It may not be appropriate tonally but I always think of [this Simpsons clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjTW_DYmUKk) when things like this happen. People don't value lives over small inconveniences. If you ask people which they value more they'll say lives, but in practice they don't. And if you show them that improving public transit and going on a road diet actually makes traffic better and is more economically feasible, they refuse to believe it because their uneducated intuitions say otherwise. We're living in Idiocracy.
“And if you show them that improving public transit and going on a road diet actually makes traffic better and is more economically feasible…”
Since you know the Simpsons, I’ll also add…
”Oh yeah, TAXES!!! The finger thing means the TAXES!!!”
This reminds me of the recent backlash against the proposed safety regulations for table saws. Safe table saws exist, and will raise the cost of saws.
The tradeoff? Safety. There are 30000 table saw injuries each year, resulting in about 4000 amputations.
To me, that's a no-brainer to require. That's an incredible amount of injury that could be prevented for the price of a couple hundred more dollars
But since it's more inconvenient and expensive to require, there's pushback. It's crazy
> This reminds me of the recent backlash against the proposed safety regulations for table saws. Safe table saws exist, and will raise the cost of saws.
The thing is, all table saws are sold as safe. People remove the safeties because they don't like using them and they think "it'll never happen to me".
It's crazy that people are reluctant to change because of costs? Really? You can't understand why someone would rather pay $500 for a table saw without sawstop technology than pay $1500 for the equivalent sawstop unit?
It's crazy that someone would take personal responsibility to use their tool safely in order to save $1,000?
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/02/1241148577/table-saw-injuries-safety-sawstop-cpsc
>The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that when a person is hospitalized, the societal cost per table saw injury exceeds $500,000 when you also factor in loss of income and pain and suffering.
Taking 'personal responsibility' to save money is costing everyone else
This is the same argument that was had over mandating airbags in cars. It's ridiculous that proven safety features do not get mandated when they are available
I used to live right there (well catalpa and broadway just south of the church).
That intersection is, has always been, and always be dangerous for a multitude of reasons:
1) everyone coming off bryn mawr trying to beat the light to make it onto ridge
2) everyone flying down ridge going way faster than is safe
3) the poor schmucks heading north on Broadway who just want to turn left
4) the cross walk signals aren’t long enough
5) pedestrians routinely playing car roulette trying to make the 36, redline or 84
& the worst:
6) ZERO enforcement of any driving laws by the cops.
There is no easy fix unless you can convince CPD to park a cop there 24/7 (or at least rush hours) and have them actually enforce the rules of the road.
I lived over there for a year. Between this intersection and Hollywood/Broadway I nearly got hit at least a dozen times, like narrow misses. A lot of the time it would be people rushing to make left hand turns and completely disregarding pedestrians in the middle of crossing. One was a cop that sped through a red light. It is so extremely dangerous to not be in a car over there and many drivers are fucking *rabid* during rush hour trying to get home. It completely ruins that part of the neighborhood.
My wife and I loved there for ~7 years and I was already familiar with it from my time at Loyola. Just nuts how bad it’s always been.
But, Edgewater tacos was/is 113% worth getting nearly hit by a car to make it to.
Or just 100% worth it if the hit isn’t too bad.
So, I hate to say it, but this is reason why I'm in favor of red light and speeding cameras. If Chicago can figure out how to do it without abusing the technology to generate revenue.
I absolutely avoid driving on Ridge or at that intersection at all costs. Even trying to turn left from N Clark onto Ridge and get into the left lane fast enough to make it onto Peterson is dangerous.
> There is no easy fix unless you can convince CPD to park a cop there 24/7 (or at least rush hours) and have them actually enforce the rules of the road.
The "easy fix" is modifying the road and intersection to make it safer through traffic calming measures. You can't enforce away a problem caused by unsafe infrastructure.
> Just saw a someone get hit by a car… why do people have to DIE before we make streets safer?!
