaukee ends and feeds you onto Kinzie and into River North & the Loop.


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This is by far my least favorite intersection. Car traffic is generally heavy, especially during rush hour, and getting across to the turn lane is sometimes nearly impossible. The left turn signal cycle is exceptionally short for such a broad intersection, only enough time for one bike to make it across legally. Unsurprisingly, the bicycle crash density in this location is quite high.

Solution: Bike box for left turns and Amsterdam-style traffic signals giving priority to turning bikes.

2. Milwaukee & Elston


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What happens when two diagonals meet? My problem here is on the northwest-bound side of Milwaukee as you approach Elston. The lane for cars turning onto Elston is very short and cars must often cross the bike lane at the last minute to merge. Once again we see a high density of crashes.

Solution: Disallow street parking on the north side of Milwaukee between Chicago & Elston to give drivers more space to change lanes.

3. Milwaukee & Wood/Wolcott


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This intersection is a mess for so many reasons. The odd angle and the placement of the traffic lights make for confusion on the part of many drivers, cyclists & pedestrians, and once again, a high density of crashes.

Solution: I like what Norsman Architects has proposed, bulb-outs to slow traffic and a realignment of Wood & Wolcott so they meet one another head on. (Incidentally, this is also the location of the Walgreens store which I have discussed in previous posts.)

4. Milwaukee between Wood & North


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Just beyond that intersection things get pretty dicey during rush hour. The street narrows slightly cutting the amount of clearance for bikes. Automotive traffic is usually backed up quite some distance and cars are parked all along the right side, making it feel like riding through a canyon. Parked cars are constantly swinging open doors and jaywalkers dart out from between them. Bike traffic also usually gets bottlenecked in this stretch. To make matters worse, delivery vehicles often double-park in the bike lane.

Solution: Dare I say it? Eliminate parking and install a separated bike lane.

5. Milwaukee & Western


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Not such a bad intersection really, except for the entrance to the McDonald's parking lot on Milwaukee. Drivers come in and out with no regard to the bike lane or pedestrians on the sidewalk, and honestly I can't see any good reason to have a parking entrance so close to a major intersection.

6. Palmer & Humboldt/Sacramento


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I have no idea what the city traffic engineers were thinking when they adapted Palmer Square for automobile use. The city has recently painted a nice bike lane around it, but the westbound entrance to the square still poses problems. If you are traveling west on Palmer and wish to continue on doing so, you have to watch out that somebody isn't coming around the little half-roundabout and deciding to cut over at the last moment to make a right onto Sacramento. You on your bicycle are all but invisible to them, since there are cars parked in the middle of the street at nearly all hours.

Solution: Cars shouldn't be allowed to park in the middle of the street!

7. Logan Square


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Not actually part of my daily commute, but I have to deal with it all the time since I live nearby. If you enter any part of the sort-of roundabout on a bike, it is very confusing which lane to use, and drivers are less than forgiving. There's been talk by the city of rerouting Milwaukee to make it a true roundabout, I'll believe that when I see it. Anyhow, it doesn't quite answer the question of how to ride safely southbound on Kedzie, or eastbound from Wrightwood to Logan/Milwaukee.

Solution: Integrate bicycle infrastructure such as separated lanes in any redesign scheme.

Easy right? Anybody else care to share their least favorite places to cycle?

The World Laps Chicago

Since the World Cup is on it's two-day break before the quarterfinals begin, I have a chance to think about things less important. A few years back, Chicago was held up as a shining example of what big cities could do with bicycle infrastructure when the civic elites set their minds to it. Then, apparently, Mayor Daley got distracted by his dreams of Olympic glory, selling off the rights to the city's parking meters, inventing new ways to use the English language and who knows what else. Nowadays, a lot more is happening in New York, London & Mexico City than here at home.

I've been reading about what transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is doing in New York for the last couple of years with great envy. It wasn't until I finally booked myself a trip to London later this year that I realized how much we've slipped. As we all know, London is a sprawling metropolis, and as excellent as their transit system is, I've grown so accustomed to getting around by bike that I figured it would help out my patience and my wallet to do so during my visit. They don't have an ideal system in place just yet, and reading the comments on various posts on the Guardian's bike blog would indicate that there is still a very, very long way to go. But let's run down what's coming down the pike just this summer...400 bike share stations throughout the center city and completion of the first two "cycle superhighways". All under the aegis of a Conservative mayor in need of a new hairstyle who rides a bike to work. The city is spending £110 million just this year, a big chunk of which is coming from Barclays, who get naming rights to the programs and even get to put their logo on the maintenance crew's uniforms. But what impressed me more than anything is that the city's bicycle plan is totally integrated within the framework of Transport for London (TfL), the government body charged with running the Tube and double-deckers. Go to TfL's website and you can find an entire section with information on bike sharing, route planning and even a page where users can upload their own routes into a Google Maps mashup.

