Every year, the Boulder-based advocacy group People for Bikes rates Chicago as one of the very worst large U.S. cities for cycling. While that's inaccurate, they do have two very valid criticisms.
The Chicago Department of Transportation has installed lots of protected bike lanes and Neighborhood Greenways, but we still don't have a cohesive citywide network of low-stress bike routes. And we need to lower our default speed limit from 30 to 25 mph, like peer cities that have reaped the safety benefits.
One of the main barriers to addressing those issues is that we don't yet have a critical mass of alderpersons who prioritize sustainable transportation and traffic safety. The good news is, there's a new movement to change that.
This Thursday, August 21, there's a launch event for the Chicago Bike PAC. It's a political action committee with the mission of electing politicians who want better bicycling infrastructure, and support safer, more sustainable street designs and policies. The gathering, called Start Line, takes place from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the headquarters of SRAM, a bicycle components manufacturer, 1000 W. Fulton Market in the West Loop. Bike-friendly City Council members Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st) and Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) plan to attend.
The cofounders of the PAC are Kevin Borgia, "an experienced political advocate for sustainable solar power," and Chris Ridgeway, former political communications director for Ald. La Spata. Right now, their main goal is to elect a bike-friendly City Council in 2027.
According to Ridgeway, 120 people have registered for the launch events, and many people have donated to the PAC. Streetsblog caught up with him this afternoon to learn more about they plan to get this project rolling. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
John Greenfield: You used to work as a communications director for Ald. La Spata. So that puts you in a good position to do this kind of work. He's chair of the City Council's transportation committee, and he's been a very bike-friendly alder. He's gotten a lot of projects done in his ward, most notably the Augusta Boulevard protected bike lanes in West Towns – that's great project.
Recently, People for Bikes rated Chicago as one of the very worst large American cities for bicycling. And while I disagree with that finding, they made a couple of valid points. They noted that, although the city of Chicago has installed a lot of bikeways, it's a very disjointed system. So if you want to tell somebody what's the best way to bike where they want to go via a low-stress route, where they don't have to share the road with drivers on a main street, you often have to give them a very circuitous route. And the part of the reason for that, as you know, is our gerrymandered ward system.
What we need to do is have a real quilt of bike-friendly alders across the city who are not going to use aldermanic prerogative to veto proposed CDOT bikeway projects that would cross into their wards. How can your project could help with that?
Chris Ridgeway: Obviously the policy and governance issues in Chicago are really essential to us getting stuff done. As you referred to the patchwork, I lived in the 1st Ward, and for quite a while you'd ride down Milwaukee Avenue in a protected bike lane, and then suddenly you'd pop out into nothing, because you were entering the 32nd Ward. [In 2023, local Ald. Scott Waguespack signed off on CDOT installing protected lanes on Milwaukee between Western and North avenues.] It's real standard across Chicago, to not be able to bike from ward to ward safely.
But the goal of the pack isn't a specific policy initiative at this point. It's to be a key piece in of the grassroots coalition that already exists in Chicago for policy issues and active transportation. There's Better Streets Chicago, Chicago, Bike Grid Now!, Chicago Family Biking, and we've talked with all these groups. Our goal is to be a piece of the puzzle that was missing in that coalition, because none of these groups have the ability to directly contribute, the way they're organized, to campaigns.
[Some Chicago sustainable transportation advocacy organizations are 501(c)3 nonprofits, which "are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office," according to the IRS.]
New York City has StreetsPAC, which is the political action committee that was formed in 2013 to provide a little bit of that political weight and muscle.
[StreetsPAC has no direct connection to the Streetsblog Network of sustainable transportation news and advocacy sites, although Streetsblog NYC sometimes covers the group's endorsements.]
And so while we've had great organizing here, we needed this additional political action committee.
JG: Yeah we have a great selection of sustainable transportation advocacy organizations in Chicagoland. Other ones include the Active Transportation Alliance, Ride Illinois, Commuters Take Action is a transit advocacy organization, and we've got a lot of other groups.
Obviously we need to have a sea change in City Council for Chicago to become a fully sustainable-transportation-friendly city. For example, we had that recent vote, and Ald. La Spata was the sponsor, on the bill to lower our default speed limit from 30 to 25, like New York and other peer cities, and it's saved lives in those cities. And it was defeated by 28 to 21 votes. So really need to have alders who care about safer streets, all across the city. So how is your organization going to help with that?
Chris Ridgeway: Yeah, that's the goal. We're focusing on the 2027 City Council election. We actually started last year, but we're officially launching this Thursday. But we've been working on this pretty much for seven months, meeting with Ald. Vasquez, Ald. La Spata, [Ald. Matt Martin (47th)], some of the alders that are the most bike-friendly, and then meeting with all the advocacy groups, so lining up support.
And now the goal is for us to raise money so we can weigh in on the 2027, elections. We've come up with six criteria that we'll be doing that with, and an advisory council that includes members of a lot of these organizations. We don't want to just raise money for the alders that we already know are on our side. We want to keep those folks in their spots. So if we need to influence that, we will.
But what we'd like to do is identify, are there three or four independent opportunities? Great early response, but we're going to see what our what our capacity will be. But we'd like to identify three or four races where really feel like there's a viable candidate for a seat that might be flippable, so we can get stronger support in that ward for, as you say, a fully connected bike grid.
So that's our goal. We were in a pre-launch phase, and right now we're going to go into a full fundraising phase. And then in a year, we'll be in the phase where we start really going through candidate viability, looking at voting records, looking at the communications, public statements, looking at their leadership on legislation, and their engagement, and talking about where we need to invest.
Check out the website for the Chicago Bike PAC here.
RSVP for Thursday's launch event here.
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