Steven Can Plan

Over here in Richmond, Virginia

Steven Vance — Sat, 26 May 2012 16:40:43 +0000

My first trip of 2012 was to Richmond, Virginia, to travel with my friend who is racing (in 60 minutes) in the North American Cycle Courier Championships (NACCC, see more photos).

I went for a two hour walk today (got a haircut, too) around Carytown and neighboring districts. The homes here are beautiful.

The photos are actually from yesterday. More will come later.

Stats from the OECD: Comparing traffic injuries of the United States and Netherlands

Steven Vance — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:21:48 +0000

For an article I’m writing for Architect’s Newspaper about the Chicago Forward CDOT Action Agenda, I wanted to know about traffic injuries and fatalities in the United States, but compared to the Netherlands and Denmark and other places with a Vision Zero campaign (to have 0 traffic deaths each year).

I already knew the OECD had a good statistics database and web application. With a few clicks, I can quickly get a table of traffic injuries (casualties) listing just the countries I want. I can easily select the years I want, too.

In one more click the web application will show a time animated bar chart. A feature I’d like to see added is dividing the figure (in this case traffic injuries) by the population. Check out the video to see what it looks like. The United States looks to be in terrible shape, but our country has several times more residents.

I did have trouble downloading and opening the CSV file of the data table I created. The XLS file was damaged, also. The built-in Mac OS X Archive Utility app couldn’t open the .gz file, but I used The Unarchiver app successfully.

My calculations, based on data from OECD, Illinois Department of Transportation, and the American Community Survey:

Fatalities per 100,000 in 2009

United States: 11.02472
Denmark: 5.48969
Netherlands: 4.35561
Sweden: 3.84988
Chicago: 16.74891

Chicago’s fatality rate per 100,000 citizens in 2009 was 16.75 (473 deaths on the roads). The fatality rate dropped in 2010: just 11.65 deaths per 100,000 residents (315 deaths on the roads; the population also decreased).

This is what transit stations should look like

Steven Vance — Sun, 20 May 2012 13:17:58 +0000

Grid Chicago. The station had its soft opening for passenger service on Friday, May 18, 2012. A grand opening will likely be on Friday, June 1, 2012."/>

The CTA Morgan Green/Pink Lines station had a soft opening today. No press conference, no fanfare. I learned about the opening the night before on Twitter.

This station makes several strong statements: it clearly identifies the CTA as the organization that services this building, this operation, this monument to efficient transportation. The MORGAN STATION text tells you where you are, and you can read it from blocks away. And the artistic bike parking with a sufficient storage quantity says that the neighborhood will be biking here.

Grid Chicago. The station had its soft opening for passenger service on Friday, May 18, 2012. A grand opening will likely be on Friday, June 1, 2012."/>

It will probably make an ideal location to install a bike sharing station. I know exactly where they can install the bike sharing station, if not in place of the existing bike racks: in the parking lane where the white, small SUV is parked (see photo below).

Grid Chicago. The station had its soft opening for passenger service on Friday, May 18, 2012. A grand opening will likely be on Friday, June 1, 2012."/>

Terminology debate: crash versus colliision

Steven Vance — Fri, 18 May 2012 17:54:03 +0000

The following is an email conversation between myself and Travis Wittwer, a cool guy in Portland, Oregon, whom I stayed with in April 2010. We’ve had similar conversations before about the language writers (mainly newspaper article authors) use when speaking about and describing situations where “people and their bicycles make contact with people and their cars” (yes, there’s an easier way to say that, read on).

Travis:

Interesting use and structure of words; even the title is a problem: Statement from [Portland] Mayor Sam Adams on Bicycle Crash at SW 3rd and Madison.

Steven:

This part is weird: ”there was a collision between a motor vehicle and bicycle and the young woman on the bicycle lost her life.”

I don’t see an issue with the title. What is your opinion?

Travis:

It wasn’t a “bicycle crash”. It was a collision. A truck did the colliding.

My kids have bicycle crashes.

