Streetsblog Chicago

• Letter from RTA Chief Kirk Dillard: "If the state would fund its mandates, the RTA wouldn’t be faced with such a fiscal crisis" (Tribune)

Milwaukee Avenue, the diagonal street that runs about 11 miles northwest-southeast between downtown and Superdawg Drive-In in the Norwood Park neighborhood, is Chicago's most important cycling street. It's got the highest ridership of any roadway in our city, and since it's the most direct route from the Loop to Wicker Park, Logan Square, and Avondale, some call it the "Hipster Highway."

Want to urge state legislators to properly fund Chicago-area transit during their spring 2025 session, so as to prevent drastic service cuts in 2026? The Active Transportation Alliance recommends going to the webpage "Support the Clean and Equitable Transportation Act!" to send letters to your state reps.

Good news: The Chicago Department of Transportation has proposed extending the Graceland Greenway protected bike lanes on Clark Street further north into Uptown to the Andersonville retail district.

• Hearing on legislation for Metropolitan Mobility Act, which would combine the 4 local transit agencies, this Tuesday 9 AM at Bilandic Center, 160 N. LaSalle

Streetsblog Chicago is a sustainable transportation news and advocacy website, not a publication that typically covers finance. So it's not really my role to opine on whether it was a smart fiscal decision for the City Council to approve an $830 million bond deal to pay for transportation infrastructure. But let's look at how the narrow 26-23 vote went down last Wednesday; some arguments against and for the financing by alders; and reactions from walk/bike/transit boosters.

This week, the CTA released the final design concepts for a pedestrian path and other new amenities on a 1.3-mile segment under Red and Purple tracks, between the Lawrence and Bryn Mawr stations in Uptown and Edgewater. At the second of two community meeting this week, held last night at Truman College, 1945 W. Wilson, attendees seemed generally satisfied with the design.

• "Why a Plan to Borrow $830M to Repair Streets, Sidewalks, Bridges Touched Off a Political Firestorm" (WTTW)

• CTA "Will Pilot Automatic Detection System on Rail Right-of-Way" to detect trespassing on tracks, and prevent injuries and service delays