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Permalink Reply by dan brown on October 5, 2011 at 3:02am

I agree with Jared (and I was there this year and at the open streets in 2009 and 2010).

 

Dan

Jared said:

Wasn't this more of a street festival than anything else?  I didn't go but it seems much different than the Open Parkways or whatever they were called they had a few years ago where they closed off several miles of streets to cars and the primary activity it seemed as cycling.

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Permalink Reply by Liz on October 5, 2011 at 3:21am

Here's a good blog State street before. 

http://jamesiska.blogspot.com/2009/03/de-mall-ition-of-state-st.html

 

The reality of that time period is that the loop was simply a place people did not visit much.  Growing up in chicago the only time we went downtown was at Christmas to see the window displays and "skate on state".

 

Urban flight had taken a heavy toll on downtown. My grandma was mugged 3 times downtown in the 80s.  This happened to many of the “older ladies” who went downtown to conduct banking business.

 Even with state street reopened to traffic Carson’s closed.  There are a LOT of storefronts sitting empty in the loop today.  Block 37 is sitting mostly empty since it opened. Open or closed the loop is still struggling to bring shoppers back. 

 

At night the loop clears out.  Even today with all the theaters and restaurants. If I leave my office between 5-7pm, the traffic is crazy, people are cars are everywhere.  When I leave my office between 7-9pm, traffic is reduced, and there are a fraction of the pedestrians present. 

 

I think a daytime restriction and a slight road diet, with state street being open to all traffic 7pm-6am and limited to buses 6am-7pm would be a good start.  Much of the state street daytime congestion is turning vehicles on to the one-ways.  There are simply too many pedestrians crossing to allow vehicles to turn during the day. 

 

David said:

This predates my time in Chicago, but didn't State Street in the Loop used to be exactly like that (according to Wikipedia, between 1979 and 1996)?   As far as I can tell, it was considered at the time to be a failure, at least in terms of revitalizing the street, but I don't know much about it beyond what I've read.

 

Montreal closes a big chunk of Ste. Catherine st. to cars every summer and it's a huge success, but that's a street with a lot of bars, cafes and restaurants that expand into the street, creating a very lively pedestrian area.  I agree that Milwaukee or Damen could probably do something similar, but there just doesn't seem to be much on State St. to sustain that kind of thing.   

 

Of course, the problem in Wicker Park is that for a lot of people it's not easy to get to without driving, so if you drop a lot of parking it's hard to know how many people would stay away.  So much of Chicago seems built around an automobile infrastructure and mindset; it's going to take a lot of work to move away from that.  

Steven Vance said:

I'm taking this idea a bit further and suggesting we make pedestrian only section of streets full time. They could be for 10 hours a day on certain days of the week in very busy areas. Like Damen between Wicker Park Avenue and North Avenue. Or on Milwaukee between Damen Avenue and Wood Street. 

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Permalink Reply by Michelle S on October 5, 2011 at 6:28am

I love jennifer's idea of holding an open streets event on Michigan Ave. From Oak St to Cermak is a little more than three miles, and would be a perfect setting for both bicyclists and pedestrians on a sunny weekend morning in May.

 

Lizzy, I'm a huge fan of removing street parking as well but unfortunately as I understand it, the parking meter lease deal has made this idea extremely difficult for the next 72 years, since every existing space is "owned" by the company that the city contracted with, so removing any one given space would mean we would have to cough up cold hard cash to make up for the parking meter company's lost revenue.

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Permalink Reply by Steven Vance on October 5, 2011 at 2:16pm

Yep! Now there are 50,000 students (some living, some commuting) and 27,000+ residents within half a mile of State Street in the Loop. 

 

Michigan Avenue from Oak to Cermak sounds great. Since there's a median, perhaps the east lanes could be for bicycling while the west lanes are for slower activities. 

