You
can also view this issue at www.biketraffic.org/biketraffic/BT0903/
or download the PDF at www.biketraffic.org/biketraffic/BT0903.pdf.
| You're not a member? Good
god, not so loud. Someone might hear. After all, everyone's fed
up with traffic jams, tired of being afraid on the streets of
their own neighborhoods, sick of dirty air, and done with spending
the vacation money on a new transmission. So they've all joined
the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation and are making a difference
(and getting discounts on maps, at bike shops, and events to boot).
So carefully now, slip off with this issue of Bike Traffic (another
member benefit) and call us or
join at www.biketraffic.org. That was close, but it's gonna
be okay. |
| Bikes
on some Metra trains for a few weekends.
As far away from regular service as ever and as limited as it was
last year, but AT LEAST IT'S SOMETHING, and it's still $5. And it's
still fun: check schedules and make your reservations at biketraffic.org. Walk to School Workshop September 10. Learn how to organize kids and parents to speak out with their feet on International Walk to School Day October 8. Workshop's from 6-8 pm at a convenient downtown location. Call Dave Glowacz, 312/427-3325x29 for info or see the Safe Routes website. 15th Anniversary Boulevard Lakefront Tour September 14. The classic bike tour takes you on a leasurely ride around Chicago's "Emerald Necklace," the Burnham-designed sytem of boulevards and city parks. Register on-line only at biketraffic.org. Northwest Suburban Bike Meeting is September 23, 7-9 pm in the Schaumburg Prairie Center for the Arts, 201 Schaumburg Court. Bring your bike-riding friends from around and south of Schaumburg, e.g. Roselle, Itasca, Hanover Park, Elk Grove, Bloomingdale, etc. and share your ideas to make biking easier, safer, funner. Call Matt@312-427-3325 or e-mail NW Coordinator James "Not Francis's Husband" McDermott for info. Deadline for the November ‘03 Bike Traffic is October 8. I’d threaten to darken the sun, but that’s happening whether I want it to or not. |
|
|
| Get our FREE Bike to Work Guide!
|
| If you took stop-acton photos of Frank Thomas's bat as he's being walked, it would look like this!!!! |
This Man
Wants to Install YOUR Bike Rack! John Greenfield and the CDOT Bike
Rack Program have dozens of shiny new racks ready to install RIGHT NOW
at the site of your choosing. THEY COST YOU NOTHING, and beautify any
establishment. Request one! Request a dozen! Fill out the
on-line form at chicagobikes.org!
| Chicagoland
Bicycle Federation At 650 S. Clark: Randy
Neufeld Dan
Korman Steve
Buchtel Dave
Glowacz Cathy
Haibach Nick
Jackson Eve
Jennings Matt
Maloney Anne
Nepokroeff Randy
Warren Position
Open Alex
Wilson At
Chicago Department John
Greenfield |
Safe Routes debuts as suburban solution
By Angela Hahn
Who
knew that a quiet little town in Lake County would catch the radar of a
Chicago Tribune opinion editor, WGN radio, ABC news, and an Illinois State
Senator? Certainly not John Barbini, Superintendent of Wauconda Community
Unit School District 118, who approved a ban on bicycles at Wauconda Grade
School last month. Since confirming the ban, Barbini has been bombarded
with reporters wondering why kids will have to pack away their bikes before
they pack up their book bags in the fall."The bike ban sends the message that [the school district] alone can't solve the problem," said Barbini. The problem, he said, is that car traffic is increasingly dense and hazardous during pick-up and drop-off times at the middle school, which enrolls grades five and six. A similar bike ban for 7th and 8th graders has been in place for four years at Wauconda Middle School across the street. Barbini said that the middle school's principal has witnessed "a lot of close calls" and that last April a biker was struck two blocks away from school, yet wasn't seriously injured.
Barbini said his two priorities are safety and minimizing the school district's liability.
"How much longer," he said, "are we going to wait until someone gets hurt?"
