Alex Wilson

West Town will recruit, hire and train 30 youth from neighborhoods bordering the Bloomingdale Trail.

This article also ran in the Chicago Reader weekly newspaper.

[This piece also runs on the Green Lane Project's blog.]

Not long after Gabe Klein reported for work as commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation on May 16, 2011, there was speculation that he wouldn’t stick around long. Klein’s wife was remaining in Washington, D.C., where he had previously run the DOT. As an ambitious guy who had worked in several different fields, including the bicycle and car-sharing industries, it seemed likely he’d stay long enough to accomplish certain goals and then move on to his next endeavor. And, following five different CDOT chiefs in five years, some of whom seemed indifferent to sustainable transportation, a bike-riding transportation czar who voiced a commitment to "complete streets" seemed too good to be true.

It’s the end of an era. After serving as Chicago’s first and only bike program coordinator since 1996, Ben Gomberg says he has left the city’s transportation department for greener pastures. “After 17 years coordinating Chicago's bike program I felt it was time to move on,” he told me. “I'm proud of establishing the largest and best bike program in the U.S., and helping launch the Divvy bike sharing program. But it was time for new challenges, new things to do, and more time with my kids.”