Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on September 25, 2013 at 2:26am

It would be nice if those meetings were ever scheduled so people with jobs could make it to them...

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on September 25, 2013 at 3:30am

Do you ever get the feeling that they do this on purpose? ;)

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Permalink Reply by Huck1eberry on September 25, 2013 at 4:15am

I used to Student Teach at Saucedo. Wish I could make it but I have another meeting to attend tonight. . . 

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Permalink Reply by grayn8 on September 25, 2013 at 4:37am

Dangnabit! Why Wednesday at 5:30! Please represent!

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Permalink Reply by Miguel Alvelo on September 25, 2013 at 9:40am

I'll be there!

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Permalink Reply by Alex Z on September 25, 2013 at 1:22pm

?

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Permalink Reply by Miguel Alvelo on September 25, 2013 at 2:59pm

Talk about depressing and disempowering. I wasn't as much concerned about the comments from the residents as much as I was about the comments from the Alderman, who eventually turned the "discussion" into a monologue. I didn't feel welcome to speak up, mostly because he only opened it to residents of the boulevard who have parking problems and not, say... people who commute through it! 

He said Little Village didn't have a cycling culture. Well... how does a cycling culture come about if you have a bunch of through-ways that are not bicycle-friendly? And... what is he talking about? I work at a youth program in the heart of the Village and I have around 15 kids who ride. The bike rack in front of our center is always full when adult classes are in session... and well, what about me? I sold my car. Am I to blame for a "lack" of parking on the boulevard?

"What about the chiilllddreeen?!"

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Permalink Reply by Dan Korn on September 25, 2013 at 6:38pm

(Cross-posted from https://www.facebook.com/notes/dan-korn/marshall-boulevard-bike-lan... .)

Here is my report on the community meeting to discuss the Marshall Boulevard and 24th Boulevard bike lanes, which took place tonight, September 26th, 2013, at the Maria Saucedo Academy.

I didn't take notes at the meeting, so this is all from memory.

I got there right at 5:30, when the meeting was scheduled to start.  There were about 30 people there, not counting about 8 "official" people, including Alderman Cardenas (12th) and his assistants, a few folks from CDOT.  the principal from the school, and some others.  At least a dozen of the attendees were obviously "bike people," including Steven from Streetsblog Chicago and Andres from Active Trans.

We chatted for a while with some other neighbors and cyclists.  Someone from Active Trans passed out a flyer touting the benefits of protected bike lanes in general.  Alderman Cardenas went around to greet everyone, and he knew us from the co-op.  He asked me who rode the tall bike, and I said it was me.

The meeting finally started at 6 pm, with a presentation from CDOT.  Actually, it started with an apology from the assistant commissioner about the poor installation process.  Then she presented a slide show.  I have pictures of some of the slides.  The first couple of slides were about the safety impact of the bike lane, showing fewer speeders, crashes, and injuries.  Then they showed a series of slides of their plan to add more parking spaces, which seems to address the biggest complaint about the bike lanes, that car parking was reduced.  They plan to add 74 parking spaces: 19 on Marshall Boulevard and 55 on side streets.

My main criticism of the CDOT slide show was that it was only in English.  It would have been good to at least put Spanish text along with English on the slides, even if the presenter only talked in English.  This kind of thing doesn't help to combat the perception that cycling is a "white" activity, and that this bike infrastructure is being pushed onto the neighborhood by white outsiders. If nothing else, it was a bit tone deaf.  But the presentation did a pretty good job of making the case for the bike lanes, i thought.

Then Alderman Cardenas got up spoke for about ten minutes, mostly about how he wanted to hear from other people.  He said that he had an open mind about the bike lanes, and he kind of bent over backwards to point out that he's a big proponent of cycling because he sponsors a bike ride once a year (which is a nice enough ride, but it's not anything resembling actual cycling advocacy in my opinion).  But he also said that the most important thing is people's quality of life in the neighborhood, and that if the bike lane isn't improving that, we should change it or get rid of it.

There wasn't really a moderator, so the alderman ended up taking on that role.  He asked people who live on the Boulevard to speak first, and he asked the people who had complaints about the lanes to go first in that group.  They never really seemed to open it up to anyone who didn't live right along the boulevard, so I think some of the other cyclists there would have spoken if they had done that.