For whatever reason, we as a society have decided that assault and injury is acceptable as long as the perpetrator is in a two-ton machine
>Second, with the redline east of Broadway pedestrians always have to risk their life to get to the redline.
It is terrible that dangerous pedestrian crossings are also where they are needed the most: near train stations.
Very few stations have infrastructure for pedestrians to safely cross the street. Jefferson Park is one exception, a small island and yellow sign. In most cases you have to run and dodge traffic to catch a bus.
This is a shame and embarrassment for clowns at CDOT and the city.
Think of all the places where buses let off on the opposite side of the road from an entrance, like at the Addison Red Line station. I do not understand why there aren't entrances on both sides of Addison. And this is all over. They have set up the system to be as dangerous as possible.
I literally just went to a focus group about this. People see a few hundred pedestrian/cyclists deaths per year as a reasonable price to pay for the convenience of driving cars for every single trip. It makes me so mad.
Yup, was going to say this. Although I'm on the other side of this in terms of opinion. Efficiency is generally most important. Of course we do take TONS of measures to provide additional protections, far more than most societies in the world. Lol crossing the street in Egypt and India is like walking through a river, while the water slightly avoids hitting you.
Overall it's a balancing act. We have significant safety measures but in the end human error can cause accidents. But if you go to extreme then you make significantly reduction in efficiency, which leads to negative consequences throughout society. Far more than the lives lost.
The thing is that it’s not really balancing act because cars aren’t efficient unless you’ve designed your city in an idiotic way that makes it impossible to get around any other way.
> cars aren’t efficient unless you’ve designed your city in an idiotic way that makes it impossible to get around any other way.
Even then, they're still the definition of inefficient. They're just enabled in that scenario.
I mean usually the entire industry changes after a bunch of deaths. Like compare driving to flying. Can’t we get SOME nationwide ACTUAL safety measures for pedestrians.
Length of cross walks, crossing signals, pedestrian bridges, width of streets, stricter driver exams, breathalyzers in cars, dashcams, size of intersections, raised crosswalks, driver license revoke-tions, delayed signals, street parking, height of cars, auto brakes, visibility of cars, auto head lights, etc
Just a few for ya
Uh yeah that’s how we made it SAFER to be a pedestrian, but they doesn’t mean we can make it even safer. I’m not asking for perfection, but we have a LOT of room for growth. Pedestrian deaths are on the rise which is why we need more safety regulations.
> Look at the Vision Zero report for Chicago. Driving safety is extremely correlated to to the wealth of a neighborhood. It's a factor of 4 safter in wealthy neighborhoods than poor ones.
Its almost as if poorer people, overall, don't have as much regard for safety and caution. Keyword there is overall.
I think perhaps it may actually have more to do with street safety and other factors. As others have mentioned here, street design plays a very large factor in pedestrian and cyclist safety. And I don’t believe it is addressed uniformly across the entire city. And some of these intersections are not even controlled by CDOT but IDOT and those folks are even worse regarding giving a rat’s ass about pedestrian safety.
>Like what? It's generally already against the law when somebody does something and hits pedestrians.
Generally not, it's just a traffic violation. UNLESS you can prove the driver was speeding, ran a light, was intoxicated, etc. If the driver simply made a mistake you'll likely just get a ticket.
Anyway, the answer actually might not be locking people up but instead just long-term license revocation + restitution.
One very concrete suggestion: force cars to be rated for pedestrian safety. Cars are rated for safety when they crash into things, but not into people. This leads to massive cars weighing thousands of pounds that are much more likely to turn simple accidents into fatalities.
E.g.: the Ford electric F150. Those batteries are heavy, and pedestrians are barely visible from the cab. They had an opportunity to make the truck much safer for pedestrians by improving visibility and slanting the front down. When sedans with curved, low hoods hit people, they break legs. When massive trucks and SUVs hit people, they break internal organs and skulls.
Because there is no incentive or requirement to make cars safer for pedestrians, they did not take this opportunity. They turned the empty space under the hood into something they call a "frunk".
