Ashland Ave BRT 3, The route we left behind.

Now I want to turn back the clock and compare the proposed, center running Ashland BRT with the one I thought was a no brainer, Western Ave, Parking and Median  Removal.

The main disadvantages of this plan would be the removal of both the median and parking on one side of Western.

The parking removal seems terrible but nothing says it all has to be on the same side. The entirety of Western Ave is lined with high schools, hospitals, parks, shopping centers, strip malls, used car lots, factory blocks and fast food joints. Get the picture? These are all places with their own parking lots. In fact there are only about eight blocks where street front commercial and residential uses (these uses rely on street parking) dominate both sides of the street.

O.K. You would have to make the traffic lanes slalom from the east to west to take advantage of this, but that could be a good thing. Increasing the complexity of the road way  should have a minor effect during the peak hours, when everyone is traveling slow and following the guy in front, but it might serve to have a traffic calming effect in the overnight hours when a wide open, dead straight road encourages driving above the speed limit..

You would have to annoy about 150 Property owners and LAZ., but LAZ has only 532 parking spaces on all of Western. Even if we eliminate half of them, LAZ could easily be bought off by increasing their holdings on the cross streets. There are a hundred spaces on North Ave alone that would make LAZ wet their pants if they thought they could a hold of them.

Median removal? This is a joke. The median on most of Western is a stripe painted on the asphalt. For ¾ mile the median is a bridge to nowhere that they have been talking about removing for 40 years. For five miles, the median is a 100 foot wide park and there are two Westerns on both sides. There are only a few blocks of actual raised medians on the whole street.

How about a line by line comparison

           

                                   Western curbside             Ashland center running

Bus speed                         15.6mph                           15.9mph

Increased boardings   9549 new riders            8440 new riders

Average late bus           39secs                               22secs

Pedestrian space           30ft                                   43 ft (inc 14ft station)

Traffic capacity lost      0%                                     50%

Cost                                     110 million                     165 million

Why did they choose the current proposal?

The only advantage it has over the Western proposal is the loss of traffic capacity.

I am not a conspiracy nut. I think Oswald was the lone gunman. I think that 85 yards is such an easy shot, even with a junk rifle, that if anyone thought of putting a second shooter on the grassy knoll, it would have been dismissed as a waste of manpower.

But here’s what I think.

I think that center running traffic lane removal was the plan all along.

I think they played the community like a cheap violin. Ginning up fears of parking and planted median loss. Hyping percentage improvements in reliability speed and “transit use share” until travel lane removal seemed like a reasonable choice.

I think they chose Ashland simply because they thought the fall out would be less.

I don’t believe that they are doing this to force some municipal vision of a transit state or bicycle utopia. I don’t think that even the mayor has that much clout.

I think their reasons are much more mundane.

I suspect that somewhere out there is some ginormous federal grant for congestion abatement and we are being trampled while the city fathers scramble to get a piece of that pie.

The fact that the 2014 budget shows that CDOT plans for an additional 200 million dollars (over last year) in federal infrastructure grants, only reinforces that suspicion.

 Paul K. Dickman

Ashland Ave BRT 2, The report.

The city finally released their Environmental Impact report last week.

http://www.transitchicago.com/ashlandbrt/#ea

It is several hundred pages and I have been wading through it as fast as I can. They say it will have no impact, but that is what we expected them to say. So I will give my review so far.

First, my predictions…

Prediction #1

The rush hour traffic count will come out higher than expected, and the parts of the plan the CTA won’t want to talk about will include rush hour bans on all of Western and Damen (with loss of bicycle lanes) and probably parts California, Kedzie and Halsted.

 True.

They didn’t make it easy, but the rush hour traffic counts are there in

Appendix B-2: Level of Service Analysis

http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/brt/AshlandBRTDraftEA_AppendixB-2_20131113.pdf

It’s labeled “Existing Volume Schematics” on pages 6-14 and it is in the form of a bunch of intersectional counts for every intersection.

They’re confusing, but to get a count for, say, the south side of any intersection,  you add all the vehicles in the north bound lane (inc turns) and the count in the south bound lane that travels straight and the south bound turns from the cross streets.

I did that and they showed that my seat of the pants AM rush traffic counts were right on the money. They indicate that compared to IDOT’s 2010 counts, they are 25% higher in the phase 1 zone (Cortland to 31^st), 6% lower in the north section (Irving Pk to Cortland) and 13% higher in the south (31^st to 95^th). And when I estimated they would have to divert 650 car per hour in the rush, the actual number is more like 1000.