The first seven or so speakers were all against the bike lanes, even though some of them prefaced their speeches with a perfunctory declaration that they were in favor of cycling.  The complaints were wide-ranging.  Mostly it was about parking: the reduction in spaces overall, but also complaints about the difficulty of parking in the spaces off of the curb next to the bike lane, especially since if you stop to try to park, there's no room for other cars to pass.  One person said that she worried about opening her door into traffic when parking there.  Another complained that it was harder for emergency vehicles to get through with two lanes for cars and no passing room.  One woman said that her son needs special medical treatment, but that the people who come to her house to do that might have to stop because they can't find parking.  (I thought that she should talk to the Alderman directly about this and something could probably be worked out instead of blaming the bike lanes for the problems, but I didn't say anything about it.) One woman complained about the Divvy bike contract being given to a private firm.  (As if private firms don't have contracts to repave roads and such now, and what does that have to do with the bike lane anyway?)  Several people complained about the ticket situation, where they got tickets when the signage on the boulevard didn't match the paint on the road, though the Alderman said that the tickets were thrown out for everyone who contacted his office about them.  One guy complained about part of CDOT's plan to open up more parking spaces by converting some spaces that are currently permit-only.  Multiple folks talked about how they never see very many cyclists riding in the bike lanes (though CDOT had posted a slide with bike counts, something like 18 cyclists in each rush hour period for a day last month).  At least one person pointed out that we don't really have a cycling culture in Little Village, so this wasn't a good place for these bike lanes.   One said he had no idea how the city could possibly plow the streets in winter with the bike lane.  (I don't know why he didn't just ask the folks at CDOT who were there, who obviously must have thought about that.)  A couple of people suggested that the bike lane be reconfigured, either in the center of the road, or on the frontage of the boulevard, presumably by paving over some of the grass.  (These are both terrible ideas.)  One person said that the bike lanes were wasting space, that there was too much of a buffer between the car and bike lanes.  (Obviously she didn't quite get the whole concept of a protected, or buffered, bike lane.)  A few people complained that the boulevard was more dangerous with the bike lanes, because parents have to park in them when dropping kids off at Saucedo.  One person complained that it was harder to cross the street, because it's hard to see around the parked cars, which of course, didn't make any sense, because you had to see around the cars parked against the curb before.

(I have to admit that some of these points are valid, especially about the road being narrowed to two traffic lanes, with no place to pull over or pass.  On the other hand, the boulevard is not supposed to be a main thoroughfare, and the fact that it forces people to slow down is a positive.)

There were only two of us who spoke in favor of the bike lanes.  The other, besides me, spoke about how he feels threatened when cycling because drivers don't give him enough room, and that drivers should realize that they're protected by their metal cages while he's exposed.  He said the the protected bike lanes were the only places in the city where he felt safe riding.

So other than that guy, and his relatively narrow focus on how the bike lanes affect him while cycling, it was pretty much all on me to defend the bike lanes and try to dispel some of the myths.  I tried to get my points in as well as I could.

I started by introducing myself, saying that I've lived right across the street for over eight years, and that I'm a regular cyclist.  I said, some of you have probably seen my riding my double-decker tall bike, and I got a few nods, including from the Alderman.

I said that, contrary to the Alderman's comments suggesting that people's quality of life in the neighborhood had been reduced by the bike lanes, my quality of life was improved by them.  But not just mine, everyone else's.  Despite people saying that the bike lane was dangerous, the numbers from CDOT don't lie.  The traffic is slower, and there are fewer crashes.  This matches my own experience, having seen about one crash a month on the curve between Marshall and 24th for the last eight years.

I also said that my wife and I have never owned a car in the whole time we've lived here.  This might make it seem like I don't have anything to say about parking, but I pointed out that I was actually making parking easier for everyone else who has a car.  If we can get more people in the neighborhood who don't own cars, then that will make everything easier.  Adding more parking will just bring more people with more cars.

(At this point I was getting some evil eyes from the anti-bike lane people.)

I said that the alderman was right, that we don't have the same kind of culture of cycling here in Little Village that other parts of the city have.  But the whole point of this kind of infrastructure is to build a cycling culture.  Because if we don't do that, then what do we have now?  Well, some people use transit, but basically what we have now is a car culture, and that's what we need to change.

