Our feet are still sore from braving the crowds and walking the million square feet of floor Saturday at the 2012 Chicago Auto Show. We saw damn near every one of the thousand vehicles on display. more ›

For Chicagoist, one of the few bright spots of winter is when we get to head over to McCormick Place and lust after hundreds of the latest cars and trucks for sale. more ›

Forrest Claypool's 2012 CTA Budget closes a $277 million deficit without fare hikes or service cuts. The problem? It's built on work rule changes that labor unions probably won't stomach. more ›

If you walk, bike, drive or take public transit in the Chicago area, point your browsers toward Grid Chicago. The sustainable transportation blog has rounded up a network of sites covering local transportation. more ›

The plan means tolls for motorists using Illinois Tollway roads will nearly double for most passenger cars, increasing to a range of 30 cents to $1.90. more ›

The Chicago Department of Transportation brings together all the bike traffic laws from the city and state in one convenient web page. more ›

Video from Steve Vance shows the before-and-after traffic along the Kinzie Street protected lane. Also, Vance is beta testing a bike rack locator. more ›

Our friends over at the Expired Meter believe last month's rules of the road crackdown on cyclists didn't go far enough. more ›

So how's the protected bike lane on Kinzie Street working out? more ›

The city finally revealed its long-planned renovation project for the labyrinthine intersection at Elston, Fullerton and Damen that's confounded commuters for years. That six corners intersection flummoxes an average of 70,000 commuters a day and is one of the banes of 32nd Ward Ald. Scott Waguespack's existence. Waguespack says he receives more calls about this intersection than anything else and believes that the development in recent years around the intersection makes rehabbing it a priority. more ›

Among soaring gas prices and looming environmental concerns, a growing number of Chicagoans are walking, biking, and/or taking mass transit to lessen the carbon footprint, reduce spending, and improve health. When maintaining a vehicle costs an estimated $8,000 per year, car owners are considering using mass transit coupled with car-sharing programs like I-GO for weekend getaways or shopping trips. There are an abundance of healthy options to get around town, but the alternatives are not always safe and accessible. more ›

If you bike regularly throughout the city, chances are good that either you or a cyclist you know has been injured by a motorist getting out of his vehicle. Doorings are arguably the biggest threat to Chicago cyclists, but the Illinois Department of Transportation has said that having police departments keeping records on them would be a burden, because they didn't think it was that big an issue. (Tell that to cyclists who have lost work days and amassed medical bills recovering from injuries related to doorings.) more ›

Mayor-elect Emanuel has named Forrest Claypool as his choice to head the CTA, a seeming quid pro quo move for garnering Claypool's endorsement in the mayoral race. Can we finally stop calling Claypool a "reformer" now? more ›

Tonight is the first night game of the Cubs 2011 home season, which means the immediate area around Wrigley Field, already strained for street parking during day games, becomes, in the words of Ted Nugent, a free-for-all. We never cease to be amazed at the number of people going to the game who are willing to be gouged by residents living near the park renting their parking spaces for exorbitant fees. the city will also have ticket writers out and about to drum up city revenue more ›

The National Transportation Safety Bureau has found subsurface tears in three more Southwest Airlines planes similar to the one that ripped a hole in the fuselage of a Boeing 737 in flight and forced an emergency landing last week. Since then, Southwest has canceled over 300 flights across the country and pulled the remaining 79 of its 737s from its fleet. more ›

Tracy Swartz, Red Eye's "Going Public" CTA columnist, is reaching a milestone tomorrow when she climbs aboard the No. 85 Central Avenue bus and rides the route from end to end. It'll be her 100th such bus ride. more ›

A report released yesterday showed that 2,239 bridges in Illinois have structural problems that require immediate repairs. The report conducted by transportation advocacy group Transportation for America also indicates that a growing repair backlog means the deficiencies will only get worse if left unattended. more ›

James Cappleman and Molly Phelan, the two candidates vying to replace outgoing Ald. Helen Shiller in the 46th Ward, are meeting in a transportation-focused forum this evening that should be a good primer to the Monday forum Shiller and 44th Ward Ald. Tom Tunney are moderating between the two at Truman College. Cappleman and Phelan will discuss their plans for improving walking, biking and public transit in the 46th Ward. The forum will also propose some ideas to use alternate means of transportation make the ward safer for businesses and to reduce crime. more ›

