Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Chicago

Vote for the Best Urban Street Transformation of 2015

By Angie Schmitt and Ben Fried | Dec 22, 2015 | 29 Comments

It’s almost time to say goodbye to 2015, which means we’re about to hand out Streetsies to recognize achievements for walking, biking, and transit in American cities this year. Earlier this month we asked readers for nominations for the Best Urban Street Transformation of the year, and here are the standouts from your submissions. It’s a great batch and […]

The Inside Story of How Chicago Built the Dearborn Street Bike Lane

By Gabe Klein | Oct 26, 2015 | 1 Comment

Editor’s note: As transportation commissioner for DC and later Chicago, Gabe Klein was pivotal in the development of a new model for big-city DOTs. Along with Janette Sadik-Khan in New York, Klein (who sits on the board of OpenPlans, the organization that publishes Streetsblog) pioneered an approach that prioritized people instead of cars and emphasized the importance of […]

House Transpo Bill Spells Trouble for Transit Projects Across America

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 23, 2015 | 6 Comments

A provision in the House GOP’s new transportation bill threatens to upend how transit agencies fund major capital projects, delaying or killing efforts to expand and maintain rail and bus networks. The Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act (STRR), released Tuesday and marked up in committee yesterday, would change funding rules for the three federal programs […]

Ghost Parcels Show How Urban Highways Squandered Valuable Land

By John Greenfield | Oct 7, 2015 | No Comments

Love that Cook County still keeps track of the parcels under the expressways punched through Chicago pic.twitter.com/wcLXNcbZmM — Neil Freeman (@fitnr) September 22, 2015 Here’s a great illustration of how incredibly destructive and wasteful it is to run elevated highways through cities. New York City-based artist and planning consultant Neil Freeman, who grew up in Chicago, […]

The 10 Best and Worst Cities to Catch a Bus to Work

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 7, 2014 | 12 Comments

It’s been called “the geography of opportunity.” And David Levinson is trying to make a science of it. In a new analysis, Levinson, a University of Minnesota transportation engineering professor, and his colleague Andrew Owen have ranked the 50 largest U.S. metro areas based on job accessibility by transit [PDF]. Levinson and Owen used transit schedules and walking […]

Fixing a Blank Wall Streetscape With Storefront Retrofits

By Angie Schmitt | Sep 5, 2014 | 20 Comments

Every city has places where the buildings present a blank face to the sidewalk. A dark, recessed arcade deadening the pedestrian environment or a soulless concrete wall fronting a windswept plaza. Consultant Brent Toderian, formerly the planning director for the city of Vancouver, pointed out a cheap and easy solution to this problem. He calls them […]

Show More Stories