That iconic blast of heat as you turn the corner onto Ardmore at the northern terminus of the Lakefront Trail

Preregistering my prediction for veto session transit bills: Governance will pass as-is but funding will come in well below $1.5b, maybe $500m-$700m. Enough to keep the lights on while we reorg. Legislators will bet the reorg is enough to transform transit w/o the political risk of major tax hikes

I wonder what the revenue / politics would have looked like if Bring Chicago Home had only applied to single family homes, condos, and apartments with a price per unit >$1m. It probably would have left a ton of revenue on the table, but maybe clearer winners + losers would have helped the messaging

Two normal elderly women in line behind me at the coffee shop chatting about car-free streets in Paris, Doug Ford ripping out bike lanes in Toronto, and how they’d bike more if more lanes were protected. Not totally correct on the details but solid on values. A small reminder that we’re winning

Is there any reason to believe adding noise barriers to expressway median L stations wouldn’t be extremely cheap, especially in proportion to the benefit to South/West side riders?

I hadn’t biked to Logan Square in a while before tonight (probably at least a year) and I was pleasantly surprised to find that you can now get there from Edgewater basically entirely on greenways, protected lanes, and off-street trails

My compromise position on cars is that they should be safe, legal, and rare

We’re gonna save transit, folks

God bless whoever put up this pro-upzoning poster in Edgewater, please put up more

Pilsen rooftops

The moment the rally started marching north on Dearborn, as seen from the County building

A tale of two cities, Chicago bike edition: On the left is CDOT's map of bike infrastructure on the North Side, and on the right is the South Side. Even without the legend, you can tell that these are two different worlds, with I-55 acting as a border between them

Montreal Critical Mass

You can tell a lot about municipal priorities in Chicago and Montreal by comparing the two cities’ “Green Alley” programs. Chicago’s program funds better types of concrete pavement (left), while a program with the same name funds people-first green spaces in Montreal (right)

“Cold and windy” was not what I was asking for here

Sorry to the Sun-Times newsletter editors who have to deal with it, but the typo in this morning’s edition did get a laugh from me

Today feels like a good day to reflect on the extent to which Jesus was a non-citizen who was detained and tortured on trumped-up charges in an attempt to suppress speech deemed threatening to the occupation of Palestine

Just one time I would like for the weather to be warm without being windy, please

Bus drivers should be allowed to play music while they drive

Gone pseudonymous, DM me if you can't remember who I am

Flagging, but instead of different color handkerchiefs it’s Clark Devon Hardware beanies

Is there a name for this particular style of small multifamily building that seems to be common across Cincinnati’s west side?

Seeing as deed-restricted affordable housing seems to be legal in IL (even if not rigorously tested in the courts AFAICT), would it be theoretically possible to restrict the deed on a multifamily property to require that tenants or owner-occupants not own cars?

One thing I really like about walking is that there’s no chance I could accidentally kill someone

Today is a great day to sweep and mop your Chicago Vintage Tile Floor

Walking 20min down Randolph from Millenium to Ogilvie for a perfectly timed ME ➡️ UP-N transfer, thinking about how one day when we #BuildTheTunnel and make this a one-seat ride we will gain a convenient way to get from Hyde Park to Edgewater but lose the opportunity for a pleasant stroll in the rain

One particularly interesting historical detail here is that the two ads that are visible in the photo are for 1) a day labor agency in Uptown and 2) an anti-fire PSA, two of the most important focal points of political conflict on the far north side in the 1970s

It’s wild to me that: * A non-journalist (Nik) FOIAed for the Red Line Extension budget * Discovered that costs have nearly doubled for mysterious reasons * Found the CTA is planning to issue $2.75B in bonds to plug the hole And yet no local news outlets seem to have picked up the story

McKinley Park corners

Sunny twins in Chatham

I bet I could beat this number in a single day if they let me write tickets

Test your knowledge of 2024 Chicago local news with my quiz! 🏙️🤓 lauriemerrell.github.io/chicago-news...

Thanks to a charging cable from eBay, I have confirmed that the 2008 iPod Nano I found on the street does indeed turn on and does not have any songs newer than 2011

Since the electric Divvy bikes have GPS trackers on them and a lot of analog Divvy riders probably have location services enabled in their app settings, I wonder if Lyft knows what routes riders are taking? Would be an interesting dataset for planning and advocacy purposes

15% increase in single family home prices in Bronzeville/Hyde Park/Woodlawn/Washington Park since summer 2023 is unreal www.housingstudies.org/releases/coo...

Looks like Shannon O’Malley officially lost his judicial retention bid according to the @injusticewatch.org election results tracker, which has 100% of precincts reporting

I’m craving a @stevevance.bsky.social take on the Cut the Tape progress tracker, seems like lots of steps have been marked as completed in the past six months but I’m curious to hear if any of it is translating to on-the-ground changes in developer experience www.chicago.gov/city/en/site...

This one lived up to the hype