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!

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.

Where I Come From

In geography, everything is about place. I once wrote a paper about how the political geography of the Franco-Prussian War influenced the philosophies of both Nietzsche & Sartre. To understand why I feel the way I do about pedestrian/transit/bicycling issues, you need to know about where I spent my formative years.

Mira Loma, California. You've probably never heard of it unless you live nearby. If you do, you probably know it as the place with all the dairy cows. The dairies are mostly gone now, but as a kid I dreaded shifts in the wind. Mira Loma is an unincorporated town in northwestern Riverside County. The most notable event to ever happen there would be the once-infamous "Wineville Chicken Coop Murders" that inspired the recent film Changeling. In 1930, this brought so much unwanted attention that the residents changed the name of the town to Mira Loma.

I grew up in a pretty typical Southern California subdivision of late-70s-vintage ranch-styles, with the rather atypical features of a.) all the streets being named after planets and constellations (I grew up on Big Dipper Drive) and b.) being zoned for horse ownership. As a result of this, sidewalks were forsaken in preference for dirt bridle trails. Here's my house, sans sidewalk. (Hi, mom & dad!)


View Larger Map

So yeah, no sidewalks. Also, it's very windy. Combine that with the dirt trails and you get a lot of dust in the air. Oh, and the temperature often pushes 100 degrees in mid-summer. Nonetheless, I walked or biked to school almost every day from second to tenth grades (except during junior high when I lived far enough away to ride the school bus). Activities for teenagers were few and far between. The closest anything to walk to is a strip mall a mile away. Supermarket, Jack in the Box, pizza place...you have to walk down this street, one of the town's two main thoroughfares, to get there...


View Larger Map

Four lanes of traffic, fifty mph speed limit. Still no sidewalks, and a big empty lot. Fun.

The last two years of high school were spent at a private school in Riverside, to which I carpooled. Upon graduation, I began attending community college in Riverside. I was sixteen, but I still didn't have a car or even a license (I failed the behind-the-wheel test the first time out). I had graduated to the world of the Riverside Transit Agency. The bus to downtown Riverside left once an hour, which led to many afternoons waiting alongside a very busy street on a very hot day for a very long time. After a fifteen minute walk to the bus stop, and an unknown waiting period, I had a ten-mile bus ride (plus a transfer) to look forward to. And somehow, I didn't really mind...I learned fairly quickly that I could use that time to read, write, listen to music, you name it. I found myself with more personal time than I knew what to do with.

Then one day, everything changed. Family issues arose which found me moving to a small town on the Oregon coast. Here, taking a bus, even the most inconvenient one imaginable, was not an option. I had to get a license to go to school and work thirty miles away. I adapted, such is the human way...it's a beautiful part of the country, and I found the weather to be a lot more agreeable to my disposition. A year goes by, and I found the rural life a bit too slow and the rural poverty a bit too depressing for a sensitive 19 year old kid interested in the outside world. I moved to Portland in 1996 (in the days long before it was well-known for high levels of bike commuting and smugness) and fell in love with public transit that worked. I got rid of my car, I didn't miss it, and I haven't owned one since. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was on my way.

Mira Loma has changed since my days there, but not for the better. The housing boom of the '00s ate up all the dairies and truck farms and replaced them with tract housing by the bushel. The newer subdivisions have sidewalks at least, but traffic is worse than ever, and there's still nowhere to walk to.

Freeway of Love

Photo: US National Archives

Los Angeles has made the news lately in the world of urban designers and transportation planners with their plan to cap the downtown portion of the Hollywood Freeway with a park. This isn't a new idea, as blogdowntown noted (two years ago!), similar proposals go back at least as far as the mid-80s. Small caps have been constructed in Seattle and Columbus, Ohio, and of course there's the case of Boston's "Big Dig". For more than a decade, Portland has been toying with the idea of various caps on that underused relic of the city's brief Robert Moses fixation, Interstate 405. Seoul has gone them one further and completely removed a freeway, restoring the river beneath and adding some rare green space to the city, and actually improving traffic flows in the area in the process. The chief obstacle has always been cost, LA's plan faces a preliminary price tag of a billion dollars.

I'm not against the idea, rather it makes me wonder how this country ever found the money and political will to build these freeways in the first place. Under the guise of national defense, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was passed with little opposition and allocated $25 billion over thirteen years...it wound up costing five times that and going 22 years over schedule. Adjusted for inflation, that would be an initial outlay of nearly $200 billion today. That's a very conservative number, since the price of labor and materials hasn't risen at a level commensurate with inflation and building codes are stricter than they were fifty years ago, especially in earthquake-prone regions. In 1956, the House was split 232-203 (almost identical numbers to today) and the bill passed 388-19...given the state of Congress these days I can just imagine the odds of achieving that same result.

And what did it get us? Five decades of government-subsidized sprawl, urban decay, no real traffic relief and an ever-expanding, ever-aging infrastructure to maintain. I'm not arguing that the country didn't need a federal highway system, but what if it had been done right the first time around? Did we need multiple freeways cutting through every city, or just lines connecting population centers for purposes of commerce and troop deployment? How many congressional districts receive no Interstate highway funding? So far as I can tell, just one: Alaska...though they get plenty of federal money in other forms.

I think the places that have the option of capping freeways got off lucky, even if they can't afford it now. Robert Moses gets a lot of attention (deservedly) for cutting neighborhoods in half via the trench of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, but Richard J. Daley's minions in Chicago's planning department were busy building walls with their freeway money. These elevated roadways placed a physical barrier between the city's expanding African-American neighborhoods on the West and South Sides and the white ethnic neighborhoods across the road. As anybody who's ever walked through a Chicago underpass in winter (or summer, or fall, or...) can attest, they are not the most pleasant pedestrian environments around. These delights serve as de facto homeless shelters, pigeon roosts and garbage dumps. The intersection of Kedzie & Belmont in the Avondale neighborhood is particularly awful. What was once a bustling street corner and intersection of two well-traveled streetcar lines is now entirely in the shadow of the Kennedy Expressway. Belmont Avenue is bisected by 400 feet of railway and freeway viaducts, immediately followed by a large (never-full) parking lot and big box stores. 400 feet is the width of two city blocks east-to-west. I used to live nearby, and found myself annoyed by the state of affairs on pretty much a daily basis.

You can't tell me that this is the best use of valuable urban real estate. This is one small section of interstate in one small section of one city, when you start to think about how many homes, businesses and other neighborhood amenities were destroyed nationwide it's absolutely mind-boggling. Cost aside, it would be political suicide to even suggest such a thing today. So, given all of the reasons above, why are some people still so in love with the idea of building freeways?

Addendum...

I found this postcard showing the Walgreens at State & Randolph c. 1960...clearly designed to maximize foot traffic.



via Chuckman's Collection