Even with these variations, IDOT’s counts were the closest to current conditions.

I tried to figure out which counts they were using for their planning. They show a map of what they thought it was at:

http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/brt/AshlandBRTDraftEA_AppendixB-1_20131113.pdf

Page 12, (13 by screen count)

But it didn’t match any I had seen. They show traffic counts on Damen where it jumps over the South Branch and Stevenson in the 40,000 range. I can’t imagine that happening unless one of the other bridges was out.

It turns out that the numbers were based on CMAP’s Travel Demand Model, which was based on counts from as far back as 2002. They crunch the numbers and create a model that estimates the current conditions. Every so often they check it against the real world to see if it is accurate. This works well enough for the broad brush planning that CMAP does,  but it falls apart when it comes to pin-striping out what is going to happen at any one street.

I’ll get into that later. Right now, let’s go back to the intersection schematics.

The complex nature of the counts has some advantages. Because they counted every turn, on every intersection (down to alleys), you can get a reasonably accurate measure of how many automobile trips are taken on Ashland on the average rush hour.  This number would be analogous to the CTA boarding counts.

I added up the AM rush count  and found that  22002 vehicles enter Ashland Ave between Irving Pk and 95^th each hour during the typical AM rush. I cross checked this by adding up the number of vehicles leaving. That total was 22342.

That is what you would expect. Roughly every vehicle that enters the road leaves at some point.

I ran the same calculations on their projected “Build Alternative Volume Schematics”. Those totals were 21666 vehicles entering and only 11940 leaving.

I am not sure how that is supposed to work. The increase in CTA ridership would only account for about 100 of the 1000 vehicles diverted each hour. The only scenario I can imagine where that would work is if half of the people who get on Ashland to take a 1-2 mile trip get stuck in traffic for over an hour.

To be fair, I don’t think this is part of an evil plan to turn Ashland into a 16.1 mile parking lot. I think they didn’t check the numbers because they just didn’t care. They were worried about what would happen when they magically cut the traffic rate in half and got rid of the left hand turns. All they cared about was whether CMAP’s model showed enough through lane capacity on the alternate routes.

Nothing in their calculations show what will happen when the 52 cars that used to make a left hand turn, eastbound onto Augusta are queuing up on Damen to make the same turn.

Prediction #2

If phase one gets built as planned, the route of Elston to Ogden to California will turn into an unintended bypass. This will piss off the people on Fry St. to no end, because everyone will be using their street to dodge the traffic snafu in the Elston-Milwaukee-Ogden interchange.

True.

Go back to Appendix B-1: Regional Traffic Diversion Analysis

http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/brt/AshlandBRTDraftEA_AppendixB-1_20131113.pdf

Down at the bottom they have (pgs 23- 28) they have maps of projected diverted volumes. Ogden has the second highest diverted counts. They blip over Elston and use Sacramento instead of California. The reason for these differences from my prediction is that they are using CMAP’s demand model that thinks these streets are already saturated.

Look at Appendix B-1: Regional Traffic Diversion Analysis page 11.

They have a chart called Table 1: Existing Conditions Results by North‐South Routes.

 Here they show something called the VMT.

VMT or “vehicle miles traveled” is the daily traffic count times the length of the road measured. It is simple enough. For roads of equal lengths, the road with the higher VMT has the higher average traffic counts.

Take another look at that chart. Particularly these three (the three highest)

Western Ave.                                                               VMT 306,429

Damen Ave.                                                                 VMT 322,336

Ashland Ave.                                                                VMT 264,626

They are operating with a model that shows Damen has a higher ADT than either Western or Ashland.

Damen is actually a couple of miles shorter then the others and this translates to Damen having a daily traffic count in excess of 22000 for its entire length. Damen only approaches 20000 in a few places. For the most part it is below 15000 and for a third of its length (Back of the yards) it is below 10000.

                

On page 12 they say:

“In reviewing the existing conditions travel demand model outputs, the VMT for Damen Avenue appears to be higher   than expected when compared with other parallel routes in the study area. However, the modeled VMT value is  not used in the  analysis, rather the relative change between Existing and Build Conditions is used, which is the best indicator for regional traffic diversion.”

           

So they noticed and ignored it. The VMT is the product of two numbers, one of which (the road length) is literally set in concrete. It didn't occur to them that the other (the modeled daily traffic count) is the very number they used to analyze the impact on every other route. It is a sad day when you hire a room full of engineers and not one of them has the good sense god gave a turnip.