Not long at all, if Chicagoland Bicycle Federation has its way. The Federation quickly proposed implementing a Safe Routes to School program similar to the one it runs for the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT). The Wauconda school board went along with the idea at its August 7 meeting, perhaps in response to the Critical Mass of 30 Wauconda students that pedaled in protest to the ban.
Safe Routes to School gathers parents, teachers, government agencies and other community players to identify barriers to walking and biking in order to remove those barriers with creative and realistic solutions. These solutions, according to CBF director of education Dave Glowacz, can include safety training for students, organizing parents to lead bike trains or walking school buses, and agitating for infrastructure changes such as redeployment of crossing guards and wider roads. "We want to enable community members," Glowacz said, "where they take on active roles in biking and walking."
Safe Routes in Chicago, funded by the Illinois Department of Transportation, has been used at over a dozen Chicago schools already. Glowacz said that the Wauconda project "provides a starting point for the dissemination of the Safe Routes program in the suburbs...so we can package it for use elsewhere." Bike bans, he said, might actually act as the "canaries in the coalmine" to help spread Safe Routes--indicating areas with strong community support, where the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation might most easily deploy the program.
"Wauconda also seems to have good media potential," said Glowacz. So good that it even caught the eye of Illinois Senator Dave Syverson, who hopes to introduce bike safety legislation as early as next spring.
But bicycle education isn't just about safety--it's about health, especially when you consider that one out of four children is overweight or at risk of obesity. "We want to stress that biking and walking to school can provide an answer to the growing problem of obesity in children. We see our program as a route to taking them down that road. We hope that biking and walking regularly would establish a pattern that would follow children through adulthood," said Glowacz.
And the national government agrees. This bike ban, or any bike ban, is a public health concern because "it's part of a national movement relative to anything that's going to improve increasing physical activity...if you engineer these activities out of people's lives, they will be inactive. Obesity rise is caught up in that," said Jeff Sunderlin of the Illinois Department of Public Health. He insists that the greatest concern with the health of children is health literacy. "We're not producing kids from school systems that are rehearsing good health practice. We're cranking kids out that simply aren't health literate and therefore producing adult populations illiterate to health issues. And we don't see parents advocating for that. This obesity thing knows no boundaries. I'm convinced it's chewing us apart," said Sunderlin.
The first organizational meeting for the Safe Routes to School program in Wauconda will be on September 3, and the Board of Education expects to review final options in March 2004. The bike ban for Wauconda Middle School will be in effect August 27.
"Donut" Apt Metaphor
Suburban ring? Spare tire's more like it
By Steven Buchtel
It's official: Chicagoland's growth really is in its suburban ring. We've told you before about the effects of transportation and development decisions on your health ("Living Large," November 2002 Bike Traffic). Thanks to the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP), now we can quantify some of those effects.
Released in late August, STPP's report, "Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl," publishes the results of the first national study to show a clear association between the type of place people live and their activity levels, weight, and health. In the most general of terms, researchers conducting the study correalated measurements of sprawl with health and activity data from 448 counties in urban areas of America, including Chicagoland.
The tale of the tape? In Chicagoland, residents in Will County--which suffers most from sprawl--have the highest average weight, are most likely to suffer from high blood pressure, and have the highest rates of obesity. Residents are healthiest in Chicago-dominated Cook County, which has the area's least amount of sprawling development. McHenry, Kane, Lake and DuPage score in between these two, in every case correalating worse health with rising levels of sprawl.
While it's easy to see (for us, anyway) that trading off walking and biking trips for car trips--as sprawl does--leads to more obesity and related health problems, the study's scope stops short of stating a causal connection between the two. Still, the study forms an important backdrop to the challenges bicyclists face every day in the suburbs. The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation's Suburban Coordinators are meeting these challenges head on. We think that as barriers to bicycling fall, so will waistlines. More on the report at www. stpp.org.
