Posts about Illinois

And...: Chicago's bikeshare system Divvy will start in June. (Chicago Tribune) ... Is it White Flint or North Bethesda? (BethesdaNow) ... Hearings on the Wheaton Costco gas station start today. (Patch, Dan. S) ... Hertz On Demand joins ZipCar in Bethesda. (RD@BR) (Comment)

Chicago will do BRT: Chicago plans to convert car lanes to BRT on a major avenue. Can Montgomery County, or DC, muster the fortitude to do the same? (wbez, Ben Ross) (Comment)

And...: Georgetown's West Heating Plant building might not be worth much unless the preservation process allows adding windows. (Post) ... Is it possible to build a green downtown parking garage, or is it just greenwashing? (Grid Chicago) (Comment)

And...: Halloween is the second most dangerous holiday for pedestrians, mainly thanks to drunk drivers. (Patch) ... WMATA adds a disclaimer to the controversial "Defeat Jihad" ad. (DCist) ... Is it possible to build a green downtown parking garage? (Grid Chicago) (Comment)

Amtrak speeds up in the Midwest: An Amtrak train in Illinois hit 111 mph in a demonstration run, faster than any Amtrak train outside the Northeast Corridor. Amtrak says 75% of the Chicago-St. Louis route will be high speed by 2015. (Grid Chicago) (Comment)

Windy City wants safer walking: Gabe Klein released details on Chicago's plan to reduce pedestrian deaths to zero in 10 years through traffic calming, longer pedestrian crossing times, better connectivity. (Streetsblog) (Comment)

New York and Chicago's bike sharing delayed: Bike sharing in New York and Chicago, both slated to open this summer, have been substantially delayed. Alta Bicycle Share, which runs Capital Bikeshare, is managing both systems. (Chicago Sun-Times) (Comment)

Only some city brands stick: In the history of city branding, there have been some failures, like Chicago, and some successes, like Indianapolis. Success seems to come with apparent authenticity and avoiding a generic-seeming brand. (Salon) (Comment)

Chicago is stumbling: Not all American cities are booming and returning to the urban core. Chicago has faced population loss and other crises over the past decade, a contrast with most of largest American cities. (City Journal) (Comment)

And...: A Seoul train gets a beach. (BeyondDC) ... Chicago will shut down an entire line for 5 months for repairs. (Tribune, Ben Ross) ... 2 die on the Wilson Bridge. (Post) (Comment)

Chicago pushes ahead without feds: Chicago Mayor Emanuel announced a $7 billion infrastructure investment, revamping the city's utilities and public transportation on a scale not seen in a generation—all without federal help. (Transport Politic) (Comment)

Night of the walking dead: As one part of a pedestrian safety initiative, Gabe Klein has installed 32 mannequins around Chicago to represent the 32 pedestrians who died on Chicago's streets last year. (Chicago Tribune) (Comment)

Chicago's poor attempt at congestion pricing: Mayor Emanuel wants a $2 surcharge on parking in city-owned lots and garages. The surcharge, which will not apply to street meters, may just encourage more drivers to hunt for street parking instead. (NPR) (Comment)

Bike bits: Is Chicago neglecting poorer neighborhoods and not giving the public input into bike plans? (NY Times) ... Keep up with the latest summary of CaBi expansion. (WashCycle) ... DC was a cycling paradise in 1888. (DCist) (Comment)

Gabe & others for Chicago BRT: Gabe Klein is pushing for new BRT lines in Chicago, though a local advocacy group has an even more ambitious program. Some criticized DDOT when he headed it for not making bus priority much of a priority. (TTP) (Comment)

Interesting transit ideas: Should Metro institute "quiet cars" like Metra is doing in Chicago? (TBD) ... Should transit systems have loyalty programs like airlines' frequent flyer programs? Singapore may try it. (The Atlantic, ChrisB) (Comment)

Really, Wrigley doesn't need more parking: While advocating for a new stadium for the Chicago Cubs (itself a controversial view), a Sports Illustrated writer also requests more parking. Given that Wrigley is always packed despite not being surrounded by seas of parking lots, the status quo seems just fine. (Adam S.) (Comment)

Klein bringing bus shelter screens to Chicago: Beyond building cycle tracks, Gabe Klein wants to put real-time displays in bus shelters like the ones he piloted in DC. They'll show bus arrivals, nearby car sharing and more. (Chicago Sun-Times) (Comment)