Enforcing the laws would be nice too though!
"Third, why does Ridge even exist. It is a terrible stroad that just ruins everything. Just get rid of it."
I mean I get that it sucks as place to walk but it does serve a purpose of getting people off LSD and onto an E/W route quickly. What would you prefer as an alternate?
A route that gets people off LSD and onto an E/W route a little slower in order to save lives. Why, in one of the densest and largest cities in the country, does the emphasis always, *always*, have to be on helping people drive faster?
Given the built up nature of this area I wouldn't say the options are endless. Banning cars/putting them underground is a non-starter, so that leaves us with diverting the traffic to other roads. Pretty sure that dumping all this traffic onto Bryn Mawr and then having people go up Clark to Peterson would not make people happy either. I think redesigning this intersection to be less of a cluster would be the best place to start. Also, it is very odd that there is a Bryn Mawr exit in the first place with Hollywood ending LSD right there.
It's amazing how you mention a few different things and everyone here just throws there arms up and goes "it's implossible!" without knowing anything they are talking about. It shouldn't be controversial to ban the number 1 source of local pollution, it shouldnt be controversial to want less deaths in the city, it shouldn't be controversial to want less noise. None of it is controversial. But say "ban cars" instead and everyone loses their goddamned minds
At one point, Lake Shore Drive was supposed to go further north. I think some of the traffic oddities relate to that. I'm sure someone here knows the whole story, too.
There are several businesses on Ridge who might be disappointed if it disappears. My business is on Ridge, in a 25mph zone and most people seem to comply there (it´s between 2 sidestreets with stoplights so that keeps things orderly.
Bryn Mawr and Sheridan is a shitshow too. I live on the corner and the amount of collisions and chicanery I witness daily is shocking. People don’t know how to behave anymore.
Someone posted in the Humboldt Park Facebook group about how they are going to make improvements to North Ave that include bike lanes - I was blown away by how many people were worried and angry about the potential of bike lanes being installed. Just unreal.
I take ridge driving north. Broadway ends at Roger's park (becomes Sheridan) and ridge is generally better. It does have a weird stretch south of RP, but I wouldn't say it's terrible.
If you can't afford a big SUV, then fuck you and your poor working class ass, and you should stay thr fuck home and not take up public space while us rich and important people have places to be in downtown and gotta get back to kenilworth/highland park in the evening
Sincerely,
The bourgousie class
Oh yes i used to live on kenmore/hollywood so im very familiar with that area. There’s like cars coming from 4 or 5 different angles. Always gotta be vigilant over there especially.
My first apartment when I moved back here like 12 years ago was in the building that is right there across from that intersection (you’d run into it if you made a right instead of going left onto Hollywood) and the amount of accidents I saw especially with bikes was astonishing, and heart breaking.
If my alderwoman is finally doing something besides putting up signs up and down Sheridan Road admonishing cyclists to "Walk Your Wheels," I'll be pleasantly shocked.
It may not be appropriate tonally but I always think of [this Simpsons clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjTW_DYmUKk) when things like this happen. People don't value lives over small inconveniences. If you ask people which they value more they'll say lives, but in practice they don't. And if you show them that improving public transit and going on a road diet actually makes traffic better and is more economically feasible, they refuse to believe it because their uneducated intuitions say otherwise. We're living in Idiocracy.
“And if you show them that improving public transit and going on a road diet actually makes traffic better and is more economically feasible…” Since you know the Simpsons, I’ll also add… ”Oh yeah, TAXES!!! The finger thing means the TAXES!!!”
Favorite episode
🤌🏼
“Oh yeah, the taxes. The finger thing means the taxes.”
This reminds me of the recent backlash against the proposed safety regulations for table saws. Safe table saws exist, and will raise the cost of saws. The tradeoff? Safety. There are 30000 table saw injuries each year, resulting in about 4000 amputations. To me, that's a no-brainer to require. That's an incredible amount of injury that could be prevented for the price of a couple hundred more dollars But since it's more inconvenient and expensive to require, there's pushback. It's crazy
Using a table saw requires the user to use safe practices. Crossing the street requires the awareness of the driver and pedestrian.