Toward a Suburban Agenda
First 'burb bike meeting brings ideas and direction
By Matt Maloney
The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation held its first installment of suburban membership meetings Monday August 18 at the Wheeling Park District Fieldhouse. These meetings aim to introduce community leaders, members, and advocates to our new suburban coordinators and expand our support of bicycling and pedestrian initiatives outside Chicago. By the fall, we'll construct a suburban work plan largely derived from comments at these public forums.
This meeting focused on five communities: Wheeling, Buffalo Grove, Prospect Heights, Mt. Prospect, and Arlington Heights. Newly crowned CBF North Suburban Coordinator Steve Boime directed the play-by-play. The primary questions at hand: What improvements to bicycling and pedestrian accommodations would you like to see occur in your community over the next 12 months? How about 5 years? Now, let's get a little wild and look 10 to 20 years down the road....
This group consisted of a perfectly mixed bag of members, non-members, recreational trail cyclists, road warriors, and even a state rep (Elaine Nekritz). The brainstorm session kicked into high gear right off the bat with suggestions on enhancing drivers' education, improving signage in the region, creating new routine accommodation policies, and offering discount incentives for those who shop by bike.
The Federationnow will work to compile these topics and classify them further in terms of timeframe and importance to the region. Additional comments will be sought from Federation members and government officials as we move ahead. A new Bike Traffic section has been added, titled "Suburban View," which will keep our members up to date on all the happenings on the outer ring of the urban maelstrom.
As Steven Boime walked out of the meeting largely unscathed, Jim McDermott (NW Suburban Coordinator) and Steven Buchtel (Southland Coordinator) will schedule their meetings for late September. Watch your mail and e-mail for meeting dates, or call me at 312/427-3325 for details.
BIKE PEOPLE PROFILE
TRISHA
STERNBERG
CDOT Bicycle Program
By Floyd Mittleman
You've got to give the city credit! They've hired some really great people to help make Chicago the best big cycling city in the country. Trisha Sternberg manages the city's bike parking, safety and education, and marketing initiatives. And since the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation is a hired consultant for these programs, Trisha spends a lot of time working directly with Federation staff.
Trisha has a BA degree in geography and has completed coursework for an MS degree in urban planning from University of Illinois-Chicago. She hopes that the work she is doing at CDOT will provide a basis for her master's thesis.
Managing
the city's bike safety and education programs make up a big part of Trisha's
day-to-day activities. Trisha manages the Federation's work on Safe
Routes to School, Student
Bikes, and Mayor Daley's
Bicycle Ambassadors programs. (You'll find more info on all these programs
at biketraffic.org.) On top of this challenge, Trisha coordinates the city's
bike parking program. Racks are installed on city sidewalks and public right-of-way
by request. To request a rack use the web site: chicagobikes.org
or the bike rack hot line: 312/744-4600. Trisha Sternberg has accomplished much in her three years at CDOT. We thank her for helping to make Chicago an ever better place to cycle.
Police Beat
Driver allegedly frames half-brother for cyclist's murder
By David Callahan
Bond was set at $600,000 on August 20 for a 38-year-old Park Ridge man accused of killing a bicyclist while driving on Milwaukee Avenue in July. Samuel Staples faces one count of reckless homicide and one count of perjury for allegedly trying to frame his brother for the killing.
Now begins the process by which the defense examines the state's evidence and prepares for trial. Assistant State's Attorney Dan Groth said the entire process could take up to two years.
According to Pat Mulloy, sister of the slain cyclist Robert Heinbockel, her brother used his bicycle to ride to the Jefferson Park CTA station from his home on Eastwood Avenue, about 1.5 miles away. "Robbie didn't take chances. He was always careful," she pointed out. "He used to ride a motorcycle, but when he moved back to Chicago, he got rid of it because he thought it was too dangerous to ride here."
