CDOT considers stripping parking on Milwaukee to make room for protected lanes
With bikes making up over 40% of traffic during rush hour on some stretches, Milwaukee Avenue is Chicago's busiest biking street. But its junctures with Chicago and North avenues are two of the intersections in the city with the highest number of bike crashes, and Milwaukee/Chicago was the site of a deadly taxi/pedestrian crash last summer. Milwaukee could greatly benefit from protected bike lanes, which also increase ped safety by discouraging speeding, but at 50-52' wide, it's generally too narrow to accommodate the lanes plus parking on both sides of the street.
Now the Chicago Department of Transportation is considering the innovative step of "consolidating" parking to make room for protected lanes on Milwaukee between Elston and Kinzie, two streets that already have protected lanes. Parking would be removed from one side of the street in areas with low demand; additional spots could be created on wide side streets by converting parallel parking to diagonal. In areas where parking cannot be stripped, CDOT would put in buffered lanes to the left of the parked cars. The question is, in a city where any parking removal is taboo, will there be political support for creating the protected lanes Milwaukee Avenue needs?
http://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/03/05/cdot-considers-bold-steps-to-make-room-for-protected-lanes-on-milwaukee/
Keep moving forward,
John Greenfield
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John Greenfield on
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Perhaps narrower lanes would have slowed him down enough that the crash wouldn't have happened. Anyway, that cabbie was an outlier. Narrow lanes will reduce speeding in general, reucing the crash rate.
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Amsden mentioned that intersection improvements, including bike lanes striped through the intersections, would be part of the project, in keeping with with Milwaukee's classification as a Spoke Route bike-priority commuting street. And if we can get more people cycling, that means folks will burn more calories, which will help eliminate belly bulges.
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Permalink Reply by Juan Primo on
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Narrower lanes can also mean less margin for error.
John Greenfield said:Narrow lanes will reduce speeding in general, reucing the crash rate.
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Nah, statistics show that narrower lanes = less crashes. It's a bit counter-intuitive, I know. Historically American roadways have been designed with the philosophy that giving drivers more elbow room makes things safer. In reality, that only makes people feel comfortable speeding, which makes conditions more dangerous for everybody in the end.
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Permalink Reply by Tim S on
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I thought that the case was still open and the cab may have experienced a malfunction?
John Greenfield said:Kevin,
Narrower travel lanes due to the protected bike lanes will discourage speeding - they might have made a difference in that case.
- John Greenfield
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Permalink Reply by Adam Herstein on
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Even a road that looks narrower is safer. I've found that drivers tent to give me much more space on Wells and Wabash – under the 'L' tracks – than on other streets of similar width. The supports are in the middle of the lane, so visually the road looks narrower. I don't get quite the same treatment on other streets of equal width but with no 'L' supports.
John Greenfield said:Nah, statistics show that narrower lanes = less crashes. It's a bit counter-intuitive, I know. Historically American roadways have been designed with the philosophy that giving drivers more elbow room makes things safer. In reality, that only makes people feel comfortable speeding, which makes conditions more dangerous for everybody in the end.
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Tim,
Yes, the case is still open, so I said that narrower lanes *might* have made a difference. Obviously, if it was really the case that the driver wasn't intentionally speeding and the cab was malfunctioning, then narrower lanes wouldn't have made a difference.
- John Greenfield
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Statistics prove every point.
John Greenfield said:Nah, statistics show that narrower lanes = less crashes. It's a bit counter-intuitive, I know. Historically American roadways have been designed with the philosophy that giving drivers more elbow room makes things safer. In reality, that only makes people feel comfortable speeding, which makes conditions more dangerous for everybody in the end.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Zumwalt on
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Yeah but he was sitting or standing waiting for the bus. The cab went Hollywood style up on the curb to hit him. A plastic pylon will do nothing.
I'm not against the protected lanes but when people are walking,jogging, parking and they look like this...Saturday the 9th
4 days after a storm with sun and temps in the 30's 40's with CDOT supposedly maintaining them. I'd rather ride in the regular bike lanes.
John Greenfield said:Mike,
The less congested an area is, the more people speed, so protected lanes make sense on Milwaukee south of Wicker Park as well. After all, that's where one of the city's worst intersections for bike crashes, Milwaukee/Chicago, is - that's where a pedestrian was killed by a speeding cab last summer.
- John Greenfield
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To me, Mike Z's pics show a point against PBL's. If we had a regular bike lane there, parked cars would be in the muck and biking would clear. No one would ride that lane, so taking the "car lane" would be the best bet.
Another reality (but still an opinion) is that the city is not good at providing services. PBL's are a recent invention and Chicago hasn't figured it out. I contend that Rahm made that "we have x miles of new bike lane", so his promise is made. The lanes won't be plowed, the city won't sweep them, taxis will always drop off fares in them, and cyclists will be less safe because they will avoid them.
Finally, if we have segregated bike lanes, cyclists will lose the right to use the "car lanes". PBL's are a step backward, yet Active Trans is advocating them.
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Daniel: Half assed engineering is not going to grow the bike population. Government does not create cyclists. In fact, assigning cyclists the worst part of the street will turn people off from cycling.
PBL's are utopian, but they wish away the realities of the street.
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Permalink Reply by Kevin K on
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If the City of Chicago passed such a law it would be a clear "Compensation Event" and any increased expenses borne by Chicago Parking Meters in the course of complying with the law would have to be reimbursed to them by the City, as "Concession Compensation."
So bottom line, any and all costs of complying with that law, or any similar law, would be paid by the City. It wouldn't cost Chicago Parking Meters a dime.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/old-blog-media/pdf/chgo_parking_agree.pdf
David crZven 10.6 said:Yes. Its a terrible parking contract. It is easy to fix, but the city will not do it. All it takes is the following piece of legislation.:
All entities that charge fees for more than 3,000 parking spaces within the city of Chicago must either maintain at least one live individual during the hours of 9am to 9pm within 1 mile of every such space or must contract with the City of Chicago to provide contact services at a fee of $10.00 per parking space per day.
The justification. If you park in a garage and you have a problem, you have a live person to talk to, and if necessary, physically show them the problem. With Laz, you have a "phone call" access only which requires a phone and does not allow the parker the ability to show the physical problem.
Laz would, very quickly, want to break its contract with the City at this point and this STUPID contact would no longer stand in the way of things such as eliminating parking on large stretches of Lincoln to improve bicycling.
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