CMAP

After appointees loyal to Governor Pat Quinn muscled the Illiana tollway onto the project list for Chicagoland's regional plan, it looked like nothing could stop this risky highway boondoggle from getting funded and built. The Illiana may still happen, but not without a fight.

The Sierra Club and other organizations intend to petition the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning to remove the Illiana Tollway from its regional plan, effectively disallowing the state from building the new highway. The deletion is possible because CMAP, the federally-designated Metropolitan Planning Organization for this region, is finalizing a mandatory update of its GO TO 2040 Plan.

The Illinois Department of Transportation, whose secretary resigned last week after accusations about patronage hiring, distributed $545 million in gas tax revenue to fix streets in almost 3,000 jurisdictions last year. While this sounds like a lot of money, poor road and bridge conditions across the state can attest to the fact that these funds might not be going to the places that need them most. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the region's federally designated metropolitan planning organization, has recently written about different methods that IDOT could use to more fairly distribute these revenues across the state's cities and counties.

Every Saturday night at dusk, the main streets in Wicker Park and Bucktown seize up. The stalled lines of cars don't just infuriate drivers -- they also stall buses, block crosswalks, and push cyclists into the dangerous door zone. These crowds don't descend out of nowhere to watch the sunset, or to pile into shows at the Double Door. No, this dangerous mess stems in large part from poorly managed public parking.

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning's GO TO 2040 regional comprehensive plan has weathered some major ups and downs in its four-year lifespan. CMAP has received several awards for the plan, which required a huge effort on their part to reach out to local residents and overwrite decades of uncoordinated transportation "plans."

The Illiana Expressway encountered a potential roadblock in the form of a lawsuit filed last Thursday.

At least one Illinois legislator supports a unified transit agency, even though RTA board chairman John Gates and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have declared their opposition.

By now, Streetsblog readers know all about how the Illiana Tollway, a proposed highway that will see little use and cost taxpayers $500 million, has messed up our regional plan. Last October, the MPO Policy Committee of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning voted to add the Illiana to the GO TO 2040 plan, allowing the Illinois Department of Transportation to go ahead and build it, even though the project actually works against the plan's goal of focusing growth near existing infrastructure.

The Illiana Tollway is a solution in search of a problem, and the Illinois DOT's final document in preparation to receive federal approval to build the tollway is a case study in backwards transportation planning. IDOT's playbook went like this: Design a new road, have consultants review traffic patterns on existing roads to find issues to underpin the rationale for the new road, then rally political support for the road around those issues.