On the evening of July 9, he was riding home from the el stop when he attempted to cross Milwaukee from the east side of the road, just north of Gale Street. A bus poised to turn left onto Gale blocked Heinbockel's view of the oncoming, northbound 1989 Ford Taurus driven by Staples, whose half-brother Stephen Burns rode in the passenger seat, police said.
Police said Staples passed the bus on the right "at a high rate of speed" and drove through the intersection at Gale before hitting Heinbockel. Police said they received conflicting reports about whether Staples ran a red light.
Police said witnesses saw the driver attempt to brake, but the car skidded into Heinbockel. His body was thrown up onto the hood and broke through the windshield. Police said Staples drove over the Heinbockel's body after Heinbockel tumbled off the hood and onto the street.
Heinbockel died in the hospital two hours later, she said.
Police found the vehicle abandoned and traced it to Burns. On questioning the pair, Staples pinned the blame on his half-brother, according to the police.
Staples came forward three days later and confessed on videotape, according to media reports. Mulloy said the police told her later they think Burns may have been passed out during the entire episode.
The case resumes on September 29 at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse, 26th St. and California.
Other news: Hit & run will cost you...$100. In another case of hit-and-run, a Chicago motorist was fined $100 and given court supervision in late July for leaving the scene of an accident with injuries last December. Wanda Dzienisowicz, 52, was turning onto northbound Avers Avenue at Wellington Avenue when her car struck 16-year-old Kyle Frayne of Chicago, who was riding his bike. According to court records, she refused when Frayne got up from the pavement and asked for her insurance information.
The court dismissed an additional charge of failure to render aid to an injured party.
Paths Piggyback on Road Projects
Plus: Prairie Path turns 40! And is happy about it!
By Matt Maloney
North
* Lake County reported that the $7.3 million Washington Street widening project in Gurnee will include the addition of a bike path on the north side of Washington Street from Almond Road to Hunt Club Road. Completion is expected in 2004.
* Hanover Park will be seeing roadway improvements to US 20/Lake Street that will include a bikepath near the Hanover Park Metra Station. Completion is scheduled for 2005.
Northwest
* Northwest Suburban Bike Meeting is September 23, 7-9 pm in the Schaumburg Prairie Center for the Arts, 201 Schaumburg Court. Bring your bike-riding friends from around and south of Schaumburg, e.g. Roselle, Itasca, Hanover Park, Elk Grove, Bloomingdale, etc. and share your ideas to make biking easier, safer, funner. Call Matt@312-427-3325 or e-mail JamesM@biketraffic.org for info.
* CBF is currently conducting a METRA station bike parking survey for the North Central Line and the Union Pacific Northwest Line, and will begin the Milwaukee District North Line, the UP North Line, and the south suburban lines, the Rock Island and the Electric, in the next week or two. The results will help us assess quality of access for cyclists and suggest potential changes to make it easier to park your bike at the stations.
DuPage County
* The Illinois Prairie Path will celebrate its 40th Anniversary on Saturday September 27 at 2 PM in Volunteer Park in Wheaton. For more information, check out www.ipp.org
* DuPage County has released a draft improvement plan for the existing Illinois Prairie Path and Great Western Trail in the DuPage County Trail System. The report summarizes improvement projects which the County and local agencies would like to complete over the next five years. One of the current projects under construction is a GWT-IPP eastern connector in Villa Park.
* A critical link in the North Central DuPage Regional Trail is now complete. A surface path and wooden bridge links Lawrence Ave. west to Lawrence Ave east in Bloomingdale. The Trail is now contiguous from Busse Woods through to the Mallard Lake Forest Preserve.
South
* In Olympia Fields, Mayor Linzey Jones has requested improvements to a Cook County intersection improvement and repaving proposal. Among the improvements requested are bike lanes on Kedzie from near Vollmer Road south to 203rd Street
* Palos Heights' new Metra station on Southwest Highway just north of the Cal-Sag will feature bicycle access for commuters living south of the channel. Extended sidewalks south of the bridge will help cyclists uncomfortable with Southwest Highway's heavy traffic, and a bike path winds from the north end of the bridge to the new station.