Remember those maps at the bottom of “Appendix B-1: Regional Traffic Diversion Analysis”, well take another look. Damen at North Ave (based on IDOT’s counts) has excess rush hour capacity of around 375 vehicles an hour. They predict that it will only get 12 of the diverted vehicles during the AM rush. Western which has an excess rush hour capacity of less than 200, will see an increase of 348.

Why such a difference? Because of CMAP’s model they think Damen is way over capacity and Western is way under. They also think that Elston and California are over run with autos and that Sacramento Blvd is a good alternate despite the fact that a third of the phase 1 section winds its way through two huge parks.

Except for the actual time spent counting cars, the 7000 hours they spent modeling the traffic effects was a waste of time. It was based on data that was too coarse to be used in this way.

There are only three basic truths about the impacts on other streets

1,         Starting with the closest, all alternates will fill to capacity until all the traffic displaced from Ashland is absorbed.

2,         In as much as the average trip on Ashland is less than 2 miles, those alternates less than 1 mile away, will be under the highest pressure to exceed capacity. Increases on California and Kedzie will mostly be people who would normally take Western but have been diverted because of the congestion.

3,         The level of service, particularly on the two lane alternates, will decline in proportion to number of new left turn maneuvers in excess of available queuing capacity.

Prediction #3

If phase one ever gets built, phase two will be the southern portion. Traffic on Ashland and Western are 10% lower down there and shouldn’t present a problem.

Remains to be seen…

They are still referring to both the north and south segments, collectively, as phase two. However they always mention the south segment first.

Prediction #4

Phase three, will be from Clybourn to Irving Park and it will never be built. Traffic on Ashland is 25% higher up there and all the alternates are near capacity.

Remains to be seen…

The traffic rate is still higher up there. There is one possibility though. Reviewing the intersection schematics, I noticed something. The traffic rates spike between Belmont and Armitage. This leads me to believe that these are the result of people accessing the Kennedy.  Around 1000 cars turn onto or out of Webster and Armitage each rush hour. If a full time snafu at the Cortland lane reduction backs up into these two intersections, enough traffic may switch to an alternate ramp and lower the count to a more attractive number.

I am still holding to my prediction though.

So far I have two confirmed predictions and two pending, that’s a better batting average than Jeanne Dixon.

I feel emboldened to make a fifth prediction.

           

CMAP’s projections say that the building the BRT will result in 2% of the corridor wide VMT disappearing. A whopping 34000 Vehicle miles traveled. Don’t get worked up though, it works out to about 16 cars per typical rush hour on each of the 8 primary alternates.

Prediction #5

Geography and traffic lead me to suspect that the people accessing the Kennedy at Armitage and Webster are mostly from the east side of Ashland. Their access routes to the alternate ramps at Division pretty much suck. Elston is on the wrong side of the river, Racine doesn't go through and, Clybourn and Halsted squeeze them through a nasty choke point caused by the all the shopping at North Ave. These people represent 25% of the disappearing traffic and they will not disappear. Instead they will reroute outside of the corridor by using Clark and the Drive.

Paul K. Dickman

Coming soon

Ashland Ave BRT 3, The route we left behind.

Ashland Ave BRT

This is about the CTA’s Bus Rapid Transit plan. An idea to run busses like trains up and down existing streets.

If you are unfamiliar with it, you can read about it here:

http://www.transitchicago.com/westernashlandbrt/#infographic

http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/brt/PR_CDMSmith_AM_October_Boards_FINALlowres_20101015.pdf

If you are not from around here you should probably just skip over this one. It is pretty dry and full of technical gibberish and location references that are pretty specific.

I have been shooting my mouth off and now it is time to put my predictions down in writing.

The Phase one of the BRT plan, in its current incarnation, involves Ashland Ave between Cortland and 31^st St., but in the future, the plan is for it to run all the way from Irving Park to 95^th .

At the start, there were eight possible systems, four different configurations on two different streets. Ashland and Western. The one they have settled on is this:

They will turn the two inside lanes of Ashland Ave (a four lane street) into Bus only lanes, using the median like an El platform.

They will reduce the number of stops to two per mile (because they realize that it is not the traffic that slows down busses, it’s the passengers) and eliminate virtually all the left turns. This will cost $10,000,000 per mile ($161 mil total) not including the new fleet of busses with their doors on the left side.

