The 2013 CNU Transportation Summit is being held in Chicago, IL, November 21-22, 2013. The summit is co-hosted by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) in the Willis Tower at 233 S. Wacker Drive, Suite 800.
CNU Transportation Summits are meetings where experts gather to challenge the status quo of transportation engineering and advance the practice of new urbanist street design. Outcomes from previous CNU summits include: Highways to Boulevards Initiative, CNU/ITE Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares manual, Sustainable Street Network Principles, and Street Vitality Index.
The summit will focus on advancing reforms through working groups. Here are some snapshots from the 2012 summit. Over the two-day working meeting, groups will compile a cohesive to-do list for the future, as well as an immediate work plan for the next year. Please review the Project for Transportation Reform in preparation for the meeting.
Working Groups for the 2013 Transportation Summit
Transit Networks
The goal is to partner with APTA (American Public Transportation Association) to develop street and network guidance for transit agencies. This guidance will help transit agencies to better understand New Urbanism and will help New Urbanists to better understand the parameters of transit agencies. The group will present and take comments on introductory text and a framework/outline for the transit networks project. This outline is based on input from the last several years, collected from APTA Urban Design Standards Working Group meetings, CNU Transportation Summits, and Congress Open Source and Task Force Lunch meetings. The outline will include a series of broad goals shared among urbanists, transit agencies, and other community stakeholders; and tools/principles to address the goals. The group will discuss concepts for the format of the document. The group will also use the CTA Red Line Extension as an example of testing the tools/principles on the ground.
Transportation Modeling Reform
Reform transportation modeling so that it correctly supports the advancement of New Urbanism rather than obstructing—efforts to advance New Urbanism have often been frustrated by transportation modeling that is simplistic and focused only on cars. More complete transportation modeling that properly accounts for multi-modal travel patterns in walkable mixed-use areas can switch transportation modeling from being an obstacle to being a tool for advancing New Urbanism.
Street Vitality Index
CNU's proposed Street Vitality Index seeks to measure and rate the vibrancy of streets and neighborhoods. The SVI working group will help to define the initiative by discussing in-depth the final product, user and metrics.
Street Design Group
The initial meeting of the newly combined Street Design Group at the 2013 Transportation Summit seeks to accomplish the following:
Initial discussion re: context understanding, place, lanes, speed, parking, etc.
Groundwork for national implementation of CNU/ITE recommended practice Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares
Establish policies - complete streets/context sensitive design at all practice levels
Discussion of the NEXT Version, CNU/ITE Recommended Practice
Continue updating the Functional Classification system Area Types
Other reforms and an outline for achieving successful urban street design
Issues up for discussion at the 2013 Transportation Summit could identify ‘best practices’ and implementation obstacles at DOTs, MPOs and Local agencies and what is needed for increased agency adoption/implementation. We could define and clarify ‘trade-off’ decision making in design, traffic operations, adaptive signal control, tactile urbanism and safety.
The mission for this working group would be an outline for achieving successful urban street design and potential update elements for a revised CNU/ITE Recommended Practice Manual.
Bikeway Networks
The bikeway network group will focus on establishing common ground between the new urbanist and bicycle planning professions. In 2013, this working group put together a variety of bikeway networks from around the world to demonstrate the correlation between network density /physical separation and mode share/gender splits. The interactive agenda will include an overview of current best bikeway planning practice; the identification of bikeway network planning challenges and opportunities across the rural to urban transect; strategic group problem solving; and the ultimate creation of bikeway network design principles consistent with CNU's Sustainable Street Network Principles.
Summit Schedule
Thursday | November 21
9:00 am - 12:00 pm: Opening keynote and working groups
1:00 pm - 5:00 pm: Tours
6:00 pm - 9:00 pm: Evening Reception
14 East Jackson Boulevard, DePaul University, Suite 1601
Gabe Klein, Commissioner, City of Chicago, will be honored.
Complimentary drinks and hors d'oeuvres will be served
Friday | November 22
9:00 am - 10:00 am: Groups report and set agenda for day
10:00 am - 12:00 pm: Working groups
12:00 - 1:00 pm: Lunch and keynote
1:00 - 3:30 pm: Working groups
3:30 - 5:00 pm: Groups report out and set agenda for year
Saturday | November 23
*10:00 am - 1:00 pm: Optional tours
*Open to the public, small additional fee
Download the full schedule here
Tours
The 2013 Transportation Summit is an opportunity to present ideas and work towards reforming transportation standards that obstruct urbanism. This year, CNU will collaborate with CMAP to focus on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line extension and other transportation initiatives within GOTO 2040, the regional plan of Northeast Illinois. The Summit also features a set of tours, each one complementing the initiatives and lessons of a specific working group. Visit the Tours page for full details. Tours will explore:
Thursday Tours | Nov. 21
All Transportation Summit attendees are invited to attend one of the following tours on the afternoon of Thursday, November 21. These tours are open on a first-come, first-served basis, so register early for the Transportation Summit and indicate your top two choices.
