A memorial all too familiar to cyclists sits at the southeast corner of Addison and Damen in Roscoe Village: a white-painted “ghost bike” covered with silk flowers and surrounded by plants and candles. At the base is a plaque that reads anastasia kondrasheva: she will shine forever. Attached to the cycle’s head tube by a maroon-and-gold Harry Potter-style scarf, there’s a snapshot of the young crash victim, bespectacled and smiling. A laminated spoke card reads “Nastya, always an angel . . . and now you have wings to prove it.”
At the same time we put out this call for change, the Active Transportation Alliance was working to make it happen. The advocacy group prepared recommendations for Chicago’s Vision Zero plan to eliminate serious crashes and fatalities by 2026, which included a proposal for an ordinance requiring truck side guards and/or convex mirrors that help reduce blind spots. The organization also launched an online petition urging the city to take action to reduce the dangers posed by large vehicles on city streets, which also listed strengthening commercial driver licensing rules and limiting large vehicle traffic during rush hours as possible solutions. The petition garnered 850 signatures.
The law provides nearly a year’s notice before the first stage of compliance kicks in, requiring contractors to outfit 25 percent of the 10,000-pound-plus vehicles to be used for work performed between June 2018 and July 2019. Each year after that, another quarter of the vehicles to which the ordinance applies must be outfitted, so that the full fleet used for a contract must have the gear by August 2021, four years from now. (The city plans to upgrade its own fleet by 2026, the year by which the city also hopes to eliminate all crash fatalities.)
John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago.