The city’s presentations have all been sweetness and light, and pretty much devoid of any actual facts that haven’t already been spun tighter than a violin string.

Owing to this, my first analysis was based on the only real facts I had, existing traffic volume and road capacity.

Yes, roads have a capacity and a pretty well defined one. According to IDOT (the people who control the purse strings) a 2-way urban arterial road has a capacity of 1250 vehicles per hour for a two lane (one in each direction), 1250-2050 for a four lane, and 2050-2900 for a six lane. Roads are supposed to be built so that their capacity should meet or exceed their Design Hourly Volume (DHV). DHV represents a fairly bad rush hour, but not the worst ever.

The most recent traffic count I found was from IDOT in 2010. It said that the Average Daily Traffic (ADT) on most of Ashland in Phase one was 27,200 vehicles a day.

CDOT has more in depth counts from 2006. Not only are they older, but 2006 was the year of the Dan Ryan reconstruction (on the south) and the North Ave bridge removal (on the north). In my opinion these numbers were too skewed to be of any value. They were also much, much higher than the state’s numbers.

To obtain a DHV from the traffic counts, you can multiply the ADT times something called the K factor. This is nothing more than an approximation of the ratio between the ADT and the hourly count for the thirtieth highest traffic hour of the year. Typically, urban arterials have a K factor of around 9% but on a street like Ashland, that still has a lot of traffic after midnight, you can make a sound argument for a K factor in the 7% range.

So, we take 27200 x .07 = 1900 DHV existing. If you want to switch this four lane into a two lane, you have to get rid of 650 cars during rush hour or about 10,000 vehicles a day.

Where are they gonna go?

Figure half of them will take the biggest alternate (Western) and another quarter of them will take the nearest alternate (Damen) and the rest will scatter around. 325 cars at rush hour will put Western near or above the 2050 capacity for a four lane. That’s OK, you can put in a rush hour parking ban.

Damen, up here in the Wickerbuckukie Parktown Village, could probably escape this fate, but south of Grand Ave. the count is high enough that a similar ban would probably be needed.

Realize that a parking ban will also get rid of the bike lanes. The difference between the minimum width of an auxiliary lane and the minimum width of a parking lane is the width of a bike lane.

At first glance, it’s doable with rush hour bans on Western and parts of Damen.

Next, I wanted to cross check using few scraps of actual data the CTA let out, mostly Traffic Mode Share.      

This is not the same as ridership. It is the ratio between the number of people on busses to the total number of people traveling the road. As a ratio it has two variables. To increase the TMS you can either, double the number of bus riders and let the car traffic stay the same, or you can maintain the same number of riders and get rid of 15,000 cars.

The reality is somewhere in between, and that is what I wanted to find out.

The CTA said that their current transit share might be as high as 15%. Working backwards from their different Ashland configuration comparison pages, they said that 17%TMS represented a 21% increase, 19%TMS for a 36% increase 23% for a 64% increase and 26% for a 46% increase. I think that last one (the current proposal) is actually a typo. Otherwise they all represent a current mode share of 14%. The Cta repeats this number on this infographic.

http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/brt/BRT_Infographics_final.pdf

If transit share is 14% then auto share is 86%, and  27,200/.86 = total of 31,628 with of a daily average transit passenger load of 4428. This would represent all the bus passengers passing through any single point on Ashland Ave. on an average day and is analogous to ADT.

An earlier report from the metropolitan planning council said that you could expect an increase in ridership of 14.3% from BRT schemes. So, I tried that first.

4428x1.143 = 5061 passenger load with BRT. The current plan for Ashland says that it will capture a 26% Transit Mode Share. 5061/.26 = 19,466 total travelers minus 5061 on busses leaving 14,405 in cars or a loss of about 13,000 cars a day (only 600 of which could be accounted for by mode switchers). This seemed a little ambitious, so I increased the new passengers to 30% and ran the numbers again.

They gave me a passenger load of 5756, total travelers of 22140 and an ADT of 16390, or a loss of about 10,000 cars a day. This is the same as my road capacity calculations.

At our most recent presentation from the city, they put up a graphic that projected an increase in ridership of 29%. I am pretty sure that I nailed down the assumptions they were dealing with.

CDOT has been doing new traffic counts and they have spent 7000 hours collecting and modeling the counts. Myself, I performed a few seat of the pants AM rush counts and they indicated that my assumptions about either the ADT or the K factor were way too low. I suspect this is correct. Why would they need 7000 hours to model the traffic if it wasn’t?