I found it odd that (1) the bicycle should be made main character, (2) no human element, and (3) it is a crash rather than collision or smearing or killing or death…

Crash does not infer the idea of negative end. Nor does it infer another vehicle.

Steven:

I see it now.

I think I am going to use collision more often. And try to phase crash out. But I’ve already embedded crash in my own thought processes and in a lot of the websites I’ve created (like http://chicagocrashes.org – it just redirects to Grid Chicago) and articles I’ve written.

This is the key motivation for me to switch to using collision: “Nor does it infer another vehicle.”

A crash, now, seems like something you have by yourself. A collision demands that the second party be identified.

Travis:

Cool. Life is a series of thoughts and much of how you have gone about language has caused me to think. Creating a bike friendly style guide would be a great endeavor.

Whatever you say, please don’t use “accident”. For the kind of analysis I do, writing “collision” is probably the most accurate word. I’ve been using “crash” ever since I started diving into the traffic crash data from the Illinois Department of Transportation. I will continue using “crash” for much of my writing, but I will start writing “collision” more often.

Tweets that helped shape this discussion

@BikePortland A friend calls them "page 6 deaths" because they show up in a tiny little column at the back of the Oregonian Metro section.
— jessicaroberts (@jessicaroberts) May 18, 2012

Further reading

I’ve written a few times about language and word choice (or “englishousness” as Travis calls it):

Updated 23:26 to add Further reading links, tweets, and a longer concluding statement.

Slicing the crash data into interesting visualizations

Steven Vance — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:23:15 +0000

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The Chicago Crash Browser as it looks now. This only exists on my laptop and no place else. I can’t put it online because it’s so inefficient it would kill the server.

I presented my Chicago Crash Browser to attendees of an OpenGov Hack Night three weeks ago and gathered a lot of feedback and some interest from designers and programmers there.

We collaboratively came up with a new direction: instead of focusing on creating a huge web application that I proposed, we (anyone who wants to help) would start small with a website and a couple of crash data visualizations. The visualizations would serve two purposes:

attract attention to the project
start building a gallery of data-oriented graphics that describes the breadth and extent of the crash data

Per Derek Eder, they are called “slices”. I’ve come up with two so far. These two took me more time to develop and produce than I thought they would and I could have used data I’ve already published on Grid Chicago, but I wanted to continue growing the library of slices with new information.

The website is ChicagoCrashes.org (I also bought ChicagoCrashes.com) – they redirect to the “crash data” tag on Grid Chicago for now. I finalized the slices on Tuesday and I’ll work on getting them visualized, collaboratively, tonight at the next Hack Night (which is now at 1871 in the Merchandise Mart).

Slice 1 is a table (not shown) and list (below) showing the 10 most frequent vehicle type and vehicle use combinations in the automobile crash data provided by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

675,262 passenger car vehicles being used for personal use
85,010 SUV vehicles being used for personal use
73,256 passenger car vehicles being used for not in use
68,793 Unknown vehicles being used for Unknown
60,349 passenger car vehicles being used for unknown
53,082 Van-mini van vehicles being used for personal use
30,333 pickup truck vehicles being used for personal use
26,908 passenger car vehicles being used for Taxi/for hire
11,793 Van-mini van vehicles being used for Unknown
11,630 Tractor w/semi-trailer vehicles being used for Commercial – multi-unit

There are oddly a lot of unknowns in this dataset.

Slice 2 comprises three figures that describe the mean vehicle occupancy (number of people per vehicle) for vehicles involved in crashes:

in 2010, inside Chicago: 1.1862211566515711 people per vehicle
in 2010, outside Chicago in Illinois: 1.3137496138646556
in 2005-2010, in Chicago: 1.1873268477598977

GM hired a transit rider to promote their Volt, I think

Steven Vance — Thu, 17 May 2012 05:14:32 +0000

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A screenshot of the GM Chevy Volt ad I saw on Hulu.

If you’re like me and most Americans, you probably see an advertisement for a car at least once a day. In an ad I watched on Hulu tonight, it appears GM filmed someone who takes buses and trains (or rides her bike) to sell people on the Chevy Volt.

