What types of transportation do you use during an average week, and how has this shaped your view of transportation policy?

I mainly use CTA buses and trains. I also have a shared family car that I sometimes use in the city, but have to have for work. I travel throughout Illinois as the Director of Civic Engagement for Equality Illinois.

As someone who grew up in Chicago and only used the CTA to get to school or anywhere in the city, because my family could not afford to regularly use a car, I have always treasured CTA. When I came out as gay when I was 14, CTA was literally life-saving for me. Without it, I would not have been able to go to the community organizations that provided young gay people safe spaces to be.

CTA has always been a pillar in my worldview. So when I think of transportation policy, I imagine my life without it, which is not hard to do in the United States. My childhood would have been significantly negatively impacted without CTA. I would not have been able to travel to the places I needed to go in order to grow and learn. As an adult, I would have less financial stability and more stress. I live in Wicker Park, close to the highway. I can only imagine the amount of traffic, and therefore pollution, that would impact my family and the families who attend the elementary school where I went as a kid and now serve on the Local School Council.

Transportation policy is often talked about in very academic ways. Everything is data driven: what are the headways; will ridership support changes in route planning; does infrastructure induce ridership or discourage it. This is good in some respects, we can make decisions based on objective standards. However, transportation itself is not sanitized. It is a necessity that underlies so many parts of our lives. In the short description about myself above, the strength of Chicago’s public transportation had a direct impact on my mental and physical health, my ability to build community and seek meaningful connections, and my ability to gain access to education and jobs because I grew up in poverty.

So making decisions on what projects to advance and how to keep public transportation solvent are driven by data and objective choices, that is true. But what we have seen in Illinois is that the biggest battle we face in public transportation is whether to have it at all. And there are many people in Illinois who think we can do without it, that was the central battle in Springfield for the past several years with the fiscal cliff. My view of transportation policy is that we need to communicate its importance through every means possible. There are many narratives, like mine, that do not get told because those people making decisions very often have never actually experienced true reliance on public transportation.

I welcome the data, transportation, and public planning experts who study transportation everyday. My professional experience is in healthcare and civil rights, so I will need to collaborate extensively with experts on transportation. But stories like mine deserve to have a voice at the table in Cook County government because understanding why we are doing something is just as important as how.

What are some transportation challenges in your district?

My district, District 12, is among the most densely populated in the county. The CTA brown line is almost entirely within my district and we have multiple arterial roads that have main bus routes that travel the length of Chicago. We also have some of the highest rates of bicycle use in the city.

A challenge now and moving forward is that as Chicago has made progressive strides in reducing restrictive zoning practices and successfully eliminated parking minimums in my entire district, it will continue to become more dense. I firmly believe this is a good thing, but it presents challenges because traffic is already onerous in the district (the Kennedy highway cuts right through it) and transit passengers already complain about crowded trains and bus bunching. I think the State has set us up for success with passing the Northern Illinois Transit Authority Act to enable public transit growth and hopefully induce ridership for a positive feedback loop (the opposite of the transit death spiral). That said, Cook County Commissioners now have a greater role in appointments to the CTA, Pace, and Metra transit boards. I am committed to ensuring qualified experts fill those roles instead of politically connected people with no relevant experience.

Regarding bicycles, the government has made strides in improving bicyclist safety, increasing use and speeding up that mode of transportation. However, the North Branch of the Chicago River cuts through my district, almost the entirety of that branch within Chicago lies within District 12. The bridges are very old and built to put cars first, so many bicyclists feel unsafe and uncomfortable crossing them. Bicyclists need safer and more frequent bridges to cross the river. This is a significant impediment to choosing bicycles if travel goes west-east. The County is in a prime position to coordinate infrastructure solutions because this district encompasses many smaller districts at both the city and state level.

Cook County residents often find their local roadways fall under multiple different jurisdictions and standards. How do you view the County’s role in ensuring consistent, safe, and accessible transportation for constituents?

This is a problem. The county’s Department of Transportation and Highways should, and does, work the city’s and state’s corresponding departments. However, just like what we have seen with multiple agencies in public transportation, goals and objectives can mismatch, all to the detriment of residents. I do not believe the problem lies with the actual civil servants who do this work, but rather leadership that sets priorities and lets politics get in the way of positive outcomes. As a grassroots organizer for LGBTQ civil rights and public health, I see first hand how local politics often gets in the way of logical governance. I’m running for office because residents deserve better.

We should not have projects start and stop based on who happens to be the elected official for an arbitrarily drawn district. This goes for every level of government. The fact of the matter is that many of these separate jurisdictions are baked into place. What we have power to change however is how elected officials collaborate together. Transparency and collaboration are minimum requirements and I have a proven track record for both.

What can Cook County do to stabilize and expand access to bikeshare programs that span municipalities?

Cook County can support intergovernmental agreements and contract “piggybacking” so that municipalities that have less capacity to enter into these programs can still benefit. Cook County is also a large landowner and we can include bike docking stations and multi-modal transit infrastructure as terms to development.

What role can the County play in bringing funding sources and revenue streams to county transportation projects?

Managing the Cook County budget is one of the central responsibilities of the commissioners. A vast majority of that budget is earmarked annually for operating expenses, not projects as described here. Over half the county's budget, $5 billion, goes to supporting health care services. This is critically important, and I am not going to mess with revenue allocations if that means people will suffer.

That said, finding revenue streams to finance transportation projects is a unique ask to voters that is not objectionable. There is a detailed construction plan, there is an estimated cost upfront we can plan for, and at the end there is a physical, tangible benefit people can see. I think with enough community support, and with elected officials who can do outreach to skeptical residents, we can successfully ask for specific revenue requests mandated for a specific purpose. Whether that is structured as a TIF or some other tax, I believe people support building infrastructure that makes their lives better.

What I believe voters, including myself, do not like is when money that is set aside for a specific purpose is then used for something else. That is dishonest and unethical. Furthermore, that type of governance erodes public trust and makes it harder to finance honest projects. We need to increase transparency and trust in local government, and the commissioners need to actively engage the people who live in Cook County. So do I think there is a role for commissioners to play in expanding transportation infrastructure projects? Absolutely. I also know that this has to come with a promise to lead ethically and with transparency, which I commit to doing.

Cook County has a history of innovating access to public services, including public transit – such as the Fair Transit South Cook pilot. As commissioner, what are ways you envision the County innovating on transportation?

I actually hope Cook County commissioners will not be the local innovators for much longer. With the Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA) Act, the promise of this transformational amount of revenue for transit came with the expectation that the transit agencies would collaborate and innovate together. The Fair Transit South Cook pilot is exactly the type of project that the transit agencies should have promoted years ago on their own.

I believe that leaders bring their lived and professional experiences with them and that a diverse set of experiences is necessary for the best governance. I also firmly believe that elected officials need to listen to experts, but that requires experts to be at the decision-making table. With the NITA Act, the Cook County commissioners as a whole will have the authority to approve 8 transit board members across CTA, Pace, and Metra for the first time. We cannot squander this opportunity to ensure that every seat we have authority over goes to an expert and innovator, not simply political operatives.

I would love to see Cook County repurpose old, unused railway across Cook County into either new public transit or greenways. We need to move forward understanding that every rote cannot and should not be based on going to and from downtown Chicago. The method for doing this, what is most efficient and will have the greatest impact, I look forward to hearing from transportation experts.