The city’s traffic analysis is due out next month, so now I’ll make my predictions.

Prediction #1

The rush hour traffic count will come out higher than expected, and the parts of the plan the CTA won’t want to talk about will include rush hour bans on all of Western and Damen (with loss of bicycle lanes) and probably parts California, Kedzie and Halsted.

Prediction #2

If phase one gets built as planned, the route of Elston to Ogden to California will turn into an unintended bypass. This will piss off the people on Fry St. to no end, because everyone will be using their street to dodge the traffic snafu in the Elston-Milwaukee-Ogden interchange.

Prediction #3

If phase one ever gets built, phase two will be the southern portion. Traffic on Ashland and Western are 10% lower down there and shouldn’t present a problem.

Prediction #4

Phase three, will be from Clybourn to Irving Park and it will never be built. Traffic on Ashland is 25% higher up there and all the alternates are near capacity.

Barring thermonuclear war in the Middle East, they will not be allowed to reduce that stretch to two traffic lanes. To build it as a four lane could not be done without fulltime loss of the medians and all street parking, or widening of the roadbed. That would involve moving storm drains, streetlights, signs and stoplights and would substantially increase the per mile cost.

Understand, I am pretty much a pro transit kind of guy. I admit to owning a car, but it is thirteen years old and only has 37,000 miles on it. That is because I take CTA as much as possible.

I think BRT is a great idea! I would have piped up sooner, but one of their proposals for a curbside BRT on Western would, travel just as fast as this plan, carry just as many new riders as this plan, cause negligible traffic impacts, and cost 55 million dollars less.

Frankly, it never crossed my mind that anyone would be crazy enough to not choose that one.

Dining Al’fumo

This is about sidewalk cafés.

Specifically, it is about the fact that the city gives away chunks of the public way for chump change.

These aren’t some trash filled lot or a mothballed school building, these are our sidewalks, paid for and maintained by our motor fuel taxes and city sticker fees.

I first looked into this when the restaurants on Division Street, on the border between Wicker Park and the East Village, wanted to remove the tree pits in the sidewalks in order to expand their café seating.

Let me set this up a bit. In Chicago, the size of a sidewalk café is pretty much limited by the width of the sidewalk. You have to keep a 6 ft path for pedestrians and dodge around the street furniture, but anything else that’s paved is fair game.

Division Street has really big sidewalks. From Milwaukee to Humboldt Park, Division was intended to become one of Chicago’s tree lined boulevards. They laid it out with a large (100 ft) right of way. The boulevard thing fell through. As a result, the sidewalks on division are 25 feet wide.

So, these restaurants, who are probably paying $24000 a year for a single 1200 sqft storefront, can lease a 19 ft wide(300 to 475 sqft) stretch of sidewalk for $600 for the entire 9 month season. This area is ¼ to 1/3 of their entire interior floor area and they felt that they weren’t getting their money’s worth because the trees took up too much space.

It gets even worse.
That $600 is actually the minimum charge for a café. Goddess and Grocer up on Damen, where the sidewalks are much narrower, pays the same $600 for their 58 sq ft café. That is about the size of the tree pits on Division.

It gets even worse.
The base rate the city uses for most* of the city’s sidewalks is $1.10 per sq foot. The price to lease the sidewalk for 9 months is $600 or $1.10 per square foot net, whichever is larger.

Tocco Pizza e Arte on Milwaukee Ave has a sidewalk café on Mautene Court. Mautene Court was a tiny stub of a street that was vacated back in the 1980’s for a public open space. Unencumbered by an actual roadbed, the city leases ¼ of the space to Tocco. 1280 sq ft, larger than most actual restaurants and bars in the area and for this lease the city receives the princely sum of $1408 per season.

This is ridiculous. With retail leases running $15-$25 psf triple net, why are we leasing our sidewalks for a $1.10.

In retrospect the parking meter deal makes a lot more sense. Daley leased the parking space for $2.60 psf a year. He must have thought he made out like a bandit. Now LAZ sublets it back to us for $46.00 psf.


Other cities have sidewalk cafes. What do they charge?

San Francisco $5-6 psf plus $112

Miami $20 psf

Boston is mum on what their sq ft rate is, but they say the average café run $500-$1200 per month

New York is about $26 psf. That isn’t for midtown Manhattan, that is the rate for coffee shops in Canarsie. That is also just for the consent fees. Licensing and permitting costs are more than our minimum charge.