Again, the system isn't perfect, one of the largest flaws being that bikes aren't allowed on subway trains and only on buses "at the driver's discretion". However, it really got me thinking about the RTA here in Chicago. Public transit planners worldwide struggle with the dilemma of the "last mile". Including bikes in the equation would make transit a lot more attractive, especially in the suburbs, but of course only if adequate infrastructure exists to ride them on. This is something London really isn't too far ahead of us on, traffic has decreased since congestion pricing went into effect, but it's still pretty horrendous. And those streets are narrow, some London streets could fit into a single lane in a place like Schaumburg.

Speaking of lane width, I remember hearing an anecdote once about how the Mexican government promised to double the total mileage of the Mexico City's freeways by the end of a certain year. Money for the project either dried up or was siphoned off and the authorities simply doubled the number of lanes by remarking the roads and claimed it as a success. Nowadays I guess we would call this a road diet. The effect of these sorts of actions just made room for more cars, and now the city government is attempting to undo some of the ill effects, notably the infamous air pollution. A few years back they introduced the hoy no circula scheme, which restricts drivers from using their cars on a certain day each week based on the last number on their license plate. Now, the local government is pushing bikes as the ultimate solution and has begun by expanding bike parking, installing ramps down stairs into Metro stations, bike boxes, pedestrian bollards, bike sharing, all that good stuff.

None of this stuff is all that difficult. Chicago had a deal in the works for a bike share program a couple of years ago that fell apart, and is now tentatively moving forward with 100 bikes at six stations. Six. Compared with 400 in London, where stations will be no more than 400 meters apart, which do you think will be more successful? Despite Complete Streets design measures being passed by the city, county and state, I've seen very little in the way of new bike lanes, bike parking, bike anything over the past couple years. There has been some stirrings of support for bike boulevards and the like, but it seems like the grassroots support falls on deaf ears at CDOT, possibly because the agency just named it's sixth commissioner in five years? Mayor Daley set a very ambitious course five years ago with his Bike 2015 Plan...unfortunately, the amount of work left to do is daunting.

Cycling and Walking and all that Jazz-Funk

I know that my legions of followers are probably wondering why I've been slacking on the posts lately, and the fact is that I've just been a slacker. Combined with other facts of life getting in the way of being able to sit down and create something reasonable that people might actually want to read. But I've had some things on my mind lately that I figured I would share.

First, bikes. A subject usually on my mind, especially when I am riding around on mine. Tom Vanderbilt and others often cite a study by the public health advocate Peter L. Jacobsen (link opens a pdf) which posits that the more pedestrians and cyclists on the streets, the more the rate of serious injuries declines. The theory is that when motorists are exposed to other users of the street more often they become more aware of them as a regular part of traffic. This explains why Manhattan, for example, has relatively few pedestrian fatalities even with a higher-than-average volume of pedestrians, or why Amsterdam has hardly any bicycle fatalities even though nobody wears helmets. Various subsequent studies seem to have reinforced this, and it's not too surprising to me. During my GIS internship at the Active Transportation Alliance last year, I made dozens of maps of the city plotting crashes between 2005 and 2008. Without strong data on the number of people cycling to draw from, I could only make some inferences based on the observation that more bikes were on the road each year, but the number of fatalities and serious injuries declined each year and I suspect that trend has continued.

Here in Chicago, just a short time into the mass-cycling season (I ride throughout most of the winter, but can understand why some folks wouldn't want to) I've been surprised not only by the number of bikes on the road, but by the people riding them. It's not just for pasty hipsters and dudes in spandex anymore! I mean, it never was, but there's a visible shift taking place. In my purely unscientific study of observing people on bikes in the neighborhoods that I am usually in, I have noticed a greater diversity of ethnicities, gender and ages on the streets. Often a problem for bicycle advocacy among immigrant and minority communities has been the assumption that riding a bike is for people who can't afford a car, that here in America people drive cars, and once you buy a car, you have arrived. The presence of more people of color and women on bikes is a very encouraging sign to me...but once transportation cycling finally goes mainstream, expect the hipsters to ditch their fixies in favor of SUVs.

Speaking of the Active Transportation Alliance, some kudos are in order. The Illinois State Senate passed a must-stop for pedestrians ordinance. I played a VERY small role in their efforts during last year's legislative session before the bill stalled, so I'm very glad to hear this news.

And finally, to round this post out and make it fit the random title I assigned it, some pedestrian-themed jazz-funk...



...and hey, some shameless self-promotion, why not? Man does not live by transportation planning and urban design alone. To hear some similar-type jams (though not this particular one, since I don't have the record), walk or bike down to Logan Square's Burlington Bar on Tuesday May 4, for the latest installment of my DJ night Listen Here!