Gabe putting in bike lanes: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gabe Klein talk about protected bike lanes, the first of which are now going in. Emanuel promised 100 miles of them in 4 years, and discusses the value to businesses of bringing more people into and around downtown by bike. (NBC Chicago) (Comment)

Walmart a wash for jobs: 2 years after a Walmart opened in a Chicago neighborhood, the number of jobs lost by businesses that closed was essentially equal to the number of jobs created by Walmart. The businesses that closed also had paid similar wages and benefits to the new Walmart jobs. (Post) (Comment)

Developer gives away cars to home buyers: A Chicagoland developer has taken a page from the streetcar suburb developer playbook by offering to subsidize potential homebuyers' transportation. The problem: he's offering to buy them all cars. (Grist) (Comment)

Suburbs dying?: Sales of new single-family homes are extremely slow—outside Chicago, down 90% from the peak—while townhouse sales are strong as people choose smaller and closer to work over large and distant. (NYT) ... If the future isn't in suburbs, why are policymakers cutting transit rather than investing in it? (Boston Globe) (Comment)

Gabe Klein going to Chicago: Chicago's next mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has nominated Gabe Klein to run that city's DOT. Emanuel has committed to build 100 miles of bike lanes in his first term, and ran on a strong pro-transit platform.

Mike DeBonis notes that Klein won't have much authority over parking meters, since the city gave away its control over parking for a one-time budget fix; Lydia DePillis writes, "I'd say this'll last until Emanuel manages to get thrown out, but that city is used to high-handed, forward-thinking mayors." (12 comments)

Diffrent Democrats' attitudes on bike lanes: Former Congressman and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, now a candidate for Chicago mayor, wants to build new bike lanes including cycle tracks as a major portion of his platform. Meanwhile, New York Senator Chuck Schumer is lobbying hard against a popular bike lane on Prospect Park West in Brooklyn, where he lives. (Streetsblog) (Comment)

And...: Abu Dhabi owns Chicago's parking meters (Atlantic, charlie) ... You've heard of elevator music, well, Rosslyn makes escalator music (Ode Street Tribune) ... Michelle Rhee got a job offer to be state education head in New Jersey. (Post) (Comment)

Flashy architecture often has problems: A Chicago museum is suing its architects for a building that won two awards for excellence. That's because the flashy modern architecture that pushes the envelope both gets attention and also often has big flaws because of the untested materials or design principles. We discussed the same issues with the National Gallery's East Wing last year. (WSJ) (Comment)

Stranded at O'Hare: I know you all wish there were some rain, but instead it all hit Chicago, which I had the bad judgment to try to connect through from Las Vegas. As a result, I'm stuck overnight in air travel purgatory. (Chicago Weather Center)

It's ironic to get stranded by our air travel system the day after interviewing Ray LaHood. At the panel, he got the most applause when he talked about new restrictions on airlines stranding passengers and the like. Sadly, USDOT can't make new rules ordering the weather to stop being so extreme, and the Senate won't address the larger problem. (Comment)

Automated garages: A maker of automated parking systems produced a video of their garage located under a public square in Budapest. (Erik W) ... A new automated parking garage in Chicago's Bucktown may be the first to get LEED Gold, touted as "emissions free," though the car traffic it generates won't be. (Government Technology, Bryan) (Comment)

Jail time needed for cycle assault?: Following an extremely light sentence for two drivers who intentionally hit two cyclists, Chicago advocates are pushing prosecutors to push harder for jail time. (Adam Voiland/DC Bicycle Transportation Examiner) (Comment)

Hit cyclists intentionally, don't go to jail: 2 drunk Chicago men deliberately hunted down and hit bicyclists in their car. They pled guilty, but got zero jail time for one (and two years probation) and just 10 days in jail for the other. (Streetsblog) (Comment)

$8 billion, high-speed: The Obama administration awarded $8 billion for high speed rail, primarily to California, Tampa-Orlando, and the Midwest.

The Washington region got some smaller grants, like $75 million for a third track in Prince William and Stafford Counties and various small projects on the Northeast Corridor. (The Transport Politic, Fredericksburg.com, Scott, Gavin Baker, mcs) (Comment)