Steven Vance

Update: NICTD responded to our request for comment after publication and we will post a follow up story on Tuesday. 

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It's looking like the nightmarish vision of a totally unnecessary, 47-mile highway cutting through prime Illinois farmland is not going to become a reality. A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Illinois Department of Transportation failed to provide a proper Environmental Impact Statement for the Illiana Tollway.

It turns out that, despite Chicago's disastrous parking meter deal, the city government can still use meters to benefit neighborhoods. During a recent discussion of Chicago's parking challenges and their accompanying report, Metropolitan Planning Council vice president Peter Skosey and research director Chrissy Mancini Nichols told me how the city can make lemonade out of this lemon of a deal. There are a few issues that need to be resolved first, and this turnaround would require installing more meters, but that would only be a good thing for neighborhoods.

Yesterday, Governor Bruce Rauner drove a second stake into the heart of the Illiana Tollway, a sprawl-inducing highway proposed for rural Illinois and Indiana, just south of metropolitan Chicago. Rauner's office issued a press release slamming a new state budget passed by Democratic leaders as fiscally irresponsible. In response to the budget, the Republican governor announced he will cut many state programs, including the Illiana. The release states:

Is 20th Ward Alderman Willie Cochran's speedometer broken? This morning, DNAinfo columnist Mark Konkol wrote that Cochran has received three tickets from the same speed camera, near the Midway Plaisance and Cottage Grove in Hyde Park. The cam is located a few blocks west of where a driver struck and injured a young girl last month.

Earlier this month, the CTA, Metra, and Pace announced that they are delaying the launch of the Ventra mobile app from this spring until this fall, and that an independent civic app testing group will help vet it. Contrary to what Chicago Tribune transportation writer Jon Hilkevitch wrote, that's not a sign that there are "undisclosed issues" with the technology. Rather, it shows that the transit agencies are being careful to thoroughly test the app before releasing it to the public. Given the rocky launch of the Ventra card two years ago, that's a wise strategy.

If you ride Chicago Transit Authority buses, you've probably had the infuriating experience of waiting an eternity at a stop, only to have two or more buses show up at the same time. This phenomenon, known as bus bunching, is the bane of most big-city transit systems in the U.S.