The woman (the ad’s overlay text makes it seem like she’s a real owner) says, “I don’t event know what it’s like to stop and get gas” and “I am probably going to the gas station about once a month, probably less”.

With a car that only gets 35 MPG city, 40 MPG highway,* and has a range of 379 miles, she must be taking the bus for all those other trips she has to make each month! Or she walks to work each day and bikes to the grocery store on weekends. Or she just rarely leaves the house. But I don’t think the ad implies any of these things: instead it’s telling viewers that this automobile has amazing gas mileage (the ad never mentions it has an electric motor component).

The “average American” makes 3.79 trips per day with an average trip length of 9.75 miles. If this Volt driver was that average person, she would be driving 1,108.58 miles every 30 days. And her car doesn’t have that much range. It has a third of that.

She might have bad memory, though, about visiting gas stations.

The Toyota Prius, for comparison, gets 51 MPG city, 48 MPG highway,* and starts at $7,000 less.

* These are only estimates. The Chevy Volt gets 94 MPGe when running on purely the electric motors.

N.B. The Chevy Volt website shows a photo of the car in the position where it will spend most of the time: parked. I appreciate that accuracy!

Taxicab complaint hearing is on Tuesday

Steven Vance — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:14:36 +0000

A taxicab waits at Milwaukee and Western. This is not the driver in question. Call 311 to report incidents.

On Tuesday, May 22, 2012, I will be in court as a witness to my own taxicab complaint. The charges are administrative and are in the context of the terms of the driver’s chauffeur license:

discourteous conduct
unsafe driving
abusive behavior

These are based on my description of the incident, where I told of being honked at, being passed within 3 feet (twice), being told to ride in the bike lane (on a street without one), and having them stop quickly in front of me (twice).

I don’t want to tell you more until after the hearing, which the City lawyer described as an abbreviated bench trial. Each side will make a brief opening statement. The City prosecutor will call me to stand near the podium for a “direct examination”. Then the driver, or their lawyer, will ask me questions in a “cross examination” (look at those big “Law & Order” words).

I should be able to testify from memory but if I can’t remember the details of the incident, then I’ll say “I can’t remember” and I’ll read from my affidavit. I submitted a very detailed attachment with the affidavit, including a geographic diagram of where and what happened.

The City lawyer I talked to told me there are four possible outcomes:

Fine(s)
License suspension
License revocation
Not guilty

Mandatory retraining (classes at Harold Washington Community College) would be a likely addition, or even a sole outcome.

Updated 19:15 to add “not guilty” as a fourth possible outcome.

31st Street marina is open for business, with boat slips, boat launch, and new playground

Steven Vance — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:52:03 +0000

on Steven Can Plan."/>

In this photo you can see the new community center and harbor master office, picnic tables, parking garage, and shade sails on the roof of the community center.

I completely agree with Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin’s description of those colored trees: “garishly painted recycled trees that goes overboard in an attempt to create a festive atmosphere”. I would prefer to see them removed and real trees take their place. I was saddened to see mature-growth trees being removed during construction. I appreciate a lot of the new features the marina brings to Burnham Park, like the upgraded playground, a small park on the pier and a bike trail that should bypass a lot of beachgoer traffic.

These mature trees were replaced with…

on Steven Can Plan."/>

…these garish trees.

on Steven Can Plan. I think they should have put a crosswalk about where I'm situated. Read why on my blog and look at this photo."/>

The sign in the background is outdated and should be replaced. To access the trail from 31st Street you ride down the driveway and then enter the sidewalk.

on Steven Can Plan."/>

This playground looks like a lot of fun. It has a climbing wall!

I have some criticisms about the new design of how people access 31st Street from the Lakefront Trail and vice versa.

