Funding & Finance
Top Categories
Graphic: Huge Cost Disparities Between Highway, Transit and Bike Projects
It seems like every time the city proposes an innovative sustainable transportation project, there’s someone who attacks the plan as an irresponsible waste of money for our cash-strapped city. For example, Roger Romanelli and his Ashland-Western Coalition anti-bus rapid transit group have repeatedly argued that the CTA’s plan to build 16 miles of fast, reliable BRT on Ashland Avenue at a cost of $160 million is outrageously expensive. Other initiatives like Divvy bike-share, which cost $27.5 million for the first 400 stations, and the Dearborn protected lanes, which cost $450,000, have also come under fire from citizens and in the press as frivolous uses of taxpayer dollars.
November 7, 2013
Divvy Expanding to 475, Possibly 550, Docking Stations
There’s more good news on the Divvy bike-share front. The Chicago Department of Transportation announced this morning that they scored a $3 million federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement grant to add 75 more docking stations to the 400 already planned. The system recently reached 300 stations and 3,000 bikes.
November 6, 2013
How IDOT’s Bogus Job Creation Claims Fed the Campaign for the Illiana
The Illinois Department of Transportation made its case for the Illiana tollway proposal by disseminating half truths and outright lies. At a Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning committee meeting in October where members voted 10-8 in favor of the 47-mile highway, supporters repeatedly referred to IDOT’s claim that the project would create 28,000 jobs. But that number was a lie: The project is in fact projected to create only 940 long-term jobs.
November 5, 2013
On Broadway: A Preview of Chicago’s Next Protected Bike Lane Street
Uptown is one of Chicago’s few bike-friendly neighborhoods that doesn’t have any conventional bike lanes, let alone buffered or protected lanes, but that will change by the end of the year with an upcoming Chicago Department of Transportation project.
October 31, 2013
Waguespack Kvetches About Traffic Cameras and Higher Parking Fines
As I’ve written several times, 32nd Ward Alderman Scott Waguespack is one of City Council’s key independent voices, and he’s also a frequent bike commuter and a likeable person. That makes it especially annoying that he keeps making backward statements about transportation and public space issues.
October 23, 2013
The CTA Chalks Up the Red Line South Rehab as a Major Success
At a time when the CTA has been coming under fire for the glitchy launch of the Ventra farecard system, today’s ribbon cutting for the Red Line Reconstruction project was a well-earned celebration for the transit agency, and a love fest for local politicians.
October 17, 2013
Will Transit Reps Repeat Their Misguided Support for the Illiana Tomorrow?
Funding for major Chicagoland transit projects will be at stake tomorrow, when regional representatives convened by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning vote on whether to move forward with the Illiana Tollway. Even though approving the Illiana will jeopardize CTA and Metra improvements by adding competition for the same pot of funds, all four Chicagoland transit agencies – and the Chicago Department of Transportation – either voted for the project or abstained in an advisory vote earlier this month.
October 16, 2013
CTA Picks Walsh Construction to Oversee 95th Street Terminal Rebuild
As the CTA wraps up track reconstruction on the south Red Line, slated to reopen on October 20, there’s some movement on the upcoming rehab of the 95th Street Terminal, originally built in 1969 as part of the Dan Ryan Expressway project. The agency has hired Walsh Construction to serve as the construction manager and general contractor for the $240 million station rebuild, scheduled to begin next year.
October 9, 2013
Construction Finally Begins on the Long-Awaited Bloomingdale Trail
It was a moment that was more than a decade and a half in the making. Yesterday workers began construction on the Bloomingdale Trail, the elevated greenway and linear park that Northwest Side residents have been pushing for since the mid-Nineties.
October 1, 2013
Emanuel: Transit “a Core Piece of Our Economic Strategy”
In his keynote address for the American Public Transportation Association’s annual meeting yesterday at the Hilton, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that quality transit is a cornerstone of his economic development policy.
October 1, 2013