CTA’s most heavily used line, the Red Line, stretches 22 miles from Howard on the north side to 95th/Dan Ryan on the City’s south side passing through downtown Chicago. The proposed Red Line extension adds an additional 5.5 miles and four additional stops, creating access and economic opportunities for Chicago’s far south side. The mobile workshop will take participants on a guided tour of the Roseland community, the location of the four new proposed stations, guided by Developing Communities Project (DCP) and the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). DCP, a faith based community organization has advocated for the Red Line extension since 1998, creating an expansive network of community residents and stakeholders in the process. They will speak to their successes and challenges in advocating for the Red Line and planning for the future of their community. The tour will also highlight opportunities for investment and revitalization along Roseland’s commercial corridors.
This tour will be led by Kendra Smith, Associate of Outreach & Community Engagement at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP).
Chicago's On-Street Bike Network
Mayor Emanuel is committed to making Chicago the most bicycle-friendly city in the U.S. and building 100 miles of protected bike lanes by May of 2015. For this tour, hop on one of the city's new Divvy bikes and visit several of its new protected bike lanes and other innovative bike projects installed since May of 2011, plus see Divvy operations in action. Participants will experience riding in protected, buffered and standard bike lanes, as well as see firsthand how bike boxes, colored pavement markings, and intersection markings increase the safety and visibility of bicyclists. These new bike accommodations focus on improving the safety and comfort of bicyclists and allow all Chicagoans, from children to senior citizens, to bike comfortably on city streets. Tour leaders will discuss lessons learned in outreach and implementation, design details, safety benefits, Divvy bike share station siting and operations, and ongoing efforts to implement the Streets for Cycling Plan 2020.
This tour will be led by Mike Amsden, Senior Planner for T.Y. Lin International serving as Project Manager for CDOT’s Bicycle Initiatives, and by Jack Cebe of Alta Bicycle Share, with volunteers from Chicago's Active Transportation Alliance.
Lincoln Square Streetscapes
Visit some of the city’s most ambitious traffic calming projects and see how they’re transforming the public realm. Learn how the city’s new Complete Streets Design Guidelines are being put to use along Lawrence Ave – a road diet project currently underway that will convert four lanes to three and add bike lanes, sidewalk space and pedestrian crossings. Also visit Lincoln Square, which features streetscape and place-making efforts dating back to the late 1970s. This historically German neighborhood now hosts a variety of shops, restaurants and public events.
Lawrence Before Lawrence After
This tour will be led by David Leopold, Program Manager of Chicago's Streetscape and Sustainable Design Program, and Bill Higgins, Project Analyst & Coordinator for the Office of 47th Ward Alderman Ameya Pawar. Photo credits: City of Chicago
CNT's LEED Building and the 606 Trail
See two examples of Chicago postindustrial innovation in the heart of Wicker Park. Explore one of the nation’s oldest LEED Platinum buildings: a former textile factory now home of the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). CNT first moved into the building in 1987, then renovated a second time in 2000. When the building was certfitied by LEED in 2005, only 12 other building had earned Platinum status. CNT’s use of an existing building structure, accessible by bike and transit, encapsulates its philosophy and mission of promoting urban sustainability. Next, hop on the future 606 trail: a 3-mile elevated former rail line being transformed into new open space connecting five neighborhood parks. Construction on the project is underway and the trail is expected to open in Fall of 2014. Get a unique view on how this transformational effort to connect Chicago’s neighborhoods is taking shape.
This tour will be led by Ben Helphand, Executive Director at NeighborSpace. Ben was formerly with the Center for Neighborhood Technology and will be joined by staff from the Trust for Public Land.
Optional Saturday Tours | Nov. 23
CNU is also offering a series of optional tours on the morning of Saturday, November 23, in conjunction with the Transportation Summit. These tours are optional and registration is required. If you're still in town, join other Chicagoans and explore the city!
