What do you believe are the greatest transportation challenges facing the City of Chicago right now?

Our city’s design forces individuals to rely on personal vehicles. 

People need to be able to get around quickly and safely on public transportation. Street/highway expansion encourages more people to drive and the maintenance costs become and unbearable burden. People should be able to easily bike or walk to their nearest shops, service locations, libraries, and transit stops. We must encourage people to leave their cars behind while also building up our public transportation systems. It is insane, for example, that parents feel the need to drive their children 4 blocks to school because it is too dangerous to walk or bike.

Do you or members of your family regularly use sidewalks, bike, take transit, drive, or a combination of any/all to get around? Does this correspond with your preferred/ideal modes of getting around? If not, what barriers do you and your family face in using your preferred mode of transportation?

My mother, who just turned 69, and my brother both live here in Chicago and do not own cars. I had never owned a car until just a few years ago, and living and working on the south side and being less able to rely on public transportation was the sole factor in my decision to purchase one. I was living in Bridgeport, had just started graduate school in Hyde Park, and was going to be doing my student teaching in Gage Park. Getting back and forth between these locations by public transportation takes up to eight times longer than driving - my commute to University of Chicago was fifteen minutes by car and sometimes as long as two hours taking two unreliable connecting buses that left me waiting and waiting. 

I also like to ride by bike and have often used it to bike to work etc., but fear of being killed or injured by a car has become an obstacle. Unfortunately, this is also a fear I have while driving and I wish I didn’t have to rely on driving so much.  

My mom was hit by a car several years ago walking across an intersection with the crossing light. We had not lived in Chicago long and this incident was a big setback since we were already struggling to get on our feet in a new place.  

My mom and brother now regularly commute to Bridgeport from Albany Park on public transportation to help out with the campaign. Obviously as the city’s mismanagement has impacted the CTA more and more, they have faced more and more challenges getting down here with long wait times and frequent stalling of trains on tracks.  

A wealthy city like Chicago should be able to provide top-notch public transportation that extends throughout the whole city.

Can you share a personal experience that changed your opinion about a transportation related policy matter?

I moved to Chicago almost 20 years ago. Before that I lived in a bunch of small towns, many of them rural, in the DeKalb area. After my parents divorced, my mom frequently had car trouble, and there were many times when we didn’t have a car to use at all.  

In high school in the town of Rochelle, I remember once that a guy I was friends with made fun of my mom for looking like a “bag lady” - he had seen her walking along the side of the highway that went through our town, holding some groceries she had gotten at WalMart. She would walk over a mile to the grocery store when she couldn’t get a ride. There weren’t even sidewalks for her to use along most of the way, she would just walk in the grass ditch alongside the road.  

That’s a huge part of why our lives improved so much when we moved to Chicago not long after that. It felt impossible to survive without a car in a sprawling area designed for personal vehicles. Especially in a city like Chicago, we have so many opportunities to make our communities walkable and undo the damage that the fixation with cars has done to our urban environment. I believe that requiring every family to own an expensive, dirty, and dangerous personal vehicle in order to participate in society is both impractical and cruel. 

Chicago is a snowy city, and even one stretch of uncleared sidewalk can make it impassable – particularly for folks with disabilities, the elderly, and parents with young children. What is your position on implementing a universal city-wide sidewalk snow/ice removal service?

I absolutely support municipal sidewalk-clearing. Sidewalks are city property, it makes no sense to leave this responsibility to owners of whatever property is closest to a strip of sidewalk. For various reasons some will not or cannot clear the snow in front of their property.  

In the meantime, we have to do everything we can to keep sidewalks clear for our neighbors who need it. Last year when we had tons of snow we went out with a group of volunteers in subzero weather and cleared the sidewalk (nearly a quarter mile long) along an overpass on Archer of built up snow and ice that was forcing people to walk in a busy street. This year we are also circulating a snow clearing request form and offering snow clearing to people that need help.

