Alderman Walter Burnett

Yesterday Roger Romanelli’s anti-bus rapid transit group the Ashland-Western Coalition made its most overtly political move to date. An email from the coalition urged members to lobby their aldermen to oppose the CTA’s plan, implying the AWC will campaign against politicians who support it. “The Chicago February 2015 election is ahead,” Romanelli wrote. “It's time for Aldermen to declare their Ashland BRT positions. Are they with the people... or do they support a costly, disruptive BRT?”

On Tuesday, the Active Transportation Alliance honored several movers and shakers in the local sustainable transportation scene at an awards reception in the Revolution Brewing taproom. Mayor Rahm Emanuel was given the Extra Mile Award in recognition of his role in implementing bike-share, bus rapid transit, the Red Line South rehab, and protected bike lanes.

This morning the Chicago Sun-Times published a fairly solid editorial with some interesting thoughts on the task ahead for whomever takes the reigns of the Chicago Department of Transportation after Commissioner Gabe Klein steps down later this month. “Too often in the past the city’s transportation chief has focused more on potholes and snow removal than on a vision of a city in which the streets work for everyone,” the paper states. Actually, Streets and Sanitation handles almost all snowplowing, but the sentiment is spot-on. “Gabe Klein… broke that mold. His replacement should be someone who follows through on Klein’s foresighted initiatives while addressing long-neglected problems.”

Ashland Avenue BRT could be a transformative project for Chicago, demonstrating the benefits of re-orienting streets to prioritize transit and walking. Projected to nearly double bus speeds, improve reliability, attract new riders, and improve pedestrian safety, Ashland BRT could potentially be the first world-class bus project in America, designed to a standard that would receive the top BRT rating from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

Last month I talked to Scott Kubly, deputy commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation, about the city’s efforts to make sure the new Divvy bike-share system benefits all Chicagoans, including those in low-income neighborhoods and/or communities of color. Surveys in bike-share cities like Washington, D.C., and Denver have shown that use of their publicly-funded systems has been skewed towards a disproportionately white, affluent demographic. Kubly says CDOT is committed to making sure Divvy ridership better reflects our city’s ethnic and economic diversity.

The BRT NIMBYs are at it again. In January, the Ashland-Western Coalition, a consortium of chambers of commerce and community development groups on the Near West Side, hosted a public meeting where business owners panicked that the CTA’s plan to build bus rapid transit on Ashland would ruin them. Earlier this month the coalition announced an anemic alternative proposal to robust, center-running BRT service, which they euphemistically dubbed Modern Express Bus service, although this would only keep bus riders and drivers alike stuck in the same old traffic jams.

At last night’s community meeting at Intuit arts center, the Chicago Department of Transportation discussed its vision for innovative bike lanes on Milwaukee between Kinzie and Elston. The plan, which is actually much more ambitious than what was outlined on the CDOT website prior to the meeting, involves removing about half of the car-parking spaces along Milwaukee to make room for buffered and protected lanes on the entire segment. To really wrap your head around what's being proposed, be sure to check out the department's presentation on the plan.