Adaptive Reuse and Walkability in Historic Ravenswood | Register for this tour
Take a guided walking tour of one of Chicago's most historic and innovative neighborhoods, Ravenswood, and meet with key neighborhood residents and stakeholders. This tour will focus on the current Ravenswood Creative Corridor, which spans roughly 2 miles from Addison Avenue to Foster Avenue. See example of adaptive reuse, sustainable and New Urbanist development, historic preservation, building of the creative classes, walkability, transit oriented development, and bicycle planning initiatives.
This tour will be led by Clayton Jirak, CNU-A, LEED GA, CNU Research Fellow
Historic TOD on the Brown Line | Register for this tour
This mobile workshop will explore three districts (two commercial; one residential) that have been impacted by their proximity to public transit stations over a 100-year period. Participants will travel north on the “L” and stop at several different stations. The tour will be led by one public transit planner and one historic preservation planner, who will show highlights at each stop and answer participant questions.
This tour will be led by Jim Peters and Graham Garfield.
John Norquist
John Norquist's work promoting New Urbanism as an alternative to sprawl and antidote to sprawl's social and environmental problems draws on his experience as big-city mayor and prominent participant in national discussions on urban design and school reform. John was the Mayor of Milwaukee from 1988- 2004. Under his leadership, Milwaukee experienced a decline in poverty, saw a boom in new downtown housing, and became a leading center of education and welfare reform. He has overseen a revision of the city's zoning code and reoriented development around walkable streets and public amenities such as the city's 3.1-mile Riverwalk. He has drawn widespread recognition for championing the removal of a .8 mile stretch of elevated freeway, clearing the way for an anticipated $250 million in infill development in the heart of Milwaukee.
A leader in national discussions of urban design and educational issues, Norquist is the author of The Wealth of Cities, and has taught courses in urban policy and urban planning at the University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and at Marquette University. Norquist served in the Army Reserves from 1971 to 1977 and earned his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin. He represented Milwaukee's south and west sides in the Wisconsin Legislature. He chaired the National League of Cities Task Force on Federal Policy and Family Poverty and served on the Amtrak Reform Council. John is currently CNU’s President and CEO.
Rick Hall
Rick Hall, P.E., is President of HPE. Based on his extensive transportation planning and conceptual design experience, the firm focuses on both Planning and Preliminary Engineering, especially the vital interface between Planning and Design. Transportation aspects of community plans, subarea/sector plans and corridor studies are key HPE emphasis areas. Expert witness, public participation and charrette tasks are routinely performed by HPE. Traffic engineering, site impact studies and private and public growth management related studies are also special skills of the firm. Other practice areas of the firm include hurricane evacuation studies and calculation of the all important evacuation clearance times and specialty data collection including origin/destination and trip generation studies
Mr. Hall serves as a Visiting Professor in the Florida State University Department of Urban and Regional Planning where he teaches land use and transportation courses at the master's degree level. Extensive readings in the "New Urbanism," Neo-traditional neighborhood design and other emerging concepts led to a strengthened commitment to land use-based transportation planning. His academic background combined with active charrette and workshop design experience have made him uniquely qualified to deal with controversial transportation and land use projects.
Kenneth Voigt
Mr. Voigt is the current President and a founding member of the Wisconsin Chapter of CNU. He has served as the 2009 International President of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He has served as a technical reviewer of the recent CNU/ITE handbooks on ‘Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach’ and ‘Transportation Impact Analysis for Site Design’. Mr. Voigt has published papers and given presentations on ‘Rethinking Street Design for Living’, ‘Transportation’s Role in Sustainability’ and ‘Traffic Calming for Neighborhood and Arterial Streets’. In his role as an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Voigt has taught courses on the environmental impact of transportation, complete streets, context sensitive design, pedestrian/bicycle facility design and roundabouts along with classes on traffic operation and roadway safety analysis. Mr. Voigt was actively involved in the initial development of the City of Charlotte Street Design Guidelines.
Marcy McInelly
Marcy McInelly has practiced architecture and urban design for more than 27 years in New York City and Portland, Oregon. In 1995, she founded Urbsworks, and redirected her expertise to the often-neglected space between buildings. Over time she has sharpened her focus on a multi-disciplinary, collaborative approach to sustainable urban design and placemaking, with a particular emphasis on smart, safe transportation and innovative codes for the benefit of communities.
In 2004, Marcy was appointed to co-chair the CNU Transportation Task Force, which she renamed the Project for Transportation Reform. This is the group that just published the “CNU Sustainable Street Network Principles,” and initiated the joint CNU and ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) Recommended Practice, “Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach.”
