Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Update on the Redesign North Lake Shore Drive project

by Michelle Stenzel

The Illinois Department of Transportation is continuing the massive Redesign North Lake Shore Drive project. Task force members recently got an update from the project team, and you can view the presentation and all accompanying materials on the project web page at this link. You'll see: It's 117 slides, and a lot of information. I am a huge fan of infrastructure and an enthusiastic participant in a residents task force for the project, but I still found it somewhat overwhelming. Think of how much thought and discussion by engineers, city planners and neighborhood residents goes into changes at a single intersection or building site, and this project corridor is a full seven miles long. Nevertheless, I'll try to provide a brief general summary in this post.

Keep in mind that I'm on the Grand to Diversey Residents' Task Force and that's Bike Walk Lincoln Park's primary (although not sole) area of interest, so that's what I'll focus on in this post. However, there is plenty of information available about the four-mile stretch from Diversey to Hollywood as well, and I encourage you to view all the project documents yourself for those details.

We're already about three years into the project, and Bike Walk Lincoln Park supporters previously submitted our list of problems that we believe should be addressed during the redesign process.

At the recent update meeting, the project team provided illustrations of three alternative concepts:


Much more after the jump ----->