Heck, Seattle charges more than we do.


Why are we on this race to the bottom? I don’t see any of Boston’s beaneries flocking to Chicago because of our liberal sidewalk café policy.


I am not a greedy man, and to me, some of these cities sound a little expensive. My personal belief is that commerce should not be a zero sum game. Everybody has to make a little money or the whole thing falls apart and no one makes anything. So, lets find out how much these seats are worth.

In 2010 the National Restaurant Association published the results of a survey of restaurant operators. The report is a wealth of information.

In full service restaurants with an average check of $15-$25 per person each seat brought in:

$10866 total sales (food and beverage)

$7437 gross profit

and $346 net profit before taxes.


Ok, that net profit doesn’t seem like much, but it also reflects $495 in restaurant occupancy costs (lease, taxes, fire insurance). The occupancy cost for the sidewalk seat is $16.50 ($1.10 x 15 sqft).

Median restaurant seat profit plus occupancy cost equals $841 a year.

The sidewalk seats are only used for nine months and the weather probably puts the kibosh on a third of those.

Pro rated for season and weather, every sidewalk seat is worth $420.50 free and clear.
The city charges $16.50.


Put into perspective, Tocco’s use of Mautene Ct. puts $32232 in his pocket and the city’s gets $1408.

That is way too cheap.



Here is my idea.

First, eliminate the $600 minimum charge. This is extremely regressive and charges the most to the ones who get the least.


Second, we create two separate classes of restaurant each with its own base rate.

The first class is for small local businesses that do not have a liquor license.

Their base rate should be $6 psf (about $90 per seat). At this rate the small coffee shops and hotdog stands that have got a little 100 sqft café will still be paying about the same as they are now.

The Second class is for restaurant chains and any restaurant with a liquor license.

Their base rate should be $10 psf (about $150 per seat). They have higher profit margins and can afford to pay a higher rate.

These two rates should cover most of the city, but they should be doubled in the loop and halved in the enterprise zones.


City hall has been leaving a lot of money on the table and this should bring in millions from the 1000+ cafes and still encourage small businesses. The restaurants will all cry poor, but they will still be making more money each month from each their sidewalk seats than they do from the ones indoors.


As usual, I offer these suggestions for the good of my city, but if they want to reward me, they could wave my property taxes for the next 50 years. I estimate that would equal about 10% of one year’s increased revenue.





Paul K. Dickman



* The city’s rates go up incrementally in the central business district. I have found rates of $1.50, $2.30 to peak of $4.50 for Michigan Ave. facing the park

The Axles of Evil

The City of Chicago has waged a long war against the “Axles of Evil”, also known as the pickup truck. Who knows what their beef is. I am sure that it must be part of Daniel Burnham’s plan to keep the hillbillies at bay.

Their main tool is this parking ordinance,
9-64-170 Parking restrictions – Special types of vehicles.
(a) It shall be unlawful to park any truck, tractor, semi-trailer, trailer, recreational vehicle more than 22 feet in length, self contained motor home, bus, taxicab or livery vehicle on any residential street for a longer period than is necessary for the reasonably expeditious loading or unloading of such vehicle, except that a driver of bus may park the bus in a designated bus stand as authorized elsewhere in the traffic code.

Parking is allowed in certain wards, as long as the owner obtains a sticker from the city.

Back in 2000, I was flush with money and decided to buy myself a new vehicle. At the time a small pickup made sense so I wound up with a brand new Ranger.
Like most folks, I found out about the residential parking restrictions on pickups via an orange envelope on my windshield.
Luckily, I was in a ward that allowed it, so I applied for my sticker.
Back then it was a complicated process. You filled out a form, gave it to the alderman with a $30 check and waited. They would check to see if you had any outstanding tickets, and then it went down to the city council where they would vote to give you special dispensation.
On the third year of this, my alderman called and said my application was denied because of outstanding tickets. When I checked it, I had several tickets for residential truck parking, despite the fact that I had the sticker in my windshield.
I went down to the Addison office to straighten it out. The hearing went well, but while leaving the office, I got t-boned by an undercover officer with the US dept of Transportation. He was leaving the McDonalds with his lunch and crossed a lane of traffic to hit me. That is an entire story in itself.
The experience was so bad that I said “never again”.

I read the ordinance and realized that if I was an RV of less than 22 feet in length, I would not need the sticker.