Through this work and projects at Urbsworks, she is committed to realizing the CNU Charter Principles in their highest form. Award-winning projects include the Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design Plan, the Roseway Vision Plan, the New Columbia HOPE VI community and school (all in Portland, Oregon), El Mirage Comprehensive Plan, Arizona, and NorthWest Crossing in Bend, Oregon. Marcy served as an appointed member of the Portland Planning Commission from 1997 until May of 2002 and she is a founding member of the Portland metropolitan region Coalition for a Livable Future, a network of 100+ non-profit and community based organizations working together for regional growth management. She is a graduate of the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts. She currently serves on the Board of National Charrette Institute, and in 2011 was elected to the CNU Board.
Tim Sullivan
Tim Sullivan is an urban designer with a background in city planning and journalism. His educational and professional experience has emphasized: Transportation corridor planning and design; Sustainable street design; Site analysis; Land use concepts and planning; Public outreach; The urban American West; Models of regional and collaborative planning; and, Natural resources and public land.
Tim’s experience has engaged him with a wide array of ideas, challenges and opportunities in the fields of urban design and planning. At CD+A, he is working on the Grant Road Improvement Plan, the redesign of a five-mile arterial street in Tucson, Arizona, that aims to improve pedestrian, bicycle and transit amenities and manage stormwater while revitalizing districts and preserving businesses. He has also worked on the Eastridge Transit Center Improvement and Access Plan, which sought to improve walking and bicycling to a major transit hub in San Jose, California, and the Bayview Neighborhood Transportation Plan, which developed street design improvements to add parking, trees, stormwater collection, and traffic management to the streets in a San Francisco neighborhood. Other projects include land use plans and growth modeling efforts for communities in California’s Central Valley.
Prior to joining CD+A, Tim reported for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including The Salt Lake Tribune, The Oregonian and High Country News. His reporting work has mostly focused on urban neighborhoods, ethnic minority communities, and growth and development.
Rock Miller
Rock Miller is a registered Traffic Engineer in California and is a Registered Civil Engineer in California and Hawaii. A graduate of UC, Davis, he has over 35 years of experience in a wide variety of disciplines of traffic engineering. He is currently serving as Immediate Past President for the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) after serving in similar roles for his home ITE District and Section.
Rock’s experience includes work as a municipal Traffic Engineer and for various consulting firms. He is currently serving as Principal – Traffic and Transportation for Stantec Consulting. Rock also teaches several one-day courses in Traffic Engineering for UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies, including Fundamentals of Traffic Engineering and the MUTCD. He was also recently appointed to a position on the California Traffic Control Devices Committee (CTCDC), a State committee that oversees the California version of the MUTCD.
Rock has extensive experience in designing enhanced facilities for pedestrians and bicycles. His work has helped cities to earn Pedestrian Friendly and Bicycle Friendly status through national designation programs. He has also contributed to main downtown streetscape and place-making projects.
Joseph Readdy
Joseph has a 30-year career in design, architecture, and urban design. Joseph’s projects range in scale from regional- and city-scale projects to individual design projects as small as the building, the room, and the object. Large scale projects include: regional plans, city plans, urban design; campus design; and hospital and healthcare facility master plans, Architectural projects include: hospitals and medical office buildings; wineries, restaurants, retail stores, and food-service facilities; residences; and “one-of-a-kind” projects – Center for Extreme Ultra-violet Astrophysics at U.C. Berkeley or C-141 Flight Simulator, Travis Air Force Base, Fairfield, California. Industrial design projects include: furniture design; interior design for the British Air Concorde; and surgical equipment – Arthroscopy stand surgical support equipment. Graphic design projects include: corporate identity graphics for Nissan Motor Corporation of America; graphic marks and logotypes; and typefaces.
Joseph is a member of the American Institute of Architects and is registered to practice architecture in Oregon and California. He is also certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. He is a LEED accredited professional.
Joseph is an Adjunct Professor of Architecture, Portland State University where he introduced a graduate-level seminar on Urban Design Methods in 2008. Joseph is a graduate of Washington State University where he studied architecture and regional planning.
Dr. Wesley Marshall
Dr. Marshall is an assistant professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado Denver program, director of the UCD University Transportation Center through the Mountain Plains Consortium, co-director of the Active Communities/Transportation (ACT) research group, an affiliated faculty member of the UCD Center for Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (CSIS) that houses the NSF IGERT Program, and a member of the CNU project for transportation reform sustainable street network working group.
