Please act TODAY to help improve N. LSD

Hey Chainlinkers, we just received notice about this in the middle of the afternoon and the deadline is TODAY.

If you are able to use our online platform to submit comments, we'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

Ethan Spotts, Active Trans

Here's the petition.

Your input needed: Send comments on North Lake Shore Drive Project

With planning getting underway for the reconstruction of North Lake Shore Drive, we have a once in a lifetime chance to re-imagine this iconic road as a people and transit friendly urban parkway. But we need your help TODAY to make sure that happens.

Originally envisioned as a boulevard and gateway to Chicago’s lakefront, Lake Shore Drive has evolved into a car-clogged highway that fails to move people efficiently and cuts residents off from our city’s most prized natural asset, Lake Michigan.

Last year, state and city officials kicked off a process that has the power change this story.

The North Lake Shore Drive project team has demonstrated an interest in shifting away from the same old auto-centric thinking. However, draft documents that outline the official purpose of the North Lake... re-construction project don't leave much room for a future lakefront that's less automobile-dependent.

You have a chance to weigh-in TODAY and encourage the North Lake Shore Drive project team to fully embrace the opportunity to "Redefine the Drive," because Chicagoans don't want an expressway in their front yard.

Use our online form to send a message to the project team telling them the purpose of the North Lake Shore Drive re-construction should reflect our shared community priorities.

Sign on here.

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Permalink Reply by Tricolor on May 8, 2014 at 11:04am

Lake Shore Drive is a pretty unique road, plus it's necessary for traffic from the north side to get to town or head south, east or west on the highways.  All I'd ask is to stop pretending that 40 is a proper speed limit.  As for bikes and public transit options it looks like they are being addressed by the plan.  The repeated 9 at grade crossings are a little overblown but four of them are danger spots.  I wonder how the plan would go about tracking accidents and injuries on the trail?

Permalink Reply by Michelle S on May 9, 2014 at 4:40am

We sent a letter from Bike Walk Lincoln Park to the North Lake Shore Drive project team, which is viewable here.

Note that if you're seeing this post after May 8, you can still send the North LSD project team any input you wish, and it will still be read and on the public record, so don't hesitate to take action even now.

Permalink Reply by Crazy David 84 Furlongs on May 9, 2014 at 5:08am

Let's make everyone happy.   Spend the big money.    Turn LSD into an Expressway..... high speed for all I care.  But put it UNDERGROUND.   but next to it a dedicated underground trolley line.   Cover over LSD with parkland and run a dedicated Bicycle "expressway" (limited access, 2 lane in each direction, 12 MPH minimum speed) down the top of the new berm with designated "cross overs and unders" for the other park users.  Add at least one or two "mixed use" trails of the kind we have now.   Imagine a Lake Front with no discernible LSD yet with a high speed road to make the car lobby shut up.

Permalink Reply by Tricolor on May 9, 2014 at 5:19am

I remember seeing a brilliant design about ten years ago using an offshore system of islands and tunnels that looked like something you'd see along the Florida Keys or the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.  A friend of mine living in a co-op at the end of Oak can't open his windows ever because of the black soot generated by Lake Shore Drive being so close by.

If we're going to get weird, for public transit and tourism I'd really like to see a trolley line running between Navy Pier and the Lincoln Park Zoo, similar to San Francisco's MUNI along Market Street using historic equipment.  It would require a lot of fill to get up past Oak Street, though.

Permalink Reply by David Altenburg on May 9, 2014 at 7:03am

I like your thinking, but I doubt even that would be enough to make the car lobby shut up. The car lobby, like cyclists, has an N+1 problem, but where ours is the number of bikes to own, for them, it's the number of miles of car lanes.

Crazy David 84 Furlongs said:

Let's make everyone happy.   Spend the big money.    Turn LSD into an Expressway..... high speed for all I care.  But put it UNDERGROUND.   but next to it a dedicated underground trolley line.   Cover over LSD with parkland and run a dedicated Bicycle "expressway" (limited access, 2 lane in each direction, 12 MPH minimum speed) down the top of the new berm with designated "cross overs and unders" for the other park users.  Add at least one or two "mixed use" trails of the kind we have now.   Imagine a Lake Front with no discernible LSD yet with a high speed road to make the car lobby shut up.

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