Meeting on CDOT Plan to put Bike Lanes on 55th

 -posted by chicago pop

Props to 4th Ward Alderman Will Burns. This is one of the best ideas I've heard about in a while. It's all about slowing things down. And when it comes to crazy traffic on the South Side's underutilized roadways, that's how it should be.

Substantial stretches of King Drive, 31st Street, and 55th/Garfield would be altered to incorporate protected bike lanes, and improved pedestrian safety and crosswalks. This would be done at the expense of lane space currently devoted to vehicular traffic. As a CDOT rep put it on the GRID Chicago blog:

CDOT traffic counts show that all of these roadways currently have more travel lanes and/or lane width than needed to accommodate their traffic volume, and this encourages motorists to drive dangerously. While studies show that road diets work well on streets that serve under 20,000 cars a day, actually improving traffic flow in many cases, 55th Street currently serves only 13,500 cars a day and King Drive only carries 9,000 to 11,500 cars per day. Due to the lack of congestion on these roadways, the agency found that 54% of cars on King are speeding, and 15% or motorists are driving over 40 MPH.

I'm sure lots of cyclists will agree with this traffic analysis based on their personal experience. Here again we see the pathological effects of the South Side's loss of density relative to historic levels: streets like King, Cottage, Indiana, 55th and others are far wider than their current levels of traffic would demand.

The North Side can only dream of having the kind of capacity we have down here. King Drive has 8 lanes! 55th is likewise quite broad as it passes through western Hyde Park and so encourages speeding and disregard for pedestrians.

So why not make room for bikes?

Details on the meeting:

The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) is presenting on the 55^th Street safety improvement project this Wednesday, April 25, from 6:30 – 8pm. This project, between Cottage Grove and Lake Park, seeks to create a safe and comfortable roadway for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit users accessing Washington Park, the University of Chicago, Hyde Park, and the Lakefront. The main features include enhanced pedestrian crosswalks and signage, protected and buffered bike lanes, and a ‘Road Diet’ between Cottage Grove and Kenwood.

The meeting is open to the public.

Date:                           Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Time:                           6:30 – 8:00 p.m. 

            Reception:                   6:30 – 7:00 p.m.

            Presentation:   7:00 – 7:30 p.m.  

            Q & A:                         7:30 – 8:00 p.m.

Location:                     Alumni House in the Klowden Library

    5555 South Woodlawn Avenue 60637

Presentation by CDOT Project Development Staff:  Deputy Commissioner Luann Hamilton and Project Manager Mike Amsden

Thanks to HPP reader PM for the update.

NIMBY's Corner: Deconstructing Hans

posted by chicago pop

It is characteristic of Hyde Park that the campaigning around Doctors Hospital continues to take place after the vote itself has been decided.

Fifth Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston's letter to the Herald urging 39th Precinct residents to vote "no" appeared the day after the election. A week later, a letter from precinct resident Hans Morsbach appeared, making the case for why you should have voted "yes" 8 days before, or should have morally supported those who were able to do so.

The reason for this exercise in chronological acrobatics, however, is fairly obvious: an issue of major import to two wards, two neighborhoods, and an entire section of Chicago was left to the judgment of some 600 people, of which 254 actually decided the matter, voting by a margin of 20 to ban the sale of liquor at the Doctors Hospital site.

Hans Morsbach, therefore, needs to convince the rest of Hyde Park that this was the right thing to do. The odds, however, are pretty good that if put to a vote by anything other than the 39th Precinct of the 5th Ward, the dry referendum would have failed by a large majority.

One again, a vocal and well-organized minority have taken control.

But taking control was the easy part. Convincing everyone outside the 39th Precinct that they were right to do so might be a little bit harder.

Let's have a closer look at Hans Morsbach's apologia pro vita sua of Wednesday, November 12, 2008.

****

Morsbach: "The opponents of the referendum suggested that we are unreasonable neighbors standing in the way of a much-needed development, and putting a higher value on our own conveniences than on neighborhood interests."

Comment: Agreed.

Morsbach: "A hotel largely designed as an overflow for downtown facilities would not serve Hyde Park well."

Comment: From the beginning of this controversy Morsbach, as well as Allan Rechtschaffen, have assured us all that they were deeply studied in the market dynamics of the hospitality business on the South Side of Chicago and could therefore make recommendations as to the proper scale of any hotel on Stony Island.

The problem is, they've offered no evidence to back up their statements as to the proper scale of a profitable hotel, or what the market in this area could support.

