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Love to see it. N Glenwood is another one of those quiet residential green ways that has similar two-way bike lanes despite it being a one-way street for cars. Super convenient as a cyclist to be able to travel in both directions and not have to worry about being in the wrong.

As a Kansas City resident I have been given the opportunity to see the perspectives from both sides, and experience it firsthand. I fit in the 1.5% who use public transportation to travel throughout the city. I have personally benefited from free transit, but I have also experienced a cost in time from low frequency and poor service. Just today I attended a panel on traffic violence hosted by a local newspaper and one of the topics discussed was the impact of fare-free transit service. A union representative for KCATA bus operators said there's been an obvious change in rider demographics and the purpose of trips being made; frequent "loop riders" are unhoused or have inadequate access to essential resources. The overall level of service has decreased as it has become less safe and driver retention has diminished. However, I've attended Sunrise Movement meetings and met people that the cost of a transit fare would directly impact their ability to use the service. It seems to be an issue of insufficient resources for disadvantaged people, opposed to a fault of transportation authorities (imo). Very nice video! It's uncommon for public transportation in Kansas City to get recognition

What are we doing now for cars? It's marketed as free to the average driver, but there are all kinds of fees and subsidies that try to make those costs hidden. If they took a fraction of what's being paid out to car riders, I imagine free mass transit wouldn't be that hard to provide. The unhoused issue is something that will only be solved by making housing a right and bringing back public housing, until then, everything from shopping, medicine, and even transit will be affected by this mess.

How much do drivers pay to use roads in Kansas or other American cities? I know that here in Vancouver they pay a big fat $0. Yes, there are fuel taxes collected by the provincial and federal governments but those are ostensibly to fund only provincial highways, not municipal roads. And they only cover about 30% of those - a huge subsidy for drivers. Vancouver itself gets nothing except for roads that are deemed part of the provincial highways system, just two of hundreds of roads. (Vancouver has no freeways in the city except for a very short segment that clips one corner. It's more of a bypass.) The city region collects an additional fuel tax to put towards transit - not roads. This is absurd as it entitles drivers to claim they are funding transit and pat themselves on the back as they look down their noses at those mooches on transit. In actuality they don't fund transit at all. They don't even cover their own costs. In any case drivers cover less of the cost of roads than transit riders cover the cost of transit at 35%. Drivers might cover as little as a few percent because the majority of driving is on municipal roads and not highways. Unless you live way out in the outer suburbs, Vancouver transit is pretty good and has the highest post Covid recovery in the US and Canada. I suspect the funding arrangement is similar in US cities and that's where all the problems lie. If motorists paid the real cost they impose on taxpayers, cities would be more compact and have a lot more people riding much better transit.

The city and metro area of Montpellier, France, recently switched to free transit for all locals, with only the requirement for inhabitants to request a free transit pass. It's now entirely funded by taxes and mostly by the employer contributions. It was accompanied by a major investment into the transit system and an expansion (a 5th tramway line if I recall correctly, plus new farther reaching BRT lines). So tourists still have to pay the regular fare, but all locals no longer have to. If I'm not mistaken, locals are asked to validate for statistical and resource allocation reasons (so that they can better anticipate ridership and have the required number of drivers, frequencies, etc.). They already have a robust system with tramways (4 lines), plus BRT and regular bus lines. Now, a good chunk of the center is free of cars, with mostly only bicycles, tramways and buses. To really take advantage of the switch to free transit, you also have to make it a lot less desirable to drive. The carrot and the stick... You can go pretty much anywhere on transit in Montpellier and also in many places in the suburbs. Public transportation is now substantially more used than cars in the center and roughly the entire city proper area. It's now the largest city / metro area in France with free public transportation for locals. Usually, in France, about 30% of the cost is paid by the users via ticket and pass fares, the rest comes via taxes and employer contributions. Same in Paris, where the normal adult monthly pass is like 86 euros, but its real value is estimated to be at least about 280-300.

When I went to school in Oregon my tuition covered a bus pass. When I went to school at Columbia College my tuition covered a CTA pass. When I worked at NU as a benefit my ID gave me access to the Intercampus Shuttle bus that I would take with my bike between Evanston and Streeterville. It was amazing. Free obviously doesn't mean free, but a transit system that is simply available to everyone as a service is a fantastic thing. The only real "problem" is it turning into makeshift shelter for unhoused people, but all that does is expose an already present separate problem that requires a separate campaign to address. Both are worthwhile things for a city to do. Shameless plug... if you want more of my little soapbox opinions like and subscribe to my updated channel where I ride around and talk about local north side cycling infrastructure.

at least in my region of sweden, the cost of tickets is specifically cited as one of the most significant reasons for not using public transport more, at like 30% of the responses IIRC so yeah, it *needs* to be cheaper, and at that point we might as well just rationalize away the ticket system completely so things are more efficient and reliable.

