advocacy

Got a fun photo of Kathy Schubert at a bike ride or advocacy event that you'd like to share? Please send it to me a jgreenfield[at]streetsblog[dot]org and I may add it to this post, and/or create a gallery of images that I'll link to here.

Last week, the Active Transportation Alliance started its 2025 Bike Commuter Challenge, presented by Keating Law Offices. (The firm is also a Streetsblog Chicago sponsor.) The first celebration station was put up on Wednesday, May 28, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the entrance to the Bloomingdale Trail, aka The 606, at Churchill Park, 1825 N. Damen Ave. in Bucktown.

This week, Streetsblog Chicago ran my interview with longtime sustainable transportation advocate Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Vice President for Government Affairs Jacky Grimshaw, who happens to be my grandmother. She was being recognized by Climate Action Museum with its 2025 Tom Skilling Lifetime Achievement Award, so we discussed that honor. We also talked about her current mission urging State lawmakers to address Chicagoland's impending $770 million transit budget gap this spring, so as to avoid nightmarish service cuts next year.

It's relatively simple to eulogize people who were well-loved, or even just generally liked, and who never really did much out of the ordinary in their lives. Longtime Chicago cycling advocate Arthur Travis Duffey, known as "Flip Bike Travis," was not such a person.

"Electeds often don’t want to hear more from 'bike activists' and it is our job to make sure they feel like the advocacy is coming from the community," CBGN! stated.

On a frigid #GivingTuesday, the Active Transportation Alliance held its annual member party to celebrate the organization’s 2024 advocacy wins, and announce priorities for the year ahead. Well over 100 members gathered in the cavernous Revolution Brewing taproom – fittingly situated along new curb-protected bike lanes on Kedzie Avenue in Avondale. Attendees mingled for the first hour, sipping beers and scarfing down pizza from Dimo’s and chicken from Nando’s Peri Peri. Full racks in the coat-and-bike room proved that cold-weather cycling is alive and well in Chicago.

Last Thursday, the grassroots sustainable advocacy organization Better Streets Chicago held its third annual gathering to celebrate recent accomplishments, and raise funds for future campaigns. The nonprofit was launched at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic by Kyle Lucas, Brittney Lane, Jim Hodapp, and former Streetsblog Co-Editor Courtney Cobbs. Recent efforts included a rally to protest plans to rebuild North DuSable Lake Shore Drive as an eight-lane highway with no bus lanes, lobbying the City to lower the speed limit to 25 mph, and pushing for funding of the #PlowTheSidewalks pilot.

Last Sunday, about 50 riders drew the outline of the Land of Lincoln by bicycling along Chicago's Historic Boulevard system.

A new analysis of the costs of not helping public transportation agencies fill a $2.5 billion funding gap found that it would cost former riders twice that much - $5 billion - in annual car ownership costs alone.