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Interview About CiC

Hot of the virtual presses… Last week I sat down with John Greenfield, who runs the the excellent Vote With Your Feet blog covering green transportation and related issues to talk about the book and why I wrote it. Today he posted a (lightly edited) transcript of our conversation, and amazingly, managed to make [...]

iPhone Bus Tracking

iPhone bus tracking icons

iPhone bus tracking icons

Last April, Ars Technica had a nice write-up comparing CTA Tracker and Buster, the two native iPhone apps that interface with the CTA’s bus tracking system. Since that article appeared, developers have released new versions of both applications, and the CTA has expanded its services to include all regularly scheduled routes, and made some improvements to its CTA Bus Tracker site making it slightly more usable on the iPhone itself. I thought it was worth taking a look at the current applications, and whether or not the CTA site on it’s own is good enough to stand on its own while browsing on the go.

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Bicycle Density = Bicycle Safety

After posting Matt Yglesias’s observations on mass transit safety yesterday, I had a vague recollection he wrote something along similar lines about bicycles a couple weeks ago. It turns out, I was remembering him linking to an interesting post on Streetsblog, highlighting data from NYC that as the number of bicycle riders goes up [...]

Mass Transit Safety

I’ve certainly overheard a couple of conversations on the El this week about the terrible events on the DC Metro earlier this week, when one train on their Red Line collided with another in Maryland. Of course, transit safety is critical, and we should all hold our transit agencies to a high standard. But [...]

Urban Dwellers Are Greener

Yesterday, the Sun Times featured a nice write-up of some new research showing that while cities produce more greenhouse gasses per acre than suburban and rural areas, the density of cities means that on a per-person basis, emissions are substantially lower among urbanites. The availability of mass transit, walkable neighborhoods, and opportunities to cycle [...]

Bus route in focus: 12 Roosevelt

(Note: Originally, the book had narrative descriptions of every CTA bus route. The final format simply didn’t allow for all this material, so periodically I’ll post selected entries here with updates when appropriate.)

12 Roosevelt (Between Museum Campus and Roosevelt & Monitor via Roosevelt Rd., early morning until late evening). Taking the #12 from [...]

Green Roofs on the Red Line

Red Line Green Roof Project

Apparently, there’s an interesting initiative under discussion in the 48th Ward to add green roofs to properties adjacent to the Red Line tracks, both for their intrinsic benefits, and as a visible demonstation project. The article is a little ambigiuous about the prospect for success (and timetables), but [...]

LaHood Profile

In case you missed it, current Transportation Secretary (and former congressman from IL-18) Ray LaHood got the Deborah Solomon treatment in last week’s New York Times Magazine. The interview is fairly broad but not very deep, but still gives some notion of the administrations priorities when it comes to livable communities. But although I’ve [...]

Open Streets 2009

Open Streets 2009 Map

The Active Transportation Alliance has just announced this year’s Open Streets event, scheduled for August 1. This year, the plan includes anĀ unbroken string of pedestrian and bike friendly community events starting in Logan Square to the north and going all the way down to Little Village. (Some of my [...]

Best and Worst El Stations

The Chicago Tribune has a brief but interesting story today giving it’s assessment of the best and worst El stations, along with a nice interactive graphic showing changes in ridership since 2000 by every station in the system. Quite interesting, although I’m not sure you can make a clear connection between the state of [...]

Car Sharing Companies Reviewed

Carless in Chicago goes into fairly deep detail about our local car-sharing options, I-GO and Zipcar and the distinctions between them. But the Wall Street Journal recently took a more subjective look at the two companies’ services, and those of two others not currently in Chicago, with interesting findings. (Via Motormouth.)

Bus Route in Focus: X9 Ashland Express

(Note: Originally, the book had narrative descriptions of every CTA bus route. The final format simply didn’t allow for all this material, so periodically I’ll post selected entries here with updates when appropriate.)

X9 Ashland Express (Between Sheridan Red Line stop and Ashland & 95th, morning rush through evening rush, Monday-Friday). Covering much of [...]

Welcome to Carless in Chicago

Welcome to Carless in Chicago, a companion blog and website to my book of the same name (available now from Lake Claremont Press). I’d like to start by talking a little bit about the purpose of this web site, and how it fits together with the book.

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