If you have any news or updates you'd like to see listed in "Suburban View," please contact Matt Maloney at matt@biketraffic.org.
Getting High Off the Banking
Sisters storm Friday nights at Northbrook
By Eve Pytel
This summer Cycling Sisters, an organization devoted to increasing the number of women bicyclists, sponsored three trips to the Northbrook Velodrome. On Friday, June 20th, Sarah Kaplan, Merideth Ibey, Chrissie Richards, Emily Wisner, Angela Stich, Kristen Ostberg, and Eve Pytel took to the track for the first time ever. Pushing the women's open category from the usual size of four to eleven, the Cycling Sisters showed that they were fast learners. Despite not having track bikes and riding to the velodrome, Cycling Sisters placed in the top three and won races while learning track racing tactics. This was the case every time the group went to the velodrome.
The Cycling Sisters were able to race because Friday nights are reserved for the Northbrook Velodrome's developmental bike racing series that is also referred to as stock bike racing. At these races, riders can ride any bicycle they wish and are not required to ride fixed-gear, no-brakes track bikes, giving people a chance to sample track racing without having to invest in another bicycle. And it means anyone who rides up to the track can race without having to strap another bike to their rear rack a la Gareth Newfield (see September 2002 Bike Traffic.
On these trips, women met at Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago and rode their bikes mostly up Milwaukee to the races. At registration on June 20th, Mark Harris remarked that he had never seen so many women register to race on Friday.
Other highlights included the stops on the ride home. We sampled avocado ice cream one night, parked in the drive-in at Super Dog, and rode home with members of XXX Racing, other racers and spectators. On one of our rides home, an upset man in a car asked us, "Is this the freakin' Tour De France?"
Unfortunately, the Friday Night series is jeopradized by the fact that this may be the track's last season. The surface is deteriorating, and funds to resurface the banking are short. More information, including how to donate to the project, is available at www.northbrookvelodrome.com.
This Isn't Kansas Anymore
Think shifty in Chitown to keep your ride
By Alex Polotsky, Bicycling Ambassador
They
rode in on the southerly breeze, a pair of adventurous cyclists from Kansas,
about to make their way to Milwaukee. A ride along the Lake Front Trail
was the perfect way for Angie and Peggy to take advantage of the unseasonably
cool June morning. On this day the crank-powered wheels of fate chose to
steer these two towards our display. This display, an ingenious contraption
of lengths of PVC pipe, painted canvas and nylon rope has allowed Mayor
Daley's Bicycling Ambassadors to reach thousands of children and adults
across the breadth of Chicago. Our Ambassadorial experience has taught us to use carnival tactics to attract passersby, hawking our wares: "Free maps, bike maps, get your bike maps!" When Peggy and Angie pulled over on their matching azure touring bikes, we offered them literature and advice in the form of the Chicago Bike Map and our Locking Your Bike flyer. On the map we showed them the best on-street routes to get from Jane Addams Park, located just to the north west of Navy Pier, to the Sears Tower. When we started demonstrating the proper way to use a combination of U-locks and cable locks to secure bikes in Chicago, Angie and Peggy whipped out another matching item: twin, neon green locks, no thicker than phone cords.
Liz and I gave each other a knowing look, checked our watches and pulled out our heavy-duty U-locks and cables and insisted that the two take them along to make sure that their bikes would still be where they'd left them after enjoying the panoramic cityscape from 103rd floor.
"See you in and hour," we called after them as they rode off. With our locks. And with no exchange of phone numbers or anything else to help us find them again.
An hour passed. No Angie. No Peggy.
An hour and a quarter. Still no sign of them. So we taped a note with our phone numbers to the light pole next to our location and rode back to the office to exchange sheepish looks and grimaces as we wondered how exactly we let these two nice ladies from Kansas City swindle us so thoroughly.