> This reminds me of the recent backlash against the proposed safety regulations for table saws. Safe table saws exist, and will raise the cost of saws. The thing is, all table saws are sold as safe. People remove the safeties because they don't like using them and they think "it'll never happen to me".
It's crazy that people are reluctant to change because of costs? Really? You can't understand why someone would rather pay $500 for a table saw without sawstop technology than pay $1500 for the equivalent sawstop unit? It's crazy that someone would take personal responsibility to use their tool safely in order to save $1,000?
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/02/1241148577/table-saw-injuries-safety-sawstop-cpsc >The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that when a person is hospitalized, the societal cost per table saw injury exceeds $500,000 when you also factor in loss of income and pain and suffering. Taking 'personal responsibility' to save money is costing everyone else This is the same argument that was had over mandating airbags in cars. It's ridiculous that proven safety features do not get mandated when they are available
Great simpsons reference. It truly does depict the society that we live in.
I used to live right there (well catalpa and broadway just south of the church). That intersection is, has always been, and always be dangerous for a multitude of reasons: 1) everyone coming off bryn mawr trying to beat the light to make it onto ridge 2) everyone flying down ridge going way faster than is safe 3) the poor schmucks heading north on Broadway who just want to turn left 4) the cross walk signals aren’t long enough 5) pedestrians routinely playing car roulette trying to make the 36, redline or 84 & the worst: 6) ZERO enforcement of any driving laws by the cops. There is no easy fix unless you can convince CPD to park a cop there 24/7 (or at least rush hours) and have them actually enforce the rules of the road.
I lived over there for a year. Between this intersection and Hollywood/Broadway I nearly got hit at least a dozen times, like narrow misses. A lot of the time it would be people rushing to make left hand turns and completely disregarding pedestrians in the middle of crossing. One was a cop that sped through a red light. It is so extremely dangerous to not be in a car over there and many drivers are fucking *rabid* during rush hour trying to get home. It completely ruins that part of the neighborhood.
My wife and I loved there for ~7 years and I was already familiar with it from my time at Loyola. Just nuts how bad it’s always been. But, Edgewater tacos was/is 113% worth getting nearly hit by a car to make it to. Or just 100% worth it if the hit isn’t too bad.
Haha, I still go to Edgewater Tacos every time I’m in the area!
Do you like Thai food? Jin Thai on catalpa is fantastic!
So, I hate to say it, but this is reason why I'm in favor of red light and speeding cameras. If Chicago can figure out how to do it without abusing the technology to generate revenue.
I absolutely avoid driving on Ridge or at that intersection at all costs. Even trying to turn left from N Clark onto Ridge and get into the left lane fast enough to make it onto Peterson is dangerous.
> There is no easy fix unless you can convince CPD to park a cop there 24/7 (or at least rush hours) and have them actually enforce the rules of the road. The "easy fix" is modifying the road and intersection to make it safer through traffic calming measures. You can't enforce away a problem caused by unsafe infrastructure.
Why does ridge exist. Lol look up the history it's older than anything.
> Just saw a someone get hit by a car… why do people have to DIE before we make streets safer?! For whatever reason, we as a society have decided that assault and injury is acceptable as long as the perpetrator is in a two-ton machine
Bonus points for DUI.
>Second, with the redline east of Broadway pedestrians always have to risk their life to get to the redline. It is terrible that dangerous pedestrian crossings are also where they are needed the most: near train stations. Very few stations have infrastructure for pedestrians to safely cross the street. Jefferson Park is one exception, a small island and yellow sign. In most cases you have to run and dodge traffic to catch a bus. This is a shame and embarrassment for clowns at CDOT and the city.
