@mmccabe
Working to make things more equitable, peaceful & humane. Nonprofit leader, Prev: AmeriCorps member & teacher, ed leader, Booth MBA Civic Scholar, Obama campaign + appointee. Usually posting about Chicago education, safe streets / bikes, or #Sixers
One hundred years ago:
In May 1926, 80.8 percent of all people entering or leaving Chicago’s downtown Loop district in a vehicle, on weekdays from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm, rode mass transit.
Cc @mayorofchicago.bsky.social
It's never been more important to get involved with the fight for mass transit and multi-modal infrastructure. We cannot continue to center our economy or our collective mobility on such a volatile and finite resource.
Join @bscactionfund.org on the doors next week. act.bscactionfund.org/events
Now more than ever I’m convinced losing Anthony Bourdain meant we lost probably the biggest person on tv who advocated for the wonders of meeting new people and calling anyone online who hated learning new cultures the children they were, ruthlessly to the camera.
Gas (and by extension your Uber ride) is about to go through the roof. Grab this Divvy membership promo ASAP!
100%, IMHO size of safe+connected network for biking is the equivalent to frequency for transit: It solves so many other downstream problems and unlocks a ton more usage. Also depressing that we're in March and CDOT hasn't even attempted to update this page: www.chicago.gov/city/en/site...
Those alley speed humps seem functionally pretty equivalent to the pre-fab concrete PBL barriers (similar height), I would *greatly* prefer whatever length of protected lanes $400k of those would get vs. 0.5 mile concrete (and then upgrade over time).
He Didn’t Kill Anyone. Alabama Is About to Execute Him Anyway. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/o...
Togarashi fries 😱
Housing costs now top crime as Chicago voters’ biggest worry, poll finds
Join @abundanthousingil.bsky.social if you want to fix this
www.chicagobusiness.com/real-estate/...
Drivers don't always appreciate bike lanes, and our last week's guest has seen that first hand - on Chicago's South Side, he felt drivers weren't used to seeing bikes on the roads.
He wants them to give it a try, and think about the new people who might come out and ride!
The level of ambition here is really sad. It's such a big site so close to transit. I mocked up a plan in 15 minutes just to illustrate how much space we're talking about. There's even still space in the rear for a large surface lot or parking structure. TJ's footprint is the same.
Oooof. God it would be great if there were some incentive locally to deliver with smaller vehicles in Chicago. Vehicle weight tax for deliveries, max length during daytime hours, additional tax per foot above X length. Idk something
🙏🙏🙏
😩 I wonder how they're doing it at North Lincoln or Ontario locations, both seem pretty tight... or Diversey for that matter?
Aerial shot of the proposed new Trader Joes location with mockup of where housing could do, where the entrance/exit would be least disruptive and add some trees.
Here's my 30-second attempt. Someone with much more skill (and vision!) have a better mockup? Admittedly not super ambitious but my assumption is that there is no world they're going to give up much of the parking lot...
And we must protect you, @milwaukeeavbike.bsky.social, at all costs!!
The plan for the Trader Joe's parking lot entrance/exit needs to be the most Dutch-level urban planning ever. Signalized intersection with light priority for cyclists? Retractable bollards? One way entrance, one way exit?
A very slow motion train wreck.
Someone make (or already have??) this chart for Chicago? Any news org do this analysis already? We know CPD enforcement for moving violations fell off a cliff, we know speed cameras increased a bit. Are we back to 2014 levels?
I'll say it again:
It's journalistic malpractice to publish a story about automatic enforcement that puts the number of tickets in the headline without mentioning safer streets.
It's important to note that despite the recent growth, the area around this proposed tower is not even remotely close to its historic population.
With household sizes and consumer preferences what they are today, we'd have to build 32-story towers on every single block to even come close.
Wait until they hear how much the Kennedy repaving cost...
Want to walk more without trying? Move here buff.ly/4We3iZ8
Really interesting charts/graphs showing effects of moving between more and less walkable places.
A man with a salt-and-pepper goatee and glasses kneels confidently next to a custom lowrider-style bicycle in front of a vibrant, geometric graffiti mural. He wears a black hoodie featuring a white Chicago skyline graphic, with black pants and black sneakers. His bicycle is a long, light blue cruiser with a sparkle finish and a low-slung, curved frame. The bike features high-rise black handlebars, a thick black fork, and black rims with thick tires, including a small orange card tucked into the front spokes.
A closer shot of the same man, sitting on his bike with his hands on the handlebars, smiling gently.
“I've ridden all over Chicago. We're fortunate, we're empty nesters, my wife and I, so we bike all over. We’ve biked in Las Vegas, and in New Mexico we did a bike ride to see hot air balloons take off. We’ve ridden in San Diego, LA, Toronto, Indianapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee...” 🧵
100% or even better, celebrate it with social campaign that challenges Chicagoans to see if they can beat the top 10 of CTA leadership for number of rides for the year (which would, of course, require them to do something like the WMATA wrapped campaign celebrating ridership)
Can’t build higher than four floors because “think of the traffic!” but adding 368 more cars to Wrigleyville 81 times a year gets rubber-stamped without a second thought, okay
It'd be incredibly easy to do this in the suburbs, no AI required: the vast majority of suburban traffic signals have pre-emption devices triggered by strobes on police and fire vehicles, including ambulances. Throw an infrared strobe on the front of every Pace bus and give them the green every time
Wild that MBJ appointed an interim from his mayoral staff- who *also* wouldn't take out a high-interest short-term loan. Further wild that MBJ seems to have blackballed Dr. King- his appointee! -from the permanent CEO search as a result. And now, the search firm is bailing because of the dysfunction
Chicago school board parts ways with search firm tasked with finding new CEO buff.ly/BeXrlHn
What an incredible mess. Insane that MBJ tried to force the district to take a high-interest short-term loan (and failed). Insane that MBJ pushed Pedro Martinez out (because he wouldn't take out the loan)
Find the EV.