As soon as I got my truck back from the shop, I bought a used camper shell on ebay and had it registered as an RV.
That was good for seven years.
Then something changed and I started getting tickets. Back when the cops wrote the tickets, they knew better, but now tickets are being issued by wandering revenuers who pass them out willy nilly.
I contested the first one by mail and I was found guilty. I contested the next two in person and pleaded my case successfully. On the strength of those determinations, I have successfully contested the next seven by mail.

That’s my story, and why this is important to me. However, in reviewing the municipal code I noticed something that is the reason I am writing.

The city has its own definition for recreational vehicles

The Illinois Vehicle code says;
(625 ILCS 5/1‑169) (from Ch. 95 1/2, par. 1‑169) Sec. 1‑169. Recreational vehicle. Every camping trailer, motor home, mini motor home, travel trailer, truck camper or van camper used primarily for recreational purposes and not used commercially nor owned by a commercial business. (Source: P.A. 84‑986.)

The Municipal code defines recreational vehicles as;
9-4-010 Definitions.
“Recreational vehicle” means every camping trailer, motor home, mini-motor home, travel trailer, truck or van camper used primarily for recreational purposes and not used commercially nor owned and used by a commercial business.

It is almost the same, word for word, as the state’s definition, with one important change. Where the State says “truck camper” the city just says “truck”.

In fact, it says “every truck”. Nowhere does the municipal code define truck, or mention the type of plates. So what it says is that every truck used primarily for recreational purposes and not used commercially nor owned and used by a commercial business is by city definition a recreational vehicle.

Try to follow my Perry Mason logic here.

The city has created its own definition.
So, for all things municipal, that definition reigns supreme.
They have chosen a definition less restrictive than the state’s.
So, although RV plates are proof that the vehicle is an RV, the state’s definition is a subset of the city’s.
How big is the city’s set?
Every truck used primarily for recreational purposes and not used commercially nor owned and used by a commercial business.

Recreational purposes are never defined, so the enjoyment of driving should qualify.

That means every noncommercial pickup, box, garbage or fire truck qualifies as a “recreational vehicle” in the eyes of the City of Chicago.

This brings us to pickup trucks.

The city’s ban, with respect to RVs, only applies to RVs longer than 22 ft.

As far as I can ascertain, nearly all stock pickup trucks are shorter than this. To get one longer than this, you have to move up to Ford F450 and Dodge Ram 4500 series and above. These behemoths are actually chassis cab vehicles with a pickup bed screwed on. They are closer to a dump truck with a broken lift than they are to a pickup. Even these are shorter than 22 ft until you get to various long bed/crew cab combinations.

So, there it is.
Every noncommercial truck is by definition an RV.
Virtually every pickup truck is less than 22 ft long.

Therefore it is perfectly legal to park virtually every noncommercial pickup truck anywhere it is legal to park a passenger car.

No special stickers, no special wards, no special plates, no special dispensation from the city council.

This will need to be tested by the Dept of Administrative Hearings. Someone will need to stand up and test it. I have my RV plates and my exemption and don’t have the energy for another fight. I urge someone, everyone to contest these tickets in person.
If for no other reason than that it will cost the city more to hear each case, than they could possibly get from the $25 ticket.

Paul K. Dickman

Crossing the Street

One blogger wrote, “If you’ve ever ventured out into one of Chicago’s famous six-corner intersections, you know the streets don’t always feel safe.”

Blair Kamin called Belmont, Lincoln and Ashland “one of the ugliest and most anti-pedestrian intersections in all of Chicago”

Someone taking exception with plans for the Lincoln Park Hospital site wrote, “Six corner streets are very dangerous under the best of conditions”

A photographer wrote, “To many visitors of Chicago unacquainted with the workings of a six-way intersection, these spots can be a confusing and dangerous experience, particularly if driving a car or simply trying to walk across the street.”*


I have lived near the Milwaukee, North and Damen intersection since the mid 80’s, and I never noticed how dangerous it was. I have walked across the intersection at least once a day for the last 25 years, and I have never felt any more imperilled than when crossing any other intersection.
Have I been lucky?

