GO TO 2040
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CMAP Tells IDOT: “To Each Municipality, According to Their Needs”
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.
July 8, 2014
CMAP Plan Update Includes Sobering Look at Region’s Funding Shortfall
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."
June 17, 2014
What Good Chicagoland Regional Planning Looks Like
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.
March 6, 2014
Road Projects Gobble Up Growing Share of Chicago’s “Air Quality” Funds
In its upcoming update of the GO TO 2040 comprehensive regional plan, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning needs to take a closer look at the transportation projects it funds with federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grants. In the latest round of these grants, announced Tuesday, CMAP committees have approved funding for nine projects that only add more space for cars.
November 15, 2013
How IDOT’s Bogus Job Creation Claims Fed the Campaign for the Illiana
The Illinois Department of Transportation made its case for the Illiana tollway proposal by disseminating half truths and outright lies. At a Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning committee meeting in October where members voted 10-8 in favor of the 47-mile highway, supporters repeatedly referred to IDOT’s claim that the project would create 28,000 jobs. But that number was a lie: The project is in fact projected to create only 940 long-term jobs.
November 5, 2013
Metra and Pace Maintain Support for Illiana at the Expense of Transit
Yesterday, 11 members of the Metropolitan Planning Organization policy committee, including Metra and Pace, voted to add the Illiana Tollway to the GO TO 2040 regional plan. This enables the Illinois DOT and Indiana DOT to move forward with the project approvals necessary to receive federal funds.
October 18, 2013
Metra and Pace Vote For Transit-Crushing Illiana Tollway in Advisory Meeting
Chicago-area transportation organizations are poised to shoot themselves in the foot and harm the region by allowing the Illinois Department of Transportation Department to squander limited transportation infrastructure funds on the $2.75 billion Illiana Tollway. On Friday the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning's transportation committee voted to recommend moving forward with this wasteful, destructive project, which promises to suck jobs from Illinois and send them to Indiana. It would create only 940 new jobs over the next thirty years.
October 8, 2013
As IDOT Postpones Illiana Vote, Planners Say the Region Doesn’t Need It
Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Ann Schneider has pushed back a crucial vote about the Illiana Expressway a week to October 17. The vote by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning policy committee will decide if building 47 miles of tolled highway south of the urbanized areas of Chicagoland and into Indiana can proceed.
September 27, 2013