Funding & Finance

Despite Not In My Back Yard-type opposition from some nearby residents, the Forest Preserves of Cook County is proceeding with plans to extend its popular North Branch Trail three miles further southeast into the city limits. Officials broke ground on the new segment of the path at a ceremony yesterday morning at Thaddeus S. “Ted” Lechowicz Woods, 5901 North Central.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology, a local community planning think tank, said that municipalities and public agencies are failing to follow their own plans. They're investing public funds for the region in economic development and transportation projects in undeveloped areas or away from train stations.

The CTA Yellow Line, aka the Skokie Swift, and its “Swift Bird” logo, have finally rose from the ashes this morning, following an embankment collapse last May. Getting the rail line back in operation posed plenty of challenges for both the public and the CTA.

Nationally known urbanist and ex-Chicagoan Aaron Renn recently threw shade on our city’s beloved new linear park with a blog post titled "How Chicago’s 606 Trail Fell Short of Expectations." He wrote that the new path, aka the Bloomingdale Trail, doesn’t hold a candle to the High Line in Manhattan, where he now resides. However, I’d argue that The 606 is superior on a few different levels.

Residents in the Riverdale community area, which includes the Altgeld Gardens, Eden Green, Golden Gate, and Riverdale neighborhoods, are surrounded by barriers that make it hard to travel within and beyond the area. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning recently awarded the Chicago Department of Transportation a Local Technical Assistance grant to create a multi-modal transportation plan for the area. In the grant application [PDF] CDOT noted that Riverdale residents are hemmed in by large industrial land uses, the Bishop Ford Expressway, four railroads, and the Little Calumet River. Additionally, all of the arterial streets are recommend truck routes, "creating an additional challenge for people walking and biking due to high truck traffic and speeds."

The next group of transportation projects that aim to improve air quality or reduce congestion and should receive federal funding has been approved by Chicagoland's regional planning organization. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning evaluates requests for the funding from the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement program. CMAQ has ensured for nearly two decades that bike lanes are built and new Chicago Transit Authority and Pace buses go out on the road, among other active transportation projects.

When I visited the Boston area last month, I saw a Copenhagen-style bike counter on a Cambridge boulevard. It occurred to me that installing one of these devices could help boost safety on Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago’s heavily cycled “Hipster Highway.”

Back in July, the Chicago Department of Transportation launched the “Divvy for Everyone” equity program, offering $5 bike-share memberships to low-income Chicagoans. Now they’re trying a social experiment that will answer the question, what if Divvy was, almost literally, for everyone?