What is On Biking and Sustainable Transportation?
“Without specifically responding to every suggestion in the Chicago’s Sustainable Transportation Platform, I agree that we must aggressively advocate for local, regional, state, and federal plans and funding to increase public transportation and make Chicago friendlier to bicycles and pedestrians,” says Chicago City Clerk Miguel del Valle in a statