State Policy

On Friday I had the pleasure of moderating a discussion of cycling and economics with bike writer Elly Blue, author of the new book “Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy,” at City Lit bookstore in Logan Square. Blue’s work has appeared in various biking, sustainability, and feminist publications, and she’s also the author of “Everyday Cycling,” a great beginner’s guide to using a bike for transportation. She blogs at TakingTheLane.com.

The Illinois Department of Transportation is moving forward with its portion of the 47-mile Illiana Tollway in rural Illinois and Indiana, issuing a "request for qualifications" to potential contractors. The document sheds light on how the state intends to finance the billion-dollar highway -- and how taxpayers will be on the hook.

Illinois students celebrate National Walk and Bike to School Day. Photo: Champaign-Urbana MTD

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.

The Illinois Department of Transportation is heading toward its winter goal of completing the statewide transportation bike plan. A meeting in Chicago this July led to a slightly tense discussion about IDOT's ban on protected bike lanes, during which a staffer deftly tempered the mood by saying, "We used to focus only on highways… you’re right, but we have been given direction to focus on all modes. We’re trying as a department to move away from old cultures."

[This piece also runs in Checkerboard City, John's column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

Yesterday, 11 members of the Metropolitan Planning Organization policy committee, including Metra and Pace, voted to add the Illiana Tollway to the GO TO 2040 regional plan. This enables the Illinois DOT and Indiana DOT to move forward with the project approvals necessary to receive federal funds.

Chicago-area transportation organizations are poised to shoot themselves in the foot and harm the region by allowing the Illinois Department of Transportation Department to squander limited transportation infrastructure funds on the $2.75 billion Illiana Tollway. On Friday the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning's transportation committee voted to recommend moving forward with this wasteful, destructive project, which promises to suck jobs from Illinois and send them to Indiana. It would create only 940 new jobs over the next thirty years.