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.

Shopping

The Damen Avenue CTA Blue Line station, as seen on Google Streetview. Did somebody lock a shopping cart to the bike rack?

Anybody recognize their bike?

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?

Walgreens Revisited

About a month ago, I did a post about a case study for the Walgreens located at the intersection of Milwaukee and Wood in Wicker Park. It got a pretty good reception, but was only meant as a rough outline. Yesterday, I was visiting the same friend's apartment and looking down at the store. I would now like to give you some revisions. These are still working with the existing structure, but this option would be significantly more expensive since some renovations to the store would be necessary.


Here is an overview. If you look at the previous post, in this version I have moved the streetside wall of the building in a few feet to widen the sidewalk. I have also widened the pedestrian plaza at the northwest end (lower right corner in this image). This would take another couple of parking spaces away from the lot. (Before anybody complains about the loss of parking, I should note that the metered spaces along Milwaukee adjacent to the building are rarely used.) I have added a bus shelter for the stop that currently exists here, and several amenities to make the space more inviting. And since it's Earth Day, I went ahead and threw a green roof on there.


First, the section southeast of the store entrance. This posed the biggest problem before, because it's such a long blank wall. Here I have moved the wall back about five feet but left the display windows jutting out to the sidewalk.The triangular shape next to the window is a translucent glass-block atrium window, beside that is a walk-up window serving as a coffee & news kiosk. Above is an LED news ticker displaying headlines. I have added some cafe tables and landscaping to break up the monotony, along with pedestrian-level streetlights. Out of frame to the left (but not included in the model anyhow), I thought that perhaps the last window could serve as a walk-up pharmacy counter.


Now to the northwest. Right outside the entrance, a flier kiosk where neighborhood residents can post notices. More cafe tables, and a group of outdoor chessboard tables. Elotes cart still in tow.


And finally, the view from the northwest. Here we see a small fountain surrounded by benches, a new covered bus shelter (not CTA-standard, but a lot nicer-looking) and more pedestrian-level lighting.

And that's what I've got, any comments are greatly appreciated.

The Walking Shopper's Dilemma

Grafton Street, Dublin; Flickr photo by rutty


I don't own a car. Haven't had one for about ten years. My girlfriend does, and we use it for running various errands and trips out of town, but I do the majority of my shopping for groceries and everything else on my bike or on foot. Even in a highly walkable city like Chicago, most of our stores were designed and built with the driving customer in mind, often at the expense of everybody else. The grocery store up the street from our house requires anybody arriving by foot to walk around the end of the security fence into the driveway of the parking lot in order to enter the building...not exactly the safest route.

Richard Layman had a post on urban supermarket design a few months ago that struck a chord with me. He makes the assertion that most grocery and drug store chains don't design their urban stores to take full advantage of their locations. This is something that really bothers me, particularly about Walgreens in Chicago. If you don't live here, they have locations all over the place, and it seems like a new one pops up every couple weeks. The company was one of the pioneers in the use of GIS to target their retail openings, and that is especially evident by the appearance of stores in "food deserts". I don't have any problems with a company using technology to find an underserved market and create a niche for themselves, though it always kind of depresses me when I see people doing their grocery shopping at a drug store with limited food options. But I digress. My problem is with the cookie-cutter store design. They are so ubiquitous that most mid-scale retail development seems to copy their format. Having a basic template is hugely cost-effective in the construction process, but it is impossible to differentiate between a Walgreens store in the neighborhoods of Chicago and one in the outer suburbs (apart from the size of the parking lot).

Yesterday afternoon I was in Wicker Park visiting a friend at his apartment, his front window looks down on the entrance to the Walgreens store at Milwaukee, Wolcott & Wood. (The intersection itself is another problem, and will possibly be the subject of a separate post in the future.) This is an older store, built in the 60s or 70s but the basic problems are the same. First of all is the problem of scale and street frontage. From the end of the parking lot to the furthest corner of the store, the footprint faces 282 feet of Milwaukee Avenue. This may not seem like a great distance, but that's the width of eleven standard Chicago buildings. On the pedestrian level it's basically a dead zone. If you're walking southeast on Milwaukee, first you pass the parking lot, then a long blank wall. Here's a rough model of the site, most other Walgreens I've seen in the city share the same basic alignment with the street:



Again, this is rough, and not precisely to scale, but it's close. You can see how a person walking past is completely out of proportion and would have to walk for some distance before they were engaged. Compound this with the issue of snow and a store like this literally becomes an impediment. In Wicker Park, the Special Service Area maintenance fund pays for snow removal, but in other neighborhoods this entire length of sidewalk would likely remain unshoveled all winter.

The second problem is with the entrance istelf, from a pedestrian view it's just not very inviting. I sat watching people come and go for some time, and I would venture to guess that a full half of the customers did not arrive by car. This is a neighborhood with a very high mode share for walking and cycling and the site use should reflect that. I watched as people bumped into acquaintances, or waited outside in the spring weather while their companion shopped. This is a public space, and should be treated like one. It's unrealistic to call for every Walgreens in the city to be torn down and rebuilt, but with a few minor design changes they could be better urban neighbors and take advantage of increased pedestrian traffic at the same time. Here is another rough model illustrating how getting rid of the Milwaukee driveway (the parking lot would still have an entrance on Wolcott) and losing a whopping four parking spaces, the sidewalk could be widened into a pedestrian plaza.


The result is a much more pleasant streetscape. The store is fundamentally the same, but much more attractive to passers-by. Large windows facing the street on the Milwaukee side could engage pedestrians with tantalizing sale offers, and if somebody sitting on a bench feels like a frosty cold beverage, they could walk across the street to the 7-11, but the path of least resistance is straight into the Walgreens. Of course I couldn't leave out an elotes cart...