Steven Vance
Transportation planner and advocate. Steven also created Chicago Cityscape, a site that tracks neighborhood developments across the city.
Recent Posts
Chicago Needs More Street Redesigns to Reduce Pedestrian and Bike Deaths
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Last week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a report showing that all traffic fatalities increased significantly on U.S. roads from 2014 to 2015, by 7.7 percent to reach 35,200, the worst death toll since the 2008 economic crash. Streetsblog USA’s Angie Schmitt pointed out that, while Americans drove 3.5 percent more during this period, that’s “not […]
Transit TIF Districts Pass State House and Senate, Would Fund CTA Projects
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A new bill that would generate more funding for four large-scale Chicago transit infrastructure projects, without diverting tax revenues from schools, passed the Illinois House and Senate today. The original bill was introduced in January 2015, spearheaded by the Metropolitan Planning Council. It awaits Governor Bruce Rauner’s signature, who is expected to sign a budget […]
Manor Greenway Could Become City’s Best By Cutting Cut-Through Motorists
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Last week, the Chicago Department of Transportation revealed its proposal to connect riverfront paths, reduce cut through traffic, and make it safer to walk and bike along streets in the Ravenswood Manor neighborhood. CDOT developed the plan for a “neighborhood greenway” between Horner Park and Ronan Park along the north branch of the Chicago River […]
Here’s How the Wood Street Greenway Could Better Prioritize Bicycling
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Over the past few years the city has built a handful of “neighborhood greenways,” projects that involve small changes to side streets that can have a big impact in making them more bikeable, while connecting residential areas to the wider network of bike lanes. If the Chicago Department of Transportation picks up the pace on building these bikeways, […]
App Will Route People, Especially Wheelchair Users, Around Sidewalk Issues
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Local computer programmer Steve Luker is creating to create a new app to identify and eliminate all the major bumps, cracks, and missing curb ramps on sidewalks, as well as missing sidewalks, in the Chicago area. While these flaws are an annoyance for everyone, they can be significant barriers for people with disabilities. This issue […]
Metra Studying Replacement for Old Switch Machine to Improve Reliability
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Commuter trains rumble by every few minutes while four Metra workers tell me inside a control tower how they keep 370 trains moving every day. The machine that controls switches between tracks has been operating since 1937. There needs to be more reliable and resilient equipment in place, but it’s not a cheap or easy job to […]
CTA Will Begin Off-Board Fare Collection Pilot, But Not on the Loop Link
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The Chicago Transit Authority plans to test off-board fare collection – where riders pay on the sidewalk before boarding the bus – in an unexpected location. Previously, the CTA and the Chicago Department of Transportation announced they would pilot prepaid fare collection at the Dearborn/Madison station on Loop Link. Instead, the first off-board fare collection will be […]
Rotterdam’s Boulevards Demonstrate How to Make Chicago’s Bike-Friendly
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I’ve discovered few similarities between the city of Rotterdam, where I’ve been living for seven weeks, and Chicago. The most striking similarity is the nearly identical layout of the boulevard streets. While biking from my apartment in Rotterdam towards the cool neighborhood of Witte de With, I realized that as I was cycling on the side […]
Eyes on the Street: Dearborn Detour Suggests Salmoning on Lake Street
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The City of Chicago has made notable progress on expanding its network of protected bike lanes into more community areas and communities of color than it had before Rahm Emanuel became mayor, but it seems nothing is better about the way bicyclists and pedestrians are accommodated around construction projects. The city has even beefed up detour rules contractors […]
CTA: We Can’t Reduces Fees That Social Service Providers Pay on Ventra
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The Chicago Transit Authority said that it’s working to address some of the new burdens that the switch to Ventra has created for social service providers, as described in a study from the Chicago Jobs Council, which I reported about on Monday. The study was based on a survey of 53 organizations that provide transit fare […]
Study: Ventra Fees Cost Social Service Providers 140,000 Bus Rides Per Year
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Ever since the Chicago Transit Authority and Pace switched from magnetic stripe fare cards to the Ventra smart card system in 2013, social service providers across Chicago have been spending more money on paying for their clients’ transit rides, and giving out fewer rides. A new report from the Chicago Jobs Council details the burdens […]
Popular “Transit” App Now Enables Bypassing the Divvy Kiosk
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A new partnership between Divvy and Transit app, you can now get 24-hour Divvy passes and ride codes via smartphone. This means that people who have just signed up for an annual membership won’t have to wait for a key to arrive in the mail before they can start using the blue bikes. It also means […]