Everyone should have to pay something to eliminate freeloaders, but UBI should be allowed to pay. Everyone should pay the same to eliminate unfairness among riders, but riders shouldn't shoulder the entire cost since even drivers benefit from fewer cars remaining on the road. Federal & state & county funds subsidize roads, & should also subsidize transit for all the same reasons. I think fares should be some small % of actual cost, plus there should be extra fees for extra services.

If you have luggage, are there elevators for the blue line stations?

YOU may beat the traffic, but you may get robbed as well.

I used to travel in and out of Denver a lot for work and slowly watched as the rail terminal was opened. Every time I had to rent a car for like 400 bucks and sit in traffic for miles and miles just to get to downtown. I literally teared up when the rail station was opened and I got on the A for the first time. It's an incredible blessing. DIA went from being the worst airport to get to, to being as good as Philadelphia's airport. Huge step forward

Love the 606. It's an amazing piece of infrastructure that makes the city better. The only critique I have really is unavoidable given what the 606 is: Access to the street level for a quick stop at a shop can get cumbersome (most of the time you don't even see what you're passing by).

The biggest problem with the 606 is conflict between uses. The blue stripes are the pedestrian paths, but they are incredibly narrow. Because of this, pedestrians understandably use the rest of the space. Great park, but it's a waste of dollars that could have been used for building useful bike infra.

This is so beautiful.

Great video

A shame that youtube compression can't handle trees well, love the timelapse

Rails *and* Trails? In some instances, yes, very much so, but not in all cases.

that trail looks so nice

Another beautiful video! Thanks for the trip down the 606.

Do you know where exactly is the shuttle to Terminal 5, inside of the other terminals, when you take the blue line to such terminals? Basically the route im expressing is downtown Chicago on the blue line, all the way to the airport, but how do you get to terminal 5 from there? I know its a shuttle but where are they exactly?

Do you know one could take the Metra Rock Island District line from Tinley Park to LaSalle street then walk to the CTA blue line(I think it's Clinton Station?) and take that all the way to O'Hare? Is this feasible?

Has the city looked into bulldozing Wrigley and putting in a parking lot to alleviate traffic congestion?

If you lived in the Chicago land area (Naperville for example) - is it cheaper to jump on the train and get an Uber outside of the airport area? Or would you just get an Uber at the airport?

Great video! In addition to inaccuracies when routing transit, Google Maps also doesn't factor in the inefficiencies of cars and parking. Yeah, it's only 10 minutes drive from my house to the city, don't think about how you'll have to spend another 30 minutes looking for an open parking space or the $5 per hour tax at the meter. Same applies to airport parking, only much worse.

excellent video! it's worrisome how similar a scenario the connection between Downtown Kansas City and the new international airport is. The only public transportation is an hourly bus that makes 37 stops, largely on freeway frontage roads. Hopefully there will eventually be even more Amtrak options out of Union Station, or at least improved speeds on existing ones. Nashville doesn't even have an Amtrak station 😢

It's misleading to point out the danger of bicycle-pedestrian encounters. Just the curb bump outs alone are going to save many more and make it so much more pleasant. They need to widen that path though, a very busy ped/bike path should be something like 12-16ft wide, probably? I also never understood why you would put bike lanes between parking and vehicle lanes. The bicycle is in the door zone, they have nowhere to swerve to if they are going to be hit, and to add insult it's more stressful if you are driving, one more thing to watch out for when pulling out of a parking spot. It just seems like such terrible design you really need proper bike-vehicle separation if you are going to have that much of both kinds of traffic. But yeah cars are more dangerous for sure.

Spokane WA spent a decade building a BRT-lite route but couldnt even build it to the airport

Nope. It's still not enough.

"equality feels like injustice to privileged people"

Building bike infrastructure is easy , just ban cars completely and use the existing roads, they will need less maintenance as well

No it has not gone far enough. I want to feel safe biking in Chicago and I want others to feel safe enough to bike with me

I live in Chicago and have biked on Dickens and other streets like it. In my opinion, in your description of the route, you laid out the reasons why Dickens and similar streets do NOT need bike infrastructure. Why spend the time making an already safe street safer when you could do something about actually unsafe routes, which is the majority of Chicago! I see a ton of infrastructure in this city that only angers and snarls drivers and cyclists. It's not all bad but gosh darn it's frustrating to see tax dollars spent on absolutely pointless markings and bollards.