As only the latest example, Morsbach claims without any evidence that Marriott intended this hotel to serve an "overflow" purpose. Yet even if this was indeed the intent, why would this "not serve Hyde Park well"? The presumption is that the economy of Hyde Park ought to be limited to a one square mile area, and that this isolated condition is economically desirable. We've been arguing against this idea from day one.

Morsbach: "A study has shown that there is no reason that the existing limestone-and-brick structure cannot be used."

Comment: Has anyone besides a few activists actually seen this study? Can they tell us how much the design of the preservationist alternative diverges from the parameters presented by White Lodging, and what features of the original Marriott would have been compromised (in terms of size, facilities, construction or operations costs)? Such a weighty pronouncement calls for some public facts, not just Hans Morsbach's say-so.

Morsbach: A hotel would "burden our infrastructure."

Comment: This is classic NIMBY-suburbanite whooey. How would the White Lodging Marriott burden what infrastructure?

Sewer mains? Power grids? Road surfaces? Cellular towers? The CTA? Metra station facilities? The traffic lights on Stony Island? They don't tell us, and it's not clear they have any idea.

City infrastructure in most places is underutilized, especially inner city infrastructure, and has been for generations. An entire school of thought has developed around this idea at Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy. A city like Chicago was built to deal with lots of people.

By arguing that major urban areas can't handle intensive use, Morsbach is rehearsing 70s-era anti-urban romanticism, one that runs counter to well-documented arguments that dense urban areas are in fact the most energy-efficient types of settlement pattern and should therefore be encouraged as a strategy of slowing climate change.

Cities are designed for more burden to infrastructure per unit area than any other type of settlement. There are fewer people living in the 5th ward now than there were 50 years ago,which means that there is less of a burden, if any, on existing infrastructure.

Morsbach: "There should be a place for visitors and students to park their cars without a lot of hassle. Providing adequate parking is imperative."

Comment: Parking is indeed something that needs to be planned carefully. But Hans hasn't always used such high-minded rhetoric; previously he has made it clear that he wants to be able to park his car in front of his house: "I like to park my car near my house on Harper." (Hyde Park Herald reported on August 1, 2007.)

Morsbach, like most of Hyde Park's old guard, is unreflexively automobile-oriented and density-phobic, without realizing that the latter is a partial cure for the former: as we have conveyed on this blog numerous times, urban density in fact diminishes car use. Beyond that, he gives no evidence for his inference that "parking" (in a private lot? a city lot? on the street? in a garage? in front of his house?) would become more difficult on Stony Island or anywhere else.

In fact, Rechtschaffen, who criticized White Lodging for not providing a parking study (which they did, though the University chose not to release it to the public), clearly had already made up his mind that parking and congestion would be "a disaster" without having viewed any analysis of the issue. (Hyde Park Herald, LTE, September 10, 2008)

****

In a recent article on Hyde Park in Crain's, it was mentioned that Morsbach has been in business in the neighborhood since 1962.

Back before 1962, Hyde Park was a fairly happening place, and strangely enough, it had a lot of hotels. Then things changed, it became not-so-happening, lost its old hotels, and in the aftermath of Urban Renewal and the attempt to make the inner city into a suburb, an entire generation of residents got used to it that way.

Unfortunately, what they got used to was an historical aberration.

Now that things are beginning to revert to the mean, they're fighting the norm with everything they've got. It may keep them busy in the short run, but in the long run, they're going against the tide.

Preserving Indian Village Parking Lots: Behind the Powhattan, Narragansett, and Barclay

posted by chicago pop

The HPP intelligence network recently picked up a bit of electronic NIMBY chatter. Just a few whispers detected and processed at our global listening station, alerting us to the possibility that someone might decide to build a building near the Powhattan -- a tall one, maybe a little taller than the ones already there -- on some of the parking lots pictured below.

Prime Use of Lakefront Property

Whether the chatter is true or not, what is true is that the current use of this land for surface parking only is economically inefficient, and even wasteful, from the perspective of the local economy. Land given over exclusively to surface parking lowers the residential density of a neighborhood, which reduces the local trading area and makes it harder to do shopping close to home.

And it just looks like hell.

What do you think about the fact that in one of the sections of Hyde Park-Kenwood closest to the Lake, home to some of the most impressive interwar and post-war residential high-rise architecture in Chicago, and with some of the neighborhood's best access to public transportation, significant chunks of city blocks look like this:

Barclay/East End Parking Lot from Intersection of Cornell and East End Avenues, and 49th Street

The only reason these blocks are public eyesores paved for private parking is because this little area has been a real-estate black hole for nearly half a century. But, as an urban planner friend of mine put it when he saw these lots, "those aren't going to remain parking lots forever."

