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New County Policy Supports Active Transportation, Lacks Specific Goals
Cook County's new "Long Range Transportation Plan," released last week, is the first such document published since 1940 and is a policy platform that will guide decisions about transportation spending for the next 24 years. To the credit of county officials, the plan voices strong support for improving walking, biking, and transit, which represents a major change for a governmental body that has focused on facilitating driving for many decades. However, I'd argue that the document, called "Connecting Cook County," falls short of being a plan when it come to setting concrete goals for promoting sustainable transportation, and that's a missed opportunity.
July 19, 2016
CNT: Funding Not Spent According to Community Plans Has Less Impact
The Center for Neighborhood Technology, a local community planning think tank, said that municipalities and public agencies are failing to follow their own plans. They're investing public funds for the region in economic development and transportation projects in undeveloped areas or away from train stations.
December 4, 2015
MPC’s Skosey Wants to Help Spur Economic Growth as a CMAP Board Member
I’m glad to share the news that Peter Skosey, executive vice president of the Metropolitan Planning Council and a key player in the local transportation advocacy scene, has joined the board of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. Earlier this week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed him earlier this week to replace outgoing CMAP board member Raul Raymondo. Skosey has served the planning council’s transportation committee since its inception, but as he wrote in a recent blog post, sitting on the board will be a whole new ball of wax.
July 10, 2015
CMAP Seeks Its Own Dedicated Tax For Transit, Green Infrastructure
The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning last week floated its own proposal to fix the region's shortfall in transportation funding. It launched FUND 2040, a campaign calling upon the Illinois legislature to fund sustainable infrastructure through a quarter-cent sales tax across the Chicagoland region. CMAP says this increase would generate $300 million annually, which it would use to advance projects that fulfill the goals of its federally-required plan for the region, GO TO 2040.
November 19, 2014
Preckwinkle, Environmental Groups Want CMAP to Drop Illiana
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.
September 9, 2014
More State Control Over Chicagoland Transit Is a Bad Idea
On Tuesday, the Northeastern Public Transit Task Force, created after former Metra CEO Alex Clifford's abrupt resignation and the ensuing severance package scandal last summer, issued four different options for restructuring regional transit governance [PDF]. While there's a lot of variation among the four options, they would all hand more power to the governor. This is the wrong direction to take.
March 13, 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