Are there any plans to replace those flex sticks with something that'll actually provide some sort protection for peds and cyclists?

Bike lanes are a pain in the azz. Bikers usually ignore stop signs. The person with the camera ignored a stop sign.

2:00 The 'bikes go too fast' arguement is infuriating as bikes rarely go more than even 1/3 of the top speeds seen every day on Interstate highways. The underlying issue is weak bikelane engineering where pedestrians are not sufficiently separated from through cycling routes.

I'm all for making streets car-unfriendly

"Alright, you might see a bike here but don't worry, the road still belongs to you." Unfortunately spot on 😭😭

As MUCH as I hate advisory bike lanes, I'll take the ones on Clark St. in Andersonville over speed humps and stop signs along the Glenwood Greenway. I look forward to the day Chicago wises up and vastly reduces vehicle storage so we can prioritize bikes and buses.

Unfortunately bike infrastructure isn't built on the south side because many alders for those areas don't want it, even if their constituents would be fine with it. We need to make bike infrastructure a default part of our streets instead of asking communities for permission to take action on traffic safety, reducing congestion, expanding mobility, and climate resilience.

“These bikes go too fast. I only want 2,000 lb cars going 3x as fast on this road.”

drivers getting a bit upset reminds me of my area in the UK, they built a 2 lane cycle lane down this long stretch of road that leads out of the town. It didnt even hamper the 2 car lanes at all, it just made it safer for cycling. And a lot of car people got upset because the idea of being reminded that cyclists and other road users exist causes them psychic damage for some reason.

I am sure that people who complain about bike infrastructure haven't truly experienced the joy of riding.

An effective bike/mixed use path network throughout a city benefits everyone, including drivers. Drivers benefit because: People on bikes and pedestrians are more likely to use these pathways, so bikes are out of car traffic and out of the way of drivers. Everyone who chooses to use these new bike paths to commute is potentially one less car on the road, so traffic volumes are reduced. Nobody likes driving in traffic! Bikers benefit because: obviously this new infrastructure is tailored to bicycles. People who choose to ride their bikes or walk won't have to deal with car traffic, making their trips more safe and pleasant. They won't have to worry about distracted or hostile drivers running them off the road or killing them. It's a public health benefit, people who choose to cycle or walk will be getting more exercise reducing obesity and depression, and will be breathing in less exhaust fumes and brake particulates and other byproducts of car traffic. People using these paths are less likely to be hit by cars, reducing healthcare costs all around. And a separated path (not a lane on the inside of parallel parked cars) means cyclists won't be crashing into car doors opening on the right side, better for drivers and cyclists. Cities benefit because: bicycle infrastructure is much cheaper to build and maintain than roads. Reduced car traffic means roads will need less maintenance, saving the city money in the long run. More people choosing to cycle means less pollution in the city, making it a more pleasant place to live. Businesses benefit because: more people getting around outside of cars means more people traversing the city at a human scale. People are much more likely to visit local businesses if they don't have to find a parking spot first. And obviously bike shops will do very well. And I haven't even mentioned the benefits of an effective transit system as well on top of this, but that's a topic for another video.

Watching this video I know thing maybe bike infrastructure shouldn’t go too far as it becomes an major inconvenience.

Good stuff! I really hope that we can get more stuff like this on the SW side. I wish I could just get on a safe bike lane with my kids to get to a park. As is, i would have to go on a shared lane on a major diagonal. Its safer to just drive there and haul their bikes to the park.

Most of what I see here are painted gutters that are not protected and weave in and out of main traffic as if the biker is a car. Basically exactly how not to design bike lanes but what Americans think bike lanes are. 😂

Tbh if a street is quiet and residential and does barely have any traffic, do you even need a bikelane? I am all for bikelanes (european here who leves in a city with very inadaquate bike infrastructure) but not on residential streets. There is no added value and I even feel restricted as a cyclist. Normally riding with 2 side by side is fine, but if there is a bikelane you HAVE to use it. And often they dont find 2 people. So cyclists lose space by adding bikelanes on quiet streets

Equality always feels like oppression to those benefiting from extreme privilege.

I think urbanists need to be more ok with being reasonably anti-car. The argument I always use is that just because planes are objectively beneficial to society doesn't mean that every street should be designed to double as a runway. By the same logic, we can acknowledge that cars absolutely have a place in society, but that not every single street needs to cater to them.

2:00 are people really worried about bikes going too fast as compared to cars?? 💀