On Tuesday, January 7, hundreds of Illinois residents headed to Springfield for 2025 Climate Day at the Capitol. They were pushing for sustainable, affordable, and equitable transportation through proposed legislation like the IL CleanJobs Platform and the Clean and Equitable Transportation Act.
Among the many advocates who attended were staff from Chicago's Active Transportation Alliance. Streetsblog talked with the group's executive director Amy Rynell about what went down at the rally
John Greenfield: So who went down to Springfield and why?
Amy Rynell: So, I'm just going to kind of go back in time. For about two years, maybe more at this stage, we have been building what we call the Clean and Equitable Transportation Campaign, and partnerships across our most powerful environmental coalitions in Illinois to make that campaign a reality.
And so that campaign has three parts to it. It has the big transit package. It has something called the Transportation Choices Act, which is around how do we transform transportation funding and policy to really drive it into sustainable modes of getting around. And then the third is incentivizing adoption of electrification.
And so that's a big package, really ambition and really transformative. And the coalition that's housing us is called the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition, so we're part of their agenda. So that coalition, with the support of Illinois Environmental Council, organizes periodic lobby days.
So we decided this year, given the magnitude of what's happening on transit, and some other policy area, to launch the year with a lobby day, and put it squarely at the top of people's minds and demonstrate how many people across Illinois really, really care about this.
So that was kind of the purpose of the day, and to really put climate change, and for us the role that transportation plays in addressing our climate issues, front and center of decision-makers' minds. A couple hundred people across the state gathered in really bad weather conditions in Springfield to do that.
JG: What were some of the organizations that were involved that are associated with Chicago?
AR: Obviously Active Transportation Alliance, Metropolitan Planning Council, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Sierra Club Chicago, Better Streets Chicago, Northwest Center, a lot of people. That's just a few that were there. Some of the bike networks that we meet with in the region, Kane County and some others.
JG: And who were some of the key lawmakers you spoke with?
AR: So for this lobby day, and we do a similar one in May, we match people up with their elected officials, so depending on who's coming and where they live, they're the constituents of the elected official. It's a really powerful thing, a somewhat complex thing to do.
So we met with... I'm not sure what the final number is, Illinois Environmental Council would know the number of elected officials met with. But it was all across the legislature, really, depending on who was able to come to the lobby day.
JG: And what were some of the takaways of what you learning from that day?
AR: There is such an urgency to this work. And you know the experiences we're seeing in California with the fires, and other things that we're seeing around the U.S. The impacts of a warming climate are very, very disruptive to how we get around, to our businesses, to our livelihoods, to our homes. And transportation is not an insignificant part of the problem. In fact, it's the number one part of the problem.
So being able to meet with legislators and just express that sense of urgency, and bringing that home for them, was really important. And finding folks who might be willing to step up in ways that they haven't stepped up before on these issues because of that.
JG: Is there anything else you'd like to say about the event?
AR: It's really powerful to have a couple hundred people fighting for the same thing, and I think we want to do it again as we get closer to the really important decisions being made. So there's an opportunity for more folks to get involved later this year, at another lobby day. It's not scheduled yet, but we'll probably have some small ones and then a big one again, most likely in May.
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