It was only fitting that 2019, the year leading up to the new Roaring Twenties, should be a time of transitions, milestones, and new beginnings in the Chicago transportation scene.
Bike fatalities are down, with only four cases to date, compared with the recent average of six, but the last two cases sparked outrage. On November 6, a turning truck driver failed to yield to school counselor Carla Aiello, 37, who was on her bike, crushing her under the wheels. To protest her death, dozens of people showed up to the Old Irving Park crash site, lining Milwaukee Avenue to form a “human protected bike lane” and holding a banner reading “Please don’t kill us!”
In other shared mobility device news, Chicago finally launched a dockless electric scooter pilot this summer, with a total of 2,500 scooters from ten different companies scattered across the west- and northwest-side service area. The test resulted in dozens of scooter related-emergency visits; residents griped about scooters illegally ridden and parked in the middle of sidewalks; and the gadgets even wound up in garbage cans, trees, and the Chicago River. But the program was unquestionably popular, with about 800,000 trips taken over the four-month pilot, a better rides-to-vehicles ratio than Divvy. So assuming that the numbers aren’t too horrific when the city releases the final injury stats, we should be seeing these gizmos across most of Chicago next year.
Needless to say Uber wasn’t pleased by the proposal, and they launched yet another misinformation campaign to paint the plan as unfair to poor people, even though most of the new revenue will come from downtown and the north side. They even enlisted 35 of the same ministers from their anti-Divvy offensive to promote that spurious talking point.