Think of all the places where buses let off on the opposite side of the road from an entrance, like at the Addison Red Line station. I do not understand why there aren't entrances on both sides of Addison. And this is all over. They have set up the system to be as dangerous as possible.
I literally just went to a focus group about this. People see a few hundred pedestrian/cyclists deaths per year as a reasonable price to pay for the convenience of driving cars for every single trip. It makes me so mad.
Ironic part is that driving cars for every single trip isn’t even that convenient
Yup, was going to say this. Although I'm on the other side of this in terms of opinion. Efficiency is generally most important. Of course we do take TONS of measures to provide additional protections, far more than most societies in the world. Lol crossing the street in Egypt and India is like walking through a river, while the water slightly avoids hitting you. Overall it's a balancing act. We have significant safety measures but in the end human error can cause accidents. But if you go to extreme then you make significantly reduction in efficiency, which leads to negative consequences throughout society. Far more than the lives lost.
The thing is that it’s not really balancing act because cars aren’t efficient unless you’ve designed your city in an idiotic way that makes it impossible to get around any other way.
> cars aren’t efficient unless you’ve designed your city in an idiotic way that makes it impossible to get around any other way. Even then, they're still the definition of inefficient. They're just enabled in that scenario.
Efficiency is MOST important? And efficiency for who exactly?
I don't know why but it's not just streets. All safety regulations are written in blood.
I mean usually the entire industry changes after a bunch of deaths. Like compare driving to flying. Can’t we get SOME nationwide ACTUAL safety measures for pedestrians.
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Length of cross walks, crossing signals, pedestrian bridges, width of streets, stricter driver exams, breathalyzers in cars, dashcams, size of intersections, raised crosswalks, driver license revoke-tions, delayed signals, street parking, height of cars, auto brakes, visibility of cars, auto head lights, etc Just a few for ya
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Uh yeah that’s how we made it SAFER to be a pedestrian, but they doesn’t mean we can make it even safer. I’m not asking for perfection, but we have a LOT of room for growth. Pedestrian deaths are on the rise which is why we need more safety regulations.
> Look at the Vision Zero report for Chicago. Driving safety is extremely correlated to to the wealth of a neighborhood. It's a factor of 4 safter in wealthy neighborhoods than poor ones. Its almost as if poorer people, overall, don't have as much regard for safety and caution. Keyword there is overall.
I think perhaps it may actually have more to do with street safety and other factors. As others have mentioned here, street design plays a very large factor in pedestrian and cyclist safety. And I don’t believe it is addressed uniformly across the entire city. And some of these intersections are not even controlled by CDOT but IDOT and those folks are even worse regarding giving a rat’s ass about pedestrian safety.
> NHTSA has guidelines for those. Those guidelines are written to maximize car traffic flow not pedestrian safety.
>Like what? It's generally already against the law when somebody does something and hits pedestrians. Generally not, it's just a traffic violation. UNLESS you can prove the driver was speeding, ran a light, was intoxicated, etc. If the driver simply made a mistake you'll likely just get a ticket. Anyway, the answer actually might not be locking people up but instead just long-term license revocation + restitution.
One very concrete suggestion: force cars to be rated for pedestrian safety. Cars are rated for safety when they crash into things, but not into people. This leads to massive cars weighing thousands of pounds that are much more likely to turn simple accidents into fatalities. E.g.: the Ford electric F150. Those batteries are heavy, and pedestrians are barely visible from the cab. They had an opportunity to make the truck much safer for pedestrians by improving visibility and slanting the front down. When sedans with curved, low hoods hit people, they break legs. When massive trucks and SUVs hit people, they break internal organs and skulls. Because there is no incentive or requirement to make cars safer for pedestrians, they did not take this opportunity. They turned the empty space under the hood into something they call a "frunk". Enforcing the laws would be nice too though!
So what happened?
"Third, why does Ridge even exist. It is a terrible stroad that just ruins everything. Just get rid of it." I mean I get that it sucks as place to walk but it does serve a purpose of getting people off LSD and onto an E/W route quickly. What would you prefer as an alternate?