It is now widely recognized and understood that interstate highways were used to physically divide urban communities from one another – often along racial and class lines. How do you propose we overcome these divisions to restore the urban fabric of Chicago and reconnect our segregated neighborhoods?

Viaducts and a river separates Bridgeport, McKinley, and Chinatown. Moreover, the unwalkable, industrial design of these border areas makes it unappealing, difficult, and dangerous for people to try to go from one neighborhood to another. When the Ashland/Archer Bridge sidewalks aren’t plowed, people can't get to the other neighborhood on foot. The car-highway-industry oriented development there makes it impossible for walkable areas to develop that draw people between neighborhoods, creating opportunities for interracial and intercultural encounters. Biking to Chinatown on Ashland is like taking your life into your own hands. A connected bike grid is needed along with pedestrian bridges that provide safe walkable connections between communities. Ultimately I envision a dense urban environment as one that is free from highways and expressways.

What role do you believe transportation plays in Chicago’s collective greenhouse gas emissions, climate responsibility, and overall environmental health?

Air pollution from the highways and fleets from local industry plagues our community. I myself have asthma. Industrial chemical transport is carried locally by trains as well, and the dilapidated infrastructure the railroad companies fail to maintain is an environmental and human catastrophe waiting to happen. Holding such corporations accountable is an ecological project - we must place the needs of the environment and human life over the needs of profit. 

Electric vehicles won’t save us. They create pollution and waste in various forms as well. Although electrifying buses and commuter trains and some private fleets is a step in a more positive direction, we must swiftly take drastic steps to end urban design that forces us to rely on personal vehicles and move away from them as the main mode of transportation for the average individual.

What is your position on the Illinois Department of Transportation’s current proposals for rebuilding North DuSable Lake Shore Drive? Do you believe the proposed designs will reduce congestion, improve transit access and make pedestrians and cyclists safer? How do you think the current proposals will impact access to the lakefront?

I was proud this past fall to take part in the Jamapalooza event where I laid down in the street to protest the dangerous state of DLSD. Although it is important that DLSD at the very least be improved, we need to rethink its existence altogether - it cuts us off from the lakefront and sucks up undue maintenance costs because of our eroding shoreline. I think we’ve all seen the images of all of the cars blanketed under ice from the lake coming up onto the drive during a winter storm. It should ultimately be removed or turned back into a boulevard with dedicated public transit and residential features (like landscaping, stops at regular intervals by block, and low speed limits).

What barriers do you believe the Illinois Department of Transportation presents to Chicago pursuing better safe streets design standards and transit investments? How do you plan to work with City Council, the Governor, and State legislators to overcome these barriers?

Many of the city's most dangerous streets are operated by IDOT. They are designed for quickly moving cars, not safely moving people. The recent Memorandum of Understanding between IDOT and CDOT is a step in the right direction but ultimately, these streets need to be under Chicago's control. Perhaps an intergovernmental agreement could be forged in SPI. IDOT regularly stymies safe street design, and it is very good that Chicago recently was able to get an agreement that allows more autonomy in adding safety features.

The 99-year parking meter deal enacted by former Mayor Richard M. Daley has been a barrier to enacting safe street designs by privatizing large portions of Chicago’s streets. What is your plan to address this?

We have been put in a difficult position with the ridiculous contract that was signed in this deal. I would be interested in exploring any and all legal and legislative options that would mitigate the harm of this deal and ensure that no such deal is ever made again.

Studies show us that speed and distracted driving kill. What do you think are the most effective ways to reduce driver speed and increase safe driving behavior?

There is a great deal of data that proves that there are practical ways to design our streets to force drivers to slow down and pay more attention. This includes narrowing streets, reducing the number of lanes in streets and converting them into space for walkers, bikers, pocket parks, or outdoor dining, chicanes, creating one-way driving-two-way biking streets, emphasizing the residential surroundings with landscaping and other decorations, and installing roundabouts, bump-outs, raised crosswalks, and traffic lights. We should also explore a congestion tax, especially for downtown.

