The Southwest Collective, a group working to improve sustainable transportation in the Midway Airport area, has joined forces with the Active Transportation Alliance to help make South Pulaski Road (4000 W.) a safer and more pleasant place to travel. Their campaign is in response to the many recent serious and fatal crashes that have recently happened on the wide, high-speed arterial street, particularly on the South Side. Here are are some tragic cases since June 2023, in which drivers fatally injured people on foot or bicycle.
• On March 31, 2024, a hit-and-run sedan driver fatally struck CPS teacher Charles "Charlie" Mills, in the 6400 block of South Pulaski Road in West Lawn.
• On February 8, 2024, a pickup truck driver ran a stoplight and fatally struck Jiekun Xu, 68, as she walked across Pulaski Road at 44th Street in Archer Heights.
• On October 5, 2023, An SUV driver fatally struck a man, 70, while making left turn at 57th Street and Pulaski Road in West Elsdon, and a sedan driver also struck the victim.
• On July 13, 2023, a man was fatally injured after he was dragged by a driver and he struck another motorist's car at 818 S. Pulaski Rd.
• On June 7, 2023, bike rider Ron Mendoza, 43, died from injuries sustained in a July 5 crash with a car driver at Wrightwood Avenue and Pulaski Road in Logan Square.
Southwest Collective cofounder Dixon Galvez-Searle lives near South Pulaski and frequently taken the same walking trip to the grocery store that one of these victims was making when a motorist him them. According to Galvez-Searle, this road is "essentially [an expressway] that runs through the middle of residential neighborhoods.” With seven lanes in some locations, Pulaski was designed to allow car and truck drivers to go as fast as possible, without sufficient attention given to making the road safe for people who live nearby and need or want to use other modes.
"We reached out to the folks at the Active Transportation Alliance, and asked if they would be interested in helping us put together a survey," said Galvez-Searle. "This was an online survey that has closed since then, but it was open for a few months, where people who live in the area could identify intersections where there's a particular safety issue. We got hundreds of responses to that."
The Southwest Collective and ATA also organized several community walking tours from 40th to 71st streets, divided up into half-mile, four block segments. The tours started in mid-May and lasted until mid-June. The people who went on the tours were given comment cards to fill out.
Alex Perez, advocacy manager at ATA, told Streetsblog about a few of the most common safety issues residents mentioned. "Yes, speeding is an issue. People aren’t stopping at stop lights. People are using the parking lane as a way to bypass [other drivers], the same thing with the left turn lane... making it especially dangerous. We've seen a lot of crashes happening to buildings as well. Business owners are putting in bollards as a response to [having drivers] crashing their buildings."
Now that they’ve received this information, the Southwest Collective and the Active Transportation Alliance are creating a report, Perez said. He added that they also hope to have an open house at Curie Metro High School, 4959 S. Archer Ave., where they'll present the study and highlight the recommendations they gleaned. They hope to get local elected officials to show up and discuss plans for safety improvements.
“Personally, it's really interesting to me, because it's kind of the first time that we got to collaborate like this, especially for a street where the community is very supportive of making changes,” said Perez. "Kind of [providing] permission, like, 'Yes, this is where we want to help.' We helped [the Southwest Collective] with the online survey and the walk-out, and they did a lot more of the heavy lifting, with being in the community and doing the work."
Streetsblog reached out to the offices of local alderpersons Marty Quinn (13th), Jeylú B. Gutiérrez (14th), and Silvana Tabares (23th) for feedback on this project, and if we get any responses, we'll add them to this post. Stay tuned for future updates on the Pulaski report and open house.
Update 8/2/24, 10:00 PM: According to Southwest Collective's Dixon Galvez-Searle, the report is scheduled to come out in mid-August and the community forum will be on Thursday, October 17, 6 p.m. in the Curie High auditorium.
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