I started looking into it and a few years ago CDOT commissioned a study about pedestrian safety and here are the results.
The study was prepared for the city of Chicago by the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, June 2007.
Worst intersections for pedestrians:
Number of pedestrian collisions: Location
 13: M L King & 79th
 11: ASHLAND & 79TH
 10: CALIFORNIA & NORTH
 9: CICERO & MADISON
 8: Pulaski & Irving Park
 8: KEDZIE & NORTH
 8: HALSTED & 95TH
 8: MICHIGAN & MONROE
 7: CLARK & WASHINGTON
 7: DEARBORN & RANDOLPH
 6: CENTRAL & BELMONT
 6: PULASKI & LAKE
 6: PULASKI & ROOSEVELT
 6: CALIFORNIA & 63RD
 6: WESTERN & ADDISON
 6: WESTERN & 63RD
 6: WESTERN & 71ST
 6: Paulina & 79th
 6: ASHLAND & 69TH
 6: Wacker & Madison
 6: CLARK & DIVISION
 6: DEARBORN & WASHINGTON
 6: WABASH & JACKSON
 6: STATE & 79TH
 5: AUSTIN & BELMONT
 5: AUSTIN & CHICAGO
 5: LARAMIE & CHICAGO
 5: PULASKI & 26TH
 5: KIMBALL & BELMONT
 5: Kimball & 16th
 5: CALIFORNIA & 55TH
 5: CALIFORNIA & 71ST
 5: WESTERN & DEVON
 5: WESTERN & NORTH
 5: SOUTHPORT & ADDISON
 5: SHEFFIELD & WEBSTER
 5: Halsted & Clark
 5: HALSTED & 69TH
 5: WELLS & MONROE
 5: CLARK & MADISON
 5: DEARBORN & MADISON
 5: Dearborn & Jackson
 5: STATE & MONROE
 5: STATE & ADAMS
 5: MICHIGAN & CHICAGO
 5: MICHIGAN & DELAWARE
 5: COTTAGE GROVE & 81ST
 5: JEFFERY & 79TH

You will notice that not a single one of these dangerous intersections is a six corner intersection.

Only one came close, Halsted & Clark. It is a five corner intersection. If you have been there, you know that it is not really an intersection at all, but an unholy maelstrom of surface parking and curb cuts.
Even then, it was at the bottom of the list.

Clearly, they aren’t any more dangerous than a four corner intersection.
So why are they getting such a bad rap?

Because we have confused the concept of not being “pedestrian friendly” with being dangerous.
We have to cross more streets than we would on a four corner. To perform the simple task of traveling on the same street in the same direction, we have to cross twice as many streets and traffic in twice as many directions.

We have to travel farther and check the traffic twice as often and percieve this as dangerous.
In reality it is much more dangerous crossing at a corner with a gas station or a parking lot on it.

Paul K. Dickman

The full study can be read at:
http://www.walkinginfo.org/training/collateral/resources/ChicagoPedestrian_final.pdf


*I owe this guy an apology for taking his statement out of context.
“To many visitors of Chicago unacquainted with the workings of a six-way intersection, these spots can be a confusing and dangerous experience, particularly if driving a car or simply trying to walk across the street.”
The rest of the paragraph is this:
“But to us locals, six-ways are where we want to be.”
It is part of the introduction to an enjoyable photo essay on six corner intersections and can be found here:
http://www.gabrielbiller.com/sixways/index.html

The Death of a Thousand Cuts

When a building or a district gets landmarked, it is not about restricting development or creating some historic theme park. It is simply the recognition that pieces of our culture, the stories of our common heritage were carved in our buildings. This is something that belongs to all of us and needs our protection. That heritage is no less significant for a workers cottage than it is for a mansion or skyscraper.
For the most part Chicago’s landmark ordinance, realizing that a building needs some flexibility to thrive, limits itself to a building’s exteriors. It puts most of its energy into the portions of a building that is visible from the street.
The ordinance can’t make you restore your building or put back elements that were lost before it was landmarked. Instead, it directs the Landmarks Commission and their staff (who oversee the ordinance) to identify those portions of a building that are still original or significant and gives them the power to protect them.
Sure they protect them from demolition, but that is rare. The grueling day to day work of these people is not protecting them from the wrecking ball, it is saving our heritage from the death of a thousand cuts.
Every new owner, every new tenant, every new manager looks up at the front of their building and says, “This would be better with….”.
The cuts all seem small: It needs a bigger cornice, I want French doors or a picture window.
The reasons all seem good: It’ll look more historic, no one is ever going to use that door again, I can’t sell a condo without a balcony and the latest buzzwords “adaptive reuse”.
But historic preservation is not about what your building could be. It is about saving what remains of what remains of what they once were.
Each little cut takes a piece of that away.
Enough cuts, and there is nothing left.

Paul K. Dickman