1. The distance from 31st Street to the LFT has increased from the previous design. Before there was a short hill to traverse from the street to the trail. Now one must enter the trail by sharing the driveway with automobiles, then entering a sidewalk, and then entering the trail. At this sidewalk entrance, there’s an outdated sign. It says “Yield to pedestrians in crosswalk” when state law says motorists must “stop for pedestrians in crosswalks”. I think this sign should be immediately replaced.

on Steven Can Plan. The crosswalk that connects the sole sidewalk leading people from 31st Street to the beach house should be here, instead of 50 feet further south as this is the quickest way to reach the beach (actually the quickest way is to walk through the grass on the left side of this photo or through the shrubs left of the photo, off screen). This crosswalk is also too far from the beach house and people will be crossing the street at the end of the lower curve where there is no crosswalk and no sign."/>

The crosswalk that connects the sole sidewalk leading people from 31st Street to the beach house should be here, instead of 50 feet further south as this is the quickest way to reach the beach (actually the quickest way is to walk through the grass on the left side of this photo or through the shrubs left of the photo, off screen).

2. This crosswalk is also too far from the beach house and people will be crossing the street at the end of the lower curve where there is no crosswalk and no sign.

on Steven Can Plan."/>

New intersection to access the marina parking lot and boat launch area.

3. I’d like to know if the intersection here is timed or has a sensor. If it has a sensor, will it pick up the presence of cyclists? Regardless, this intersection is an improvement over the previous access path which couldn’t facilitate Lakefront Trail cyclists who wanted to travel westbound on 31st Street (they could use the south side sidewalk, which is inappropriate). Westbound cyclists can now share the driveway with automobiles (less than ideal) but can enter westbound 31st Street without any awkward sidewalk moves or crossing the Lake Shore Drive ramp against the light.

4. My good friend Calvin points out that the new marina doesn’t have storage for small sailboats like Lasers and Vanguards. These boats are a cheap and easy way to teach children and young adults how to sail and are more accessible to the wider population. Storage is less expensive and they can be operated alone. He says that only Montrose and Belmont have storage for these boats.

Further reading

I’m on the home stretch for first update to Chicago Offline Bike Map app

Steven Vance — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:40:23 +0000

Splash screen of the app.

Since making the first version of the Chicago Offline Bike Map app, a bike map stored in your iOS device and doesn’t need an Internet connection, I’ve made several important changes and added new features. I’ve upgraded twice how train stations will be appearing. I’ve completely changed the way it looks by using jQueryMobile. Also with v0.2 you’ll find more points of interest, locate yourself using the iOS device hardware (results will vary on a variety of hardware and location factors), and zoom to any neighborhood.

I want your help. I want to make a list of at least 20 points of interest. I’ve no qualifications, but this is who I think my target audience is: people who have cycled in Chicago for a while, people who have just started cycling, people who have iOS devices (I will expand to Android eventually), and who know how to use a map.

Current points of interest are:

All CTA and Metra stations
All neighborhoods
Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
Field Museum of Natural History
Museum of Science and Industry
DuSable Museum
Harold Washington Cultural Center
Chicago Cultural Center
Holography Museum
Museum of Contemporary Art
Chicago City Hall
Chicago Velo Campus
Millennium Park Bike Station
SAIC Bike Fixit Station

Train stations on the map.

Excluding train stations and neighborhoods, there are 12 points of interest. What else should I add? (Since posting this I’ve added the three largest libraries: Harold Washington Library Center, Woodson Regional, and Sulzer Regional.)

P.S. I plan to make an Android version of this app, but I have no timeline on that. Follow app development at the app’s Tumblr.

Thank you, madam, for riding your bicycle in Chicago

Steven Vance — Sun, 06 May 2012 15:50:41 +0000

A senior citizen carries Trader Joe’s grocery bags on her bicycle at 2960 N Lincoln, a mile from the nearest Trader Joe’s.

It’s probably extremely difficult, and I can only guess why you do it. But thank you for shopping by bike. Bonus points for having front and rear baskets, carrying her purse on her handlebars, and not wearing a helmet. You are setting the direction Chicago needs to move in, 8 to 80.

I wonder what she’d recommend to make cycling in Chicago better.

Photo by Drew Baker.