LINCOLN PARK — A revamp of North Lake Shore Drive could result in big changes for Lincoln Park, including improving neighborhood connection to the lakefront and making the area's cultural draws more easily accessible for the entire city.
The renovation of the Drive between Grand and Hollywood avenues, which could cost more than $1 billion, is in its early stages but could eventually be used to correct long-standing local issues, some say.
The joint project between the state and city departments of transportation calls for submissions of bold ideas — ideas that would "stir men's blood" — to solve vexing issues. At a Downtown meeting Tuesday, a few Lincoln Park-centric proposals emerged.
Paul Biasco talks about what the LSD reconstruction could mean to Lincoln Park.
"Lake Shore Drive is just a huge behemoth mass of concrete that serves as a barrier" to the lakefront, said Michelle Stenzel, co-chairwoman of Bike Walk Lincoln Park, a committee to make walking and cycling safe in Lincoln Park.
Stenzel, who is a member of a task force of local residents for the project, said the only access points from the neighborhood to the lakefront trail and beach are roughly a mile apart — at Fullerton Avenue and LaSalle Street — and neither is easy to access. The Chicago Lakefront Protection Ordinance recommends pedestrian access to the lake at a minimum of quarter-mile intervals.
"This project can go many different ways, but at the minimum they need to provide increased access to the lake for us, as well as have it safer," Stenzel said.
Architect John Krause suggests rerouting Lake Shore Drive west of the Lincoln Park Lagoon and adding a light-rail line in the middle of the Drive. The light rail would take up one lane of traffic in each direction with stops at lakefront attractions, including Lincoln Park Zoo.
Krause's plans to reroute the road west of the lagoon would create the "Lincoln Park Dunes" for a stretch of about a mile, with the new "dunes" connected to the zoo by a pedestrian bridge. He likens the idea to that of the naturalization of Northerly Island as well as the lakefront trail on the near South Side, which is undergoing a prairie restoration.
The dunes would create a "Conservation Campus" connecting the zoo, the Nature Museum and the Nature Boardwalk, and North Pond.
Krause doesn't deny these are bold ideas, but state officials with IDOT see the project as a chance to make big changes.
"It’s going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars just to rebuild what we have, and we know there are issues with it now. So if we are going to rebuild it, lets make sure can we make it better," said John Baczek, project and environmental studies chief at IDOT.
"Is there anything we can do to improve the way it operates? The way it functions? The way it serves the stakeholders?" he said.
Other proposals include creating bus-only lanes similar to bus rapid transit proposals for Ashland Avenue, and straightening the roadway, particularly the infamous Oak Street Beach S-curve.
One area that IDOT is looking at is the lakefront trail, which, according a project study, is overwhelmed with users and received a failing grade at even the most lightly used sections. The trail is used by more than 31,000 during peak summer weekends.
Weekday trail use is expected to increase by 12 to 19 percent by 2040, according to a Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning study.
Some area residents who have submitted solutions called for two separate trails — one for bicyclists and another for walkers, joggers and runners.
"There’s high-speed bicyclists doing their thing [and] casual bicyclists," Baczek said. "There's runners, there's joggers, there's walkers, there's strollers [and] people just sightseeing. And they are all in the same space. People are getting hurt," Baczek said.
Task forces consisting of neighborhood activists, representatives from a number of aldermanic offices, including the 43rd Ward, and transportation groups have been meeting for the last year to help define the problems of the 7-mile stretch of roadway and the need for improvement.
The next step in the project is to identify and evaluate alternative plans,
Construction wouldn't likely start until late 2019 or 2020 at the earliest.
Funding has not yet been addressed, but would likely come from a variety of federal, state and local sources, according to Baczek.
"You've got to start somewhere with a plan, and you can't start asking for money if you don’t know what the solution is," he said. "We felt we had to get that process going."