Funny article in the Sun-Times today about the lengths some people will go to to get objectionable personalized license plates and the staff at Jesse White's Secretary of State's office charged with making sure nothing off-color gets past them. more ›

Now here's an idea of outsourcing of government services in which we see some promise. The Daley Administration signed a deal with Zipcar that will remove 100 vehicles from Chicago's non-emergency fleet and save the city an estimated $400,000 by the end of 2012. more ›

Gov. Quinn has asked Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman to conduct a study looking into the feasibility of one day connecting Amtrak Service from Union Station to O'Hare as a nonstop commuter rail as an alternative to Mayor Daley's much-criticized plan for high speed rail from the unfinished Block 37 station to the airport. Quinn sees an opportunity to connect O'Hare with proposed high-speed rail lines between St. Louis and Chicago. the goal of the study is to measure the costs of doing so and figure out the logistics. more ›

Prior to last night's debate on WTTW, Miguel del Valle held a press conference at the intersection of Halsted and Madison, where he said that he would review how the city is implementing its red light camera program if elected mayor and would reform what he called "oppressive" city driving and parking policies. more ›

Once again, it's time for the world's car makers to fill 1.2 million square feet of McCormick Place with their latest and greatest models, as well as concepts that point to vehicles to come down the road at the 2011 Chicago Auto Show. Now in its 103rd year, the Chicago Auto Show is the largest in the world with over 1000 cars on display and opens to the public tomorrow, running through Sunday, Feb. 20. more ›

We wanted to place a reminder to those of you who weren't around to read the site over the weekend to bring quarters and feed those parking fare boxes if you're downtown today. As Soyoung pointed out Saturday, the city will resume parking ticket enforcement for the downtown Central Business District at 9 a.m. The city will enforce parking tickets across the rest of the city at 9 a.m. tomorrow. There is no more blaming the snow. more ›

Given what we've heard about the nightmare that unfolded on Lake Shore Drive during this blizzard, my commute doesn't seem quite so bad now. It didn't involve rescue by any of the brave emergency workers or National Guard troops. I did get home at an hour that is within the realm of normal dinner time. I was greeted with hugs from the wife, who had hot tea and soup waiting. But it was no joy, either. After hearing how long people spent on the Drive waiting for rescue, I am so very grateful I wasn't among them. more ›

By now, only the truly ignorant are unaware that we're supposed to get a lot of snow. Most of the meteorologists in town are predicting up to two feet of snow between 3 p.m. this afternoon and 3 p.m. tomorrow afternoon. That's predicted to be coupled with gusting winds of up to 50 MPH, creating possible whiteout conditions we haven't seen in these parts in quite some time. The National Weather Service is calling the coming storm a “dangerous, multifaceted and life-threatening winter storm,” rivaling the Blizzards of 1967, 1979 and 1999. more ›

It's no secret the Red line needs a lot of work beyond the improvements to the Belmont and Fullerton stations. Track repair and modernizing stations for wheelchair access is slated to cost CTA $4.2 billion. In their efforts to modernize the century-old, nearly 10-mile stretch of the Red and Purple Line routes that run from Belmont to Linden in Evanston, CTA is proposing to close five stops on that stretch: Lawrence, Foster, Thorndale, Jarvis and South Boulevard in Evanston. Maybe some of the money saved in closing those stations can go to more frequent bleachings of the perpetually piss-soaked Wilson station. more ›

Sales of personalized Cubs license plates began this afternoon through the Illinois Secretary of State's office. This is right on the heels of the office's successful Blackhawks license plate sale and department officials anticipate larger sales, given the Cubs' larger fan base. more ›

A new study released by the Texas Transportation Institute on traffic congestion showed that Chicago has the worst commute in the country. The numbers they used to measure Chicago and other cities across the nation were from 2009, but they still tell a pretty damning story about how much time drivers spend on the expressways braking and starting and braking and starting and cursing and braking and starting. more ›

According to the city, it's been a good year for filling potholes. That is, the number of reported potholes last month decreased over the same time frame in 2009. more ›