sunday parkways

[slam]

looks like chicago is going to close off a few streets in chicago for two weekends in october and make them only open for bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

sounds like a cool plan!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-sunday-parkways-web-aug14,0,2383883.story

[hotfoot]

looks like chicago is going to close off a few streets in chicago for two weekends in october and make them only open for bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

sounds like a cool plan!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-sunday-parkways-web-aug14,0,2383883.story

nice. can't remember exactly which group, but some organization has been pushing for this for a while. i believe the idea comes from some South American cities that do this (Curitiba, Brazil, maybe).

[Diamond Vision]

new york did this recently and everyone said they love it... considering the island of Manhattan means work to me, I say park all the cars in manhattan and let's make brooklyn a pedestrian paradise!

[paul]

Yeah! This is awesome. Makes me wish I still lived in Logan Square. Lots of cities seem to be trying this out. This is a great pilot program, would be cool if it could eventually become an every Sunday thing. That's how it's done in the model South American cities that serve as a model.

I have been hearing from the Chicago Bike Federation about this for years. From what I understand, the main reason it's not going to be done more often are two things, and it's taken so long to get this thing started: the city workers and police unions won't allow volunteers to help with setup and traffic control, and churches along the route don't like losing parking spaces (in lots of places the boulevard is three lanes wide, and the middle lane becomes parking on Sundays).

Local transportation nerd John Greenfield has written about the planning and implementation process in detail here...

http://votewithyourfeetchicago.blogspot.com/2008/08/good-news-and-bad-news-about-sunday.html

I will try to check it out!