He received his Professional Engineering (P.E.) license in 2003 and transportation teaching and research dedicated to creating more sustainable urban infrastructures, particularly in terms of road safety, active transportation, public health, and transit-oriented communities. Other recent teaching and research topics involve: transportation planning and land use modeling, congestion pricing, human behaviors, parking, and street networks. Having spent time with the UConn Center for Transportation and Urban Planning, Sasaki Associates, and Clough, Harbour and Associates, Wes has been working on planning and site design issues related to civil and transportation engineering for the last twelve years. A native of Watertown, Massachusetts, Wes is a graduate of the University of Virginia, a recipient of the Dwight Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship, and winner of the Charley V. Wootan Award for Outstanding TRB Paper.
Norman Garrick
Norman Garrick, associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Connecticut and director of UCONN’s new Center for Smart Transportation, specializes in the planning and design of urban transportation systems, including transit, streets and highways, and bicycle and pedestrian facilities. As the Transportation Task Force co-chair, Garrick has been an essential member of the CNU/ITE urban thoroughfares project. At a critical point in the project, Garrick tirelessly reviewed comments on the manual and incorporated the advice in a productive way. Garrick holds a Ph.D. and MSCE from Purdue University, and a BSCE from the University of the West Indies, Trinidad. With a career that bridges academic study and engineering practice, Garrick is an effective leader in transportation reform.
Jacky Grimshaw
Jacquelyne D. Grimshaw works with the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago where she directs the Center's policy initiatives. Formerly as the manager of the Center’s transportation and community development programs, was responsible for research in these areas. She developed the Center's capacity to conduct computer modeling programs and community development activities. She has extensive experience developing consensus in support of less-polluting transportation options and initiating programs that assist the revitalization of inner-city neighborhoods.
Grimshaw previously served as the Deputy Director for Economic Development for the Treasurer of the City of Chicago and directed the Chicago Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. She was a member of the President's Council for Sustainable Development's Energy and Transportation Task Force and the Advisory Board of the Surface Transportation Policy Project. She is currently a Director of the Chicago Transit Authority. Grimshaw holds a bachelor's degree from Marquette University and completed graduate studies in Public Policy at Governors State University.
Zach Vanderkooy
Zach’s unofficial job title is “Importer of Bicycle Magic.” He helps direct PeopleForBikes’ Green Lane Project, a national multi-sector partnership of six leading cities working to build better bike lanes on American streets. The Project provides technical, financial and strategic resources and opportunities to network on the development of next-generation protected bike lanes. Zach orchestrates immersive peer- to-peer exchanges and international study tours to cross-pollinate ideas between the leading practitioners and visionaries in the U.S. and Europe. He has led more than ten international delegations of American city officials and professionals on expedition-style workshops to the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Spain. His background qualifies him as an expert in both Danish public space design and making dinner reservations for 16 in a foreign language.
Zach’s experience is grounded in urban design, placemaking and public space. He values getting more people on bicycles not as a goal in itself, but as a simple, cost-effective tool to enhance city life. A Portland native, Zach is a graduate of Cornell University and the National Outdoor Leadership School. He earned a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Cy Smith
Cy Smith has taken his in-depth knowledge from over 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and GIS and GPS‐based solutions to transform the way we collect and analyze wireless signaling data and turn it into meaningful and actionable information using aggregated information to model, evaluate and analyze the movement and flow of commuters and consumers.
A graduate of The Georgia Institute of Technology, Cy earned a BS in Industrial and Systems Engineering. He has been recognized as one of Georgia Tech’s “Outstanding Young Engineers” by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association and has received awards from the American Electronics Association for leadership and innovation in technology.
While there is no designated hotel, the summit will be located in the Willis Tower at 233 S. Wacker Drive in the heart of downtown Chicago with numerous hotels to choose from. The area's major airports are accessible by rail. View the map below for some suggested accommodations nearby.
The CTA offers a convenient travel option by bus or train. Click here for more information on 3- and 7-day passes. Also make sure to use transit trackers to coordinate your trips and plan your trip from the airport.
The 2013 CNU Transportation Summit is being held in Chicago, IL, November 21-22, 2013. The summit is co-hosted by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) in the Willis Tower at 233 S. Wacker Drive, Suite 800.
CNU Transportation Summits are meetings where experts gather to challenge the status quo of transportation engineering and advance the practice of new urbanist street design. Outcomes from previous CNU summits include: Highways to Boulevards Initiative, CNU/ITE Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares manual, Sustainable Street Network Principles, and Street Vitality Index.
The summit will focus on advancing reforms through working groups. Here are some snapshots from the 2012 summit. Over the two-day working meeting, groups will compile a cohesive to-do list for the future, as well as an immediate work plan for the next year. Please review the Project for Transportation Reform in preparation for the meeting.