Chicago creates yet another “shared street”

Chicago opened another “shared street” a couple of weeks ago: a 1.1-mile-long stretch of Dickens Avenue between Clark Street and Racine Avenue. Chicago uses the term “shared street” for what, in many American cities, would be called a “slow street”: a street segment where, in theory, only local movement of cars and trucks is allowed and where pedestrians and cyclists have the right of way. Perhaps in response to complaints about fast driving on Chicago’s first shared street, Leland Avenue, Chicago’s Department of Transportation installed many more barricades and traffic barrels on Dickens than on Leland. As a result, it would be very difficult to drive quickly on Dickens Avenue. A perhaps unforeseen problem is that it isn’t all that easy to walk, run, or bicycle quickly on Dickens either: you have to keep swerving to avoid all the obstacles. Despite this, there were quite a number of pedestrians using the Dickens roadway on the weekday afternoons when I visited this week, many more than on Leland at comparable times. I’m not sure, however, that there were more pedestrians than there have usually been. Dickens Avenue, with its well-maintained late 19th- and early 20th-century residential buildings and thick tree cover, is an exceptionally pleasant place to walk or bicycle, and pedestrians (and cyclists) have never been rare. Although the street is presumably not itself a destination for many people except residents, commerce (and bus lines) are present at certain cross streets (Halsted and Clark Streets), and the street includes a long-pedestrianized couple of blocks between Oz Park and Lincoln Park High School.

The Dickens shared street is supposed to be a short-term experiment. There’s a story here. Dickens Avenue runs through the neighborhood known as Lincoln Park. These days, Lincoln Park is generally a well-off and well-connected place, and some of its inhabitants know what needs to be done to win political disputes. An earlier proposal to build a reverse-flow bicycle lane on the one-way portions of Dickens had stimulated vociferous protests, and the plan to make Dickens a shared street was opposed just as firmly. It’s possible that the Dickens shared street won’t be around for long, unless, of course, politically sophisticated residents come to its defense.

What I’ve seen in Chicago has made me a little skeptical of the idea of shared streets in the American context.  These streets have been set up to do two perhaps incompatible things. On the one hand, they’re supposed to be preserving motor-vehicle access. On the other hand, they’re theoretically earmarked as space for socially-distanced recreation. The problem is that many drivers, used to getting their way, tend to be baffled by (or hostile to) the idea of a shared street, and they really can’t be counted on to defer to pedestrians. The fact that Chicago DOT has felt a need to put in all those barricades and barrels on Dickens suggests the depth of the problem. The fact that, when I was on Dickens Avenue this week, most pedestrians (although not most cyclists) were sticking to the sidewalks is evidence that it’s not easy to get even beneficiaries on board with the idea of shared streets.¹

I’d be inclined to argue that those who would like to decrease the amount of space where automobiles can operate freely in cities should be a little more ambitious and push to close streets to traffic more or less completely, perhaps focusing on commercial streets that are already crowded with pedestrians. That’s certainly been the direction in which many Western European cities have been moving.

Note added 22 August 2020. The Dickens shared street was dismantled on August 20.