Funding & Finance

Last time I tried to attend a meeting of the anti-bus rapid transit group the Ashland-Western Coalition, I was invited to leave. When Ashland Avenue corridor resident Lindsay Banks showed up for a recent meeting with a friend, coalition leader Roger Romanelli recognized Banks as a BRT supporter and allowed the pair to stay for a while. However, after Banks was told the meeting was over, the rest of the attendees stuck around, which is when the real meeting apparently took place.

The Ashland-Western Coalition, the anti-bus rapid transit group led by Roger Romanelli, executive director of the Fulton/Fulton Market Association, has gotten zero coverage so far in the daily papers, but it looks like that’s about to change. Today Romanelli sent out a bulletin to members that the Sun-Times will be running an article about the CTA’s Ashland Avenue BRT plan and taking a photo of AWC members this Monday, September 16, at 10 a.m. in front of Orlando Glass and Trim, 641 North Ashland.

Today’s roundtable at the Metropolitan Planning Council, “BRT: Moving People, Driving Development” looked at the potential of fast, reliable bus rapid transit to draw investment to urban corridors, and the benefits of transit-oriented development in general. The panel featured CEO Walter Hook and U.S. and Africa Director Annie Weinstock from the New York-based Institute for Transportation and Development policy, which has helped plan BRT systems around the world and is consulting on Chicago’s upcoming projects. Also appearing was Melinda Pollack, vice president for transit-oriented development with Enterprise Community Partners, a Denver-based affordable housing nonprofit.

Yesterday a number of heavy hitters in the local transportation scene showed up for a roundtable on sustainable transportation issues at the CTA headquarters hosted by U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (IL-05) and University of Illinois President Robert A. Easter. Quigley, whose district, formerly presided over by Rahm Emanuel, covers a large swath of Chicago’s North Side and a few inner-ring suburbs, sits on the House Appropriations Committee and the Subcommittee for Transportation.

To use Divvy you must have a debit or credit card. Currently, there's no way around that, so even though an annual Divvy pass is a bargain at $75, the system is unavailable for many Chicagoans. A significant share of city households -- 12.7 percent -- don't have bank accounts, according to graduate research by Michael Carney at the University of Illinois at Chicago's College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. That translates to at least 135,000 people and perhaps more than twice that number, Carney's demographic research indicates.

As part of the Make Way for People program, which seeks to create places where residents can relax, socialize, and maybe enjoy some culture, the Chicago Department of Transportation is seeking proposals to activate nearly 50 plazas across the city. “The concept behind the request for proposals is we believe these spaces have a lot of potential but they’re currently underutilized,” said CDOT Project Director Janet Attarian. “We’d like to see them be better maintained and enlivened with new amenities and programming. It’s really about creative ways to promote positive activity in our public spaces.”

Here's a flyer from the anti-bus rapid transit group the Ashland-Western Coalition, which I came across today at a café on Ashland Avenue in the East Village. The AWC is a consortium of business and community groups on the Near West Side, led by Roger Romanelli, executive director of the Randolph/Fulton Market Association. Let’s take a look at some of the information the group is putting out about the CTA’s plan to create fast reliable BRT service on Ashland.

Tax increment financing is a pretty neat tool cities can use to finance quality-of-life amenities, like the Beltline in Atlanta, or the streetcar in Kansas City, by capturing the taxes from the property value increases of the investments.