Transportation in Little Village: Why People Move The Way They Do Project Sponsor: Enlace Chicago Simone Alexander, Jaime de Leon Kevin Boyter, Dennis Fendrich, Adam Svoboda, Jessica Vorobel, Allie Wiegand GEO 242: GIS II 10 March 20112 | Page Project Summary: This ten week project linked with Enlace Chicago centered in Little Village was undertaken by our group because each of us, to some extent, has experienced the issue that Little Village is trying to improve upon. A few of us are avid bicyclists in the city, while others have had to deal with congested streets that are both frustrating and at times dangerous. While we were assigned to the Alternative Transportation project with Enlace Chicago, our interests met somewhere in the middle and our interactions with the project became a bit more personal than originally expected. When we first met with Simone Alexander and Jaime de Leon, our Enlace Chicago representatives, we learned of the traffic issues and congestion that plagued 26th Street in Little Village, as well as the apparent lack of bicycle traffic and pedestrian traffic safety. Their largest concern was the lack of bicycle infrastructure in the neighborhood, which hindered alternative transportation. We learned that Enlace Chicago wants to encourage alternative forms of transportation as well as improve upon the minimal and negligent existing bicycle infrastructure in the neighborhood. However, during conversation, we decided it would be best to focus on vehicular traffic concerns so as to paint a better picture of just how pedestrian and bicycle traffic interact with vehicular traffic—which is often the dominated form of transportation on the roads. In order to understand why traffic is the way it is, it is necessary to understand those who create the traffic: the drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and residents of Little Village. In brief summation of our ten weeks of research, our project focused on two aspects of understanding transportation habits in Little Village. First, we attempted to capture key characteristics of Little Village traffic patterns. In doing this, we mapped locations of parking availability on or near 26th Street, as well as tracked traffic patterns of different types of vehicles, including busses, pedestrian traffic, and bicycle traffic, in order to gauge just when and where traffic is the heaviest. Second, we sifted through census data in order to find pertinent information that might shed a light on why Little Village seems to be a vehicle dominated area, such as the amount of people who own cars, owning versus renting, and age. By understanding the trends of traffic on 26th street as well as the people who create the traffic, we hope to give Enlace a basis of information to join with the previous group’s work on bicycle related information that can hopefully lead to a future implementation of alternative transportation encouragement in Little Village. Our information products for this project are quite telling, though much more about vehicular traffic trends than about alternative transportation trends. A group of maps dedicated to depicting parking availability along 26th Street showed a clear difference between availability to the east and west of the Central Park intersection on 26th Street. A map depicted our personally collected street data gives an idea of just what the traffic looks like on a typical winter day. There was a good amount of SUV, truck and car traffic, while pedestrian traffic was low and bicycle traffic nonexistent. This will likely be some disappointing but realistic news for Enlace Chicago, as winter weather often deters bicyclists from riding even in the most bicycle friendly neighborhoods. Our demographic maps shine a light on the reasons behind our data in the first two sets of maps. While the main goal of Enlace Chicago in Little Village will be to encourage and foster a larger presence of bike riders in the neighborhood, we hope that the data collected and spatially depicted during our project will help paint a holistic picture of the transportation trends of Little Village.3 | Page Table of Contents: 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….……..4 2. Needs Assessment…………………………………………………….………....5 3. System Requirements……………………………………………….…………...9 4. Data Acquisition……………………………………………………………......12 5. Data Analysis and Visualization………………………………………………..19 6. Results……………………………………………………….............................26 7. Summary, Conclusion, and Recommendations………………………….......…33 8. Technical Appendices………………………………………….......…………...354 | Page 1. Introduction Little Village, located on the southwest side of Chicago, often suffers from intense traffic congestion on 26th Street, the main hub of activity in the neighborhood. Enlace Chicago, a community based organization in Little Village, is looking to encourage alternative forms of transportation such as bicycle riding and pedestrian movement to not only try and alleviate vehicle traffic congestion, but encourage healthier lifestyles for the residents of Little Village. There is also an emphasis on creating a safe, family friendly community. When our group first met with Simone Alexander and Jaime de Leon, our representatives at Enlace Chicago, our conversation began with a discussion of bicycle use in Little Village. It was noted that bicycle use was low and usually need based. Jaime noted that many South American countries have implemented programs that encourage bicycle riding and healthier lifestyles and added that Enlace Chicago was hoping to make baby steps toward implanted something like this in Little Village. As our conversation continued, we figured it would be best to focus trying to understand the reasons people move the way they do in Little Village. This led us to focus on traffic trends, parking availability, and demographic information on the residents of Little Village. With these problems at mind, we soon became interested in the exact types of traffic we were dealing with along with the people in the area. We conducted two different types of research. Our unobtrusive research involved the