Quote:
Originally Posted by Latoso
Blasphemy! The "L" shall never die.
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Ditto, I will chain myself to the rivited steel columns should anyone dare to demolish our treasured citywide landmark.
Not really a "general development", but an amusing article:
It's the Big Dig, Chicago style
Rare snow removal plan enforced as city elections near
By Emma Graves Fitzsimmons and David Heinzmann, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporter Mitch Dudek contributed to this report
Published February 15, 2007
Given the history of snowstorms and the ballot box in this town, no mayor worth his salt would try to plow us out of a blizzard on the cheap in an election year.
City Hall went the extra mile this week, issuing a rare "Phase 3" snow removal plan, which dispatched armies of city workers across Chicago to shovel sidewalks, crosswalks and even a few stoops.
City officials said Election Day--which is less than two weeks off--had nothing to do with the first use of Phase 3 since January 1999, when Chicago was hit with its second-biggest snowstorm on record.
The example of Mayor Michael Bilandic losing City Hall after botching the blizzard of 1979 is solidly part of Chicago lore, a fiasco that Daley is not about to repeat.
The decision to send more than 750 extra workers across the city to shovel snow early Wednesday was "absolutely not" a political decision made with an eye to the upcoming local elections, Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Mike Picardi said.
"At 12 inches, I'll always activate Phase 3," Picardi said.
Snowfall measured a foot at Midway Airport. A handful of storms since 1999 have thrown that kind of snow on Chicago without bringing out the shovel brigade, but Tuesday's event was complicated by harsh winds off the lake that made this storm "quite exceptional," said WGN meteorologist Tom Skilling.
"This storm was quite respectable. It ranks up there with the top tier" of storms in Chicago history, Skilling said.
National Weather Service reports put the storm's wind gusts at 30 to 50 m.p.h., significantly higher than peak gusts during similar snowstorms in 2000, 2002 and 2005.
The snow had stopped falling by Wednesday afternoon, but many side streets were still filled with drifts.
"We will work all night long until we get the streets down to the pavement," Picardi said. The commissioner said Wednesday that workers would keep at it until midnight and be back on the streets at 4 a.m. Thursday.
Picardi said the combination of snow and high winds convinced him it was necessary to put the additional forces on streets to clear crosswalks, bus stops and fire hydrants.
"It was a very rare and very tough storm to fight," he said.
Some would-be aldermen aren't so sure about the city's motives. Carina Sanchez is running against Ald. George Cardenas in the 12th Ward.
"Anytime you see something like this happen, especially in an election year, it makes you wonder, `Why now and why not before when there have been other snowstorms?'" she said. "It will be interesting too to see if the city workers knock on people's doors to inform residents that the snow has been cleared."
Picardi said officials didn't play favorites in dispatching workers--they went to all 50 wards.
The workers were sent to each ward's Streets and Sanitation office, where they identified vital locations to clear, including schools, hospitals and churches, officials said.
For instance, one street team in the 31st Ward went to Belmont Community Hospital and Barry Elementary School before combing West Diversey and North Central Avenues, said the department's spokesman, Matt Smith.
Wayne Crawford, 44, an electrical worker for the city, got a call late Tuesday asking him to report to the office for the 27th Ward at 4 a.m. Wednesday, he said. Crawford spent the day clearing snow with a shovel.
"It's getting very heavy," he said Wednesday afternoon while shoveling at Chicago and Milwaukee Avenues. "I didn't expect to be doing this today."
Workers from the city's Department of Transportation focused on removing snow from pedestrian bridges and viaducts at expressways. Some commuters noticed the difference.
On his way to work, Gaetano Battaglia couldn't walk across the Chicago Avenue bridge over the Kennedy Expressway because it was filled with snow. So, Battaglia, 24, of West Town, walked in the street with other commuters.
When he returned in the afternoon, the bridge's sidewalk had been cleared.
"I've never seen it like this before," he said with a smile.
In the seven years she has lived in the neighborhood, Gabrielle Kolehainen said it was the first time she had seen the bridge's sidewalk cleared after a snowstorm. The accountant crossed the bridge while out shopping Wednesday.
"I was happily surprised," said Kolehainen, 48. "They should take care of the pedestrians--not just the cars."
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