Local folks might want to get used to the prospect. At some point, someone is going to buy them out and allow them to pay to park in someone else's building.

On land this close to the lake, with such abundant transportation infrastructure, and already designed to accommodate high urban densities, it's practically inevitable. And it's probably a good thing.

A Little Piece of Manhattan (+ Surface Parking)
1640 E. 50th Street -- The Narragansett and Powhattan Buildings

Surface Parking Lot for 4940 S. East End and 5000 S. East End Avenue -- the Barclay and East End Buildings

Replace these parking lots with density of housing, and auto congestion will flatten or even decrease. Because whatever new building shows up on any of these lots, it will have its own parking, which will probably hold most people's cars stationary, going nowhere, for most of the week. It would also likely house things like convenience stores, or more amenities like Istria cafe.

It's all basic stuff. Which you'll know if you scan hipster-liberal zines like Salon.com:

As parking lots proliferate, they decrease density and increase sprawl. In 1961, when the city of Oakland, Calif., started requiring apartments to have one parking space per apartment, housing costs per apartment increased by 18 percent, and urban density declined by 30 percent. It's a pattern that's spread across the country.

In cities, the parking lots themselves are black holes in the urban fabric, making city streets less walkable. One landscape architect compares them to "cavities" in the cityscape. Downtown Albuquerque, N.M., now devotes more land to parking than all other land uses combined. Half of downtown Buffalo, N.Y., is devoted to parking. And one study of Olympia, Wash., found that parking and driveways occupied twice as much land as the buildings that they served. (Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon.com, October 1, 2007).

So if and when the day comes that someone wants to build something reasonable on any of these parcels -- say something comparable to the Powhattan or the Newport in size or shape -- don't be fooled by cries of "Congestion!" or "What about parking!"

These are the neuroses that keep Hyde Park's biggest NIMBYs tossing in bed at night, but like most neuroses, they have little to do with reality.

The cry that you probably should take seriously is this one: "Not another high-rise to block my view of the Lake!" In the 4th Ward, we've seen the lengths to which people will go to protect the "views" over which they have no proprietary rights.

Trees illegally felled near 44th Place and Lake Shore Drive, allegedly to open a view of the Lake from nearby 4th Ward condos.

If anyone already living in a high-rise between 51st and 49th Streets cries out about another high-rise going up next door, we'll be able to expand the NIMBY taxonomy beyond the owners of quaint Victorian frame houses on Harper Avenue.

The new species, if it is ever discovered, may well include inhabitants of vintage Deco towers, and perhaps a few Modernist ones. Specialists at that point will have to recognize this species as a local variant of the world-wide "last one in the door" genus (from the Greco-Latin nimbyotopus rex) or:

"I've got mine, now you stay out."

Urban Density & Climate Change

posted by chicago pop

Have a neighbor who cringes at the word "density?" Urban planners are always looking for ways to make the concept more appealing to people, especially given the negative connotations associated with early 20th-century slums, immigrant tenements, and everything that Post-War suburbia was supposed to transcend. Visuals are one way around the problem, whether a photograph of a well-liked and dense urban neighborhood, or, as here, a colorful illustration.

So, in honor of Al Gore's 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work promoting awareness of climate change, a few very pretty maps illustrating the comparatively mitigating effects of high density urban settlement patterns on greenhouse gas emissions. Courtesy of Chicago's very own Center for Neighborhood Technology, it turns out, not too surprisingly, that city living -- as opposed to the suburban alternative -- is a much more efficient way of life, and generates fewer CO2 emissions per household. Compared to the suburban alternative, it's good for the planet.

Here are two contrasting maps illustrating auto-generated CO2 emissions for the city of Chicago. In the classical view, to the left, cities are shown to emit more aggregate emissions per square mile. If we take the measure of auto-generated CO2 at the household level, however, a very different picture emerges.



The older, denser areas of Chicago emit far less CO2 per household, chiefly due to lower automobile usage. The reverse relation holds in further out, suburban areas, where lower household densities generate greater amounts of greenhouse gas.

The same relation is found in places one might not expect, like Los Angeles, which is becoming increasingly dense overall, and especially in certain areas.


Or here, San Francisco:


It's useful to keep in mind that this has nothing to do with parks or parklands, and that the 19th century notion of parks -- famously expressed by Olmsted -- as the "lungs of the city" here plays no role. Their value in a city is of a different measure, and is important, but does not diminish the importance of urban density as a more highly efficient mode of life.