What is your position on the City passing ordinances that attempt to regulate the size, weight, and/or safety features of personal and private vehicles?

I support regulations that make personal and private vehicles as safe for our community as possible. 

Vehicle registration could be based on size of the vehicle. If people want to drive large vehicles, it could be made very expensive to register, and there could be caps on allowed weights. This would also encourage commercial industry to explore smaller options to save money.

What is your position on establishing a dedicated funding stream for safe and universal pedestrian and bike infrastructure in Chicago?

I support this, and would add that a high standard of maintenance and upkeep, like snow clearing, must be included in budgeting for such a funding stream. Another problem with our bike infrastructure’s ward by-ward development through Aldermanic prerogative/menu money means that bike lane design is inconsistent throughout the city. Sharrows, paint, flex posts, and curbs are interspersed with little rhyme or reason. Legislation providing dedicated funding should mandate that our bike lanes will be built to the gold standard of connected, protected, and separated bike lanes, across at least 10% of the city to create a Bike Grid.

What is your position on creating select pedestrian-only streets?

I think it’s great. I want to pedestrianize a street in our ward - I think Morgan between 31st and 35th would be a prime spot - but of course, that’s something we would take our time getting a lot of local input on. CDOT’s Shared Streets program is a good (temporary) way to rapidly introduce Ward residents to the experience of a pedestrianized street and I would use this and other tools to build consensus around pedestrianization. We can use already available city-owned infrastructure (like construction barrels) to create these spaces. Part of being an organizer-in-office (something I am committed to being) is creating buy-in and inoculation against fear and uncertainty among and across local stakeholders for the projects that benefit all of us, like pedestrianization.

What policy solutions would you implement to ensure CTA buses operate on schedule, frequently, and quickly?

It all comes down to staffing. Our city government continuously bungles the hiring process - failing to advertise available jobs and taking months and months to hire a candidate, or failing to even respond to qualified applicants. We must invest time and energy into fully staffing our city departments like the CTA and then doing everything we can to improve the workplace to retain jobs. We have to make sure the CTA is fully funded and given what it needs to improve public transportation for the residents of Chicago.

Considering the role the CTA, Metra, and Pace play in providing public transportation within the city, what are your plans to address the impending fiscal cliff – a deficit of over $700 million – that the agencies will be facing in 2025?

We need to develop multiple new funding streams not just to save Chicago’s public transit systems from a death spiral, but to make the investments that will make Chicago a world leader in public transit. First and foremost, we should tax the most polluting, least public transit options: private cars and air travel. Chicago should begin a congestion pricing pilot program and institute even a miniscule fee on flight purchases to Chicago, scaled up for those flying Business or First Class. We also need to do a better job lobbying the Federal Government to create new grants and funding for updating and expanding our public transportation.  

We can also find efficiencies, like fully integrating fares between Metra, CTA, and PACE through the Ventra card. 

Beyond additional funding sources and efficiencies, the best thing we can do to improve transit revenues is to make CTA/Metra/PACE the first choice for every resident in the region. Putting a stop to Ghost Busses and Trains, reducing headways, and directing major funding for affordable housing, homeless, and mental health services through the city budget will help make our public transit systems feel safe, reliable, and desirable at all hours and on all lines.

What is your position on establishing a network of Bus Rapid Transit lines in Chicago?

I strongly believe in getting people out of cars and onto bikes, busses, and trains. Especially on the South Side, where L lines are less frequent. BRT is a much-needed improvement that will make public transportation a faster, easier, more convenient option than driving - crucial to changing our city’s relationships with personal vehicles. Crucially, we need to do a much better job inoculating against NIMBYISM and ensuring that racial and class equity are front and center in project planning, so that we can avoid the pitfalls that doomed prior BRT initiatives.

Will you commit to securing the funding necessary to implement CTA's plan to become 100% accessible according to ADA standards? (yes/no)

Yes.