Chicago Suburbs

Transit-oriented development in the Chicago region is falling behind cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, according to a report released in May by the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a local "think and do tank." In "Transit-Oriented Development in the Chicago Region" [PDF], CNT warns that Chicago's failure to focus housing and jobs near transit is creating additional financial burdens for households who have no choice but to shoulder the costs of car ownership.

In the spring of 2011, there were two fatalities with several parallels. In each case a teenage boy who was doing something illegal collided with an innocent female victim, killing her. One perpetrator was sentenced to more than three decades in prison; the other received no jail time at all. A difference between the cases, which may have played a role in the wildly disparate consequences of their actions, was that while the first teen was in a CTA station, the second was behind the wheel of a car.

IGO Car Sharing, owned and operated by the not-for-profit Center for Neighborhood Technology, was acquired by Enterprise, traditional car rental company, earlier this week for an undisclosed amount. Enterprise has its own car-share system, but the company will keep the IGO brand in Chicago.

[This article also ran in Checkerboard City, John Greenfield's weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets in print on Wednesday evenings.]

A recent decision by Illinois's 1st District Court of Appeals could make it harder to hold city governments and individual drivers accountable for pedestrian safety.

Anne Alt is president of the Chicago Cycling Club and works in the Law Offices of James Freeman, a sponsor of Streetsblog Chicago. 

Editor's note: Streetsblog accepts guest posts with viewpoints different than our own. Lynn Stevens is an urban planner, blogger at Peopling Places, and long-time neighborhood booster for Logan Square where she’s been an active participant in Bike/Walk Logan Square, the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, the Logan Square Corridor Development Initiative, and the (now defunct) Zoning Advisory Committee.

Ventra, you may have heard, is the new fare payment system for Chicago Transit Authority and Pace. (Metra will not be joining the Ventra system, and is currently testing other fare payment methods.) CTA is switching to Ventra to save $5 million per year on maintaining outdated fare collection technology, according to spokesperson Lambrini Lukidis.

Exactly how does a man charged with driving drunk at over 140 MPH who crashes his car into a billboard avoid jail time? Last month Dean A. Suominen, 37, of Shorewood was zooming down Ogden Avenue in Naperville when he lost control of his Dodge Charger and careened off the road, smashing into a billboard post and fence near an apartment complex, city officials said.