I said that the only times when parking on the boulevard is really a big problem are for three things, and in each case, it's people from outside the neighborhood who are taking up all the parking spaces.  One, when there's an event at the Apollo's 2000 theater/hall at Cermak and Marshall, and their patrons park on the boulevard; this happens at least once a week, though mostly on weekends.  Two, when there's a funeral at the church on 24th and California and cars are parked illegally in the bike lane for hours waiting for their funeral procession; this happens a couple of times a week.  Three, when people illegally park to pick up and drop off students at Saucedo (where I'm standing when giving this speech).  I looked directly at the principal and asked why the school would encourage such dangerous behavior, which other people had also pointed out was dangerous, but it's not because of the bike lanes.  If people all really need to drive their kids to school, then the school should come up with a better way to deal with drop-offs and pickups, like having people pull into the parking lot.

These problems, with people coming from out of the neighborhood taking up parking spaces, and parking illegally, were problems before the bike lanes were installed, and they're problems now with the bike lanes, and they will continue to be problems in the future, regardless of whether the bike lanes are there or not.    It seems to me that the onus for resolving these issues should fall on these institutions whose patrons are coming into the neighborhood and taking up the parking: the theater, the church, the school, instead of blaming the problems on the bike lanes.

So to sum up, the bike lanes are making the neighborhood safer, creating a culture of cycling, and that the problems we have with parking were not caused by the bike lanes.

That was my speech.  I think I did an okay job of getting my points across without sounding like I was calling people out for being evil drivers of death machines, but someone else will have to say how it sounded.

There were a couple of other speakers after me, not with any new points that I can remember.  Then the principal from Saucedo got up and talked about how people could park in the school's giant parking lot between 7 pm and 6 am most nights.  She took some questions too; I asked her to address what I said about people parking illegally to drop off and pick up students.  She said that because of school buses dropping kids off in the parking lot, it would be dangerous to have people pulling through there with cars too.  I pointed out that the current situation was dangerous too.  She said that they didn't have a perfect solution.

Then the alderman talked some more about how open-minded he is, and how he's worried about people not being able to park, and how he wants to do what people who live here want, etc.

Then he let CDOT have the last word.  I was hoping they would respond to some of the points that people made, especially the ones that were clearly wrong, like that they didn't have any way to plow the street.  But the woman from CDOT just gave a brief thanks for coming, and that was it, the meeting was over.  This was about 8:15.

There were some small informal discussion groups for about 20 minutes after the meeting.  I talked to the CDOT folks a bit, and to some of the other cyclists, who told me that they had wanted to talk, but the alderman made it seem like only people who lived on the boulevard could speak.  I also talked a bit to the principal of Saucedo about the situation with drop-offs and pickups and illegal parking; she said that they were doing the best they could.  I asked her if they had a Safe Routes to School program; she said that no, they weren't on a Safe Passage route.  I said I was talking about the federal Safe Routes to School program, but she didn't seem to know about it.  So that's something to work on.

That's all I can remember.  It seems like what happens next is CDOT adds the extra parking spaces, and after that, we'll see.  I suspect that people will grudgingly get used to the bike lanes if the extra parking helps.  Although I suspect that they could pave over all the green space on the boulevard for parking and it would still get filled up, and people would still complain.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on September 26, 2013 at 12:47am

Dan - Thanks for speaking up and for the thorough recap.  I don't ride Marshall Blvd. often, but when I do, I definitely appreciate the protected lanes.

Regarding the observation about "lack of bike culture," it seems that many parts of the south and west sides are in similar situations in overcoming those perceptions.  I've been fighting for better conditions on Vincennes for years, and I suspect that fight will have to continue for a while due to some driver pushback.  It's a place where most cyclists would not ride without some kind of bike infrastructure due to reckless driver behavior (speeding, passing on the right, etc.), a place where "if they build it, bikes will come."  If we have time to build ridership, I expect that more bikes will come, but I don't think it will happen overnight - on Marshall or Vincennes or other routes that are useful to us where car culture has dominated for years.

I hope that Andres or someone else from Active Trans will follow up with the school about Safe Routes to school.  In the long run, that might help a lot with the drop-off and pick-up traffic issues.

Keep on fighting the good fight.  I'll be doing the same.

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Permalink Reply by Alex Z on September 26, 2013 at 1:47am

Fantastic summary. Sounds like you gave a great speech. Wish I had seen it.

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Permalink Reply by yaj 7.4 on September 26, 2013 at 7:26am

Ditto - thanks Dan for the speech and the recap!

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Permalink Reply by Tim S on September 27, 2013 at 1:23am

Nice work!

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