Lizzy M. said:

I remember when State Street was a pedestrian mall. The Loop was--as I remember it--a much different place then and more empty at night. There were less residence in the Loop; more things closed when people left work. I remember my parents always being nervous that I'd be in the Loop after dark. I think it was considered a failure in revitalizing the area, but I miss it.

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Permalink Reply by John Greenfield on October 5, 2011 at 7:19pm

The State Street Mall in Chicago did seem to drain the energy away from the street. Meanwhile, Madison, Wisconsin's State Street Mall (where my great grandfather used to own a liquor store) is really vibrant. I think the big difference is Chicago's mall banned bicycles as well as cars, so your only choices to get around were on foot and by bus (or I suppose you could take the Red Line). The bike ban was annoying when I was a messenger and had to route around State.

 

In Madison, bikes are allowed and make up most of the traffic on the street. There's tons of bike parking as well. Not that making State Street in Chicago bus/bike only would necessarily create a vibrant street. Madison is a very bike-friendly college town with a high bike mode share, whereas not many Chicagoans feel comfortable biking downtown. If the Loop were more bike-friendly, a bus/bike-only State Street might be dandy.

 

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Permalink Reply by Steven Vance on October 5, 2011 at 7:50pm

I'd support allowing taxis down the bus/bike-only State Street also. 

Portland, Oregon, has a "transit mall" downtown which allows ALL users, but its design and the present traffic conditions seem to discourage auto and bike traffic. There are embedded train tracks that and forced turns off the transit mall every certain number of blocks. 

To facilitate bike traffic in the same corridor, the city made parallel streets very easy for biking. 

John Greenfield said:

In Madison, bikes are allowed and make up most of the traffic on the street. There's tons of bike parking as well. Not that making State Street in Chicago bus/bike only would necessarily create a vibrant street. Madison is a very bike-friendly college town with a high bike mode share, whereas not many Chicagoans feel comfortable biking downtown. If the Loop were more bike-friendly, a bus/bike-only State Street might be dandy.

 

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Permalink Reply by David on October 6, 2011 at 2:33am

I think once you add taxis you may as well add private cars.   The advantage of Portland's transit mall is that while it discourages through traffic, which has the effect of easing traffic flow, you can still walk out of a department store with a lot of packages and have somebody pick you up at the front door.  I agree this might be a workable idea for State street, but I don't think forcing people into taxis is the right solution.

 

I can't really picture the advantages of a bus-only mall or a bus-taxi mall.  With traffic of any kind, you can no longer put anything even semi-permanent in the street, like musicians, street performers, art exhibits, etc.   And you can't walk into the street without carefully looking both ways.   Rather than creating a lively pedestrian space, the 80s State St. must have seemed like a regular street with a big empty scary space in the middle.  Although, I don't think anything could have prevented the State's decline in the 80s, it was part of a much larger national movement.

Steven Vance said:

I'd support allowing taxis down the bus/bike-only State Street also. 

Portland, Oregon, has a "transit mall" downtown which allows ALL users, but its design and the present traffic conditions seem to discourage auto and bike traffic. There are embedded train tracks that and forced turns off the transit mall every certain number of blocks. 

To facilitate bike traffic in the same corridor, the city made parallel streets very easy for biking. 

John Greenfield said:

In Madison, bikes are allowed and make up most of the traffic on the street. There's tons of bike parking as well. Not that making State Street in Chicago bus/bike only would necessarily create a vibrant street. Madison is a very bike-friendly college town with a high bike mode share, whereas not many Chicagoans feel comfortable biking downtown. If the Loop were more bike-friendly, a bus/bike-only State Street might be dandy.

 

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Permalink Reply by Michelle S on October 7, 2011 at 3:04pm

Los Angeles is having its third open streets type event this weekend, called CicLAvia. It's 10 miles long, completely car free, and free to the public. In LA! They had two already, each 7.5 miles long. We really have to step it up a little here.

 

Photo from CicLAvia:

 

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