Make Chicago's Broadway More Social -- Remove Lanes and Add Landscaping, Seating, and Kiosks

The best practice today is to have urban streets with no more than three moving lanes (one for each direction of travel and a shared one for turning). The city of Chicago recently rebuilt sidewalks and reconfigured the roadway on a stretch of Broadway in Uptown. Instead of converting some of this overly wide right-of-way to more people-friendly uses, the street gained travel lanes.

Three lane streets are safer than those with more lanes and can carry about as many motor vehicles. Having more encourages constant lane switching, each maneuver an opportunity for a crash. In the new configuration on Broadway, there are as many as six moving lanes (see middle photo, looking north from Montrose Avenue).

Broadway could be Chicago's Lincoln Road (in Miami Beach) or Ramblas (in Barcelona). Limiting the travel lanes to three, one could create a wide median that would have room landscaping, places to sit, and kiosks for small businesses (see the top and bottom images of a proposal for the median at Broadway and Argyle Street). Let's make Broadway a living room, market place, and garden for Uptown.

Lakeview Living Room -- Create a Social Space at the Intersection of Broadway and Clarendon Avenue

The intersection of Broadway and Clarendon Avenue in Chicago's Lakeview is like many in the United States -- excessively wide and unsafe. It is also an unused opportunity to create a social space, or at least a more pleasing looking one, in an urban environment.

In a "Y" intersection, such as this one, traffic engineers usually give motor vehicles as much space to maneuver as possible (see middle left photo of the truck and bicycle in a sea of asphalt). This does a disservice to everyone on the road -- motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists. It becomes unclear who is to go where and also encourages higher speeds, a dangerous combination.

Tighten it up! By narrowing the "Y" to a "T" intersection and bringing out the sidewalk to the vehicle (motor and foot-powered) travel lanes, everyone benefits (see my plan, bottom left). Paths are clearer, speeds are reduced, and pedestrians have less asphalt to cross.

Landscape it! Program it! Let it be! This newly found space (shown in red in the plan), in a fairly densely settled neighborhood, can now become an urban living room. Landscaped, it can be more visually appealing. Hardscaped, it could be used for farmers markets or impromptu shows and hula-hooping (see image, top left).