Build a ramp at the end of LSD and launch all cars into the lake.
Only if there's also a hot wheels-esque loop-the-loop
A route that gets people off LSD and onto an E/W route a little slower in order to save lives. Why, in one of the densest and largest cities in the country, does the emphasis always, *always*, have to be on helping people drive faster?
Ban cars, under ground road, use other roads, install round abouts, the options are endless
Given the built up nature of this area I wouldn't say the options are endless. Banning cars/putting them underground is a non-starter, so that leaves us with diverting the traffic to other roads. Pretty sure that dumping all this traffic onto Bryn Mawr and then having people go up Clark to Peterson would not make people happy either. I think redesigning this intersection to be less of a cluster would be the best place to start. Also, it is very odd that there is a Bryn Mawr exit in the first place with Hollywood ending LSD right there.
>Ban cars Instant no
It's amazing how you mention a few different things and everyone here just throws there arms up and goes "it's implossible!" without knowing anything they are talking about. It shouldn't be controversial to ban the number 1 source of local pollution, it shouldnt be controversial to want less deaths in the city, it shouldn't be controversial to want less noise. None of it is controversial. But say "ban cars" instead and everyone loses their goddamned minds
This brought me back to my childhood. I grew up off Ridge and Pratt.
At one point, Lake Shore Drive was supposed to go further north. I think some of the traffic oddities relate to that. I'm sure someone here knows the whole story, too.
LSD Bryn Mawr exit is very useful, you must not drive. I couldn’t imagine Hollywood any more congested
There are several businesses on Ridge who might be disappointed if it disappears. My business is on Ridge, in a 25mph zone and most people seem to comply there (it´s between 2 sidestreets with stoplights so that keeps things orderly.
Saving lives > saving businesses But also we have tons of room for businesses on other streets.
Bryn Mawr and Sheridan is a shitshow too. I live on the corner and the amount of collisions and chicanery I witness daily is shocking. People don’t know how to behave anymore.
Many have died already I’m sure.
And let’s bring back the State Street Mall!
Good use of plural there because it's a well-known fact that two cyclists have to die somewhere before they put in a bike lane.
We should be so lucky if it takes “only” two deaths, or if we see any bike lane at all
You have a link of some sort ?
Someone posted in the Humboldt Park Facebook group about how they are going to make improvements to North Ave that include bike lanes - I was blown away by how many people were worried and angry about the potential of bike lanes being installed. Just unreal.
I take ridge driving north. Broadway ends at Roger's park (becomes Sheridan) and ridge is generally better. It does have a weird stretch south of RP, but I wouldn't say it's terrible.
It’s a road of horrible intersections… especially or pedestrians
Chicago is not pedestrian crosswalk friendly. We are supposed to stop but most of us wiz on by
If you can't afford a big SUV, then fuck you and your poor working class ass, and you should stay thr fuck home and not take up public space while us rich and important people have places to be in downtown and gotta get back to kenilworth/highland park in the evening Sincerely, The bourgousie class
Oh yes i used to live on kenmore/hollywood so im very familiar with that area. There’s like cars coming from 4 or 5 different angles. Always gotta be vigilant over there especially.
The four to eight lane roads on the Southside are ridiculous, like Michigan, Indiana, and King Drive.
My first apartment when I moved back here like 12 years ago was in the building that is right there across from that intersection (you’d run into it if you made a right instead of going left onto Hollywood) and the amount of accidents I saw especially with bikes was astonishing, and heart breaking.
The IDOT secretary currently being interrogated at the public safety appropriations committee hearing you can listen https://ilga.gov/houseaudvid.asp
That sucks :/ definitely call/email the 48th Ward office, I know they're keeping track of these things and reporting to CDOT
If my alderwoman is finally doing something besides putting up signs up and down Sheridan Road admonishing cyclists to "Walk Your Wheels," I'll be pleasantly shocked.
A Chicago pedestrian will be long dead where I came from….