Taking a call the next day from T.C. O'Rourke at CDOT, I'm informed that two ladies from out-of-town had tracked down the Bicycling Ambassadors and were coming in with our locks. Hallelujah, humanity is worth something again!
As
it turns out, the duo had taken our warning about bike theft to heart and
tried their hardest to lock their bikes up properly, but made a few crucial
mistakes. In their own words: "Couldn't believe it when we came back...Peggy's
bike was gone, my bike was still there, but missing my front wheel!! We
felt like such goofs!" What they had forgotten in their mad rush to make
it inside the Tower was the first rule of bike theft prevention: Think like
a thief. Most often, a thief wants the best bike for the least amount of work. To encourage crooks to look for easier pickin's, Ambassadors teach "cross locking": using two types of locks in tandem. We suggest a high quality U-lock and a separate cable lock that is at least 3/8" in diameter. Lock the frame and back wheel to something solid like a bike parking rack or a parking meter with the U-lock and then wrap the cable lock through all of the part of the bike that can be stolen. This means that both the frame and wheels should be secured. Then make sure to use a high quality padlock to secure the cable. This ensures that a thief that cuts a U-lock will still have to go through the trouble of cutting your cable. Remember, also, that a cable lock can be stretched, either to slam the padlock against the ground or to lift the bike off of a parking meter. To stop this sort of assault, wrap the cable tightly with your padlock high above the pavement.
Angie and Peggy's bikes are long gone, as are they, back to Kansas City, with a promise to tackle the trail to Milwaukee. Remember, using a pair of high quality locks will not only deter thieves, but also insure that you bike karma is in good working order.
When you drive, you're still a bicycle advocate. Or you could be. Click the sign above to take the pledge. Or read about the Driver's Pledge in the December 2002/January 2003 Bike Traffic.
We don't need no stinkin' sidewalk. The August 27 issue of Villa Park Review reports that an approved federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) project that would have installed sidewalks between Michigan and Ardmore Avenues along Roosevelt Road in Villa Park was voted down by the village board. Issues raised by trustees opposed to the project included doubt that there were any pedestrians around that would use a sidewalk, even though the CMAQ grant proposal's review team cited numerous "pedestrian trip generators"--largely apartments and shopping--along that section of Roosevelt in its approval of the funding. By refusing to move forward with the project, the village forfeits $280,000 in federal funds.
International Walk to School Day is October 8. The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation and Center for Neighborhood Technology's Walk to School Day Workshop on September 10 will teach you how to organize kids and parents to speak out with their feet about the importance of providing safe walking and biking routes to school. Workshop's from 6-8 p.m. at our downtown location. More info on the web at biketraffic.org.
Transportation funding fight is on! As reported in last month's Bike Traffic, the U.S. House of Representatives' transportation funding bill for 2004 will, if passed, kill programming for $600 million worth of bike and pedestrian projects paid for through Enhancements funding. Reps. Tom Petri (R-WI) and John Olver (D-MA) have agreed to offer an ammendment to the bill when Congress debates the bill in early September, restoring Enhancements funding. Scuttling of Enhancements by Appropriations Committee leadership is largely seen as a probe of the environmental community's mettle with an eye toward the bigger fight to come: reauthorization of TEA-21, the six-year transportation spending legislation. More information at americabikes.org.
Bike Traffic is published by the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, a nonprofit, volunteer advocacy organization that is improving the quality of life in Northeastern Illinois by making cycling safer, more convenient, and more fun. All material that isn't copyrighted may be reprinted. Advertising rates available on request.
Managing Editor
Steve Buchtel
Editors
Randy Neufeld
David Callahan
Layout
Steve Buchtel
Copyright
2003, Chicagoland Bicycle Federation
650 S. Clark, Ste. 300, Chicago, Ill. 60605
Ph: 312/427-3325 Fax: 312/427-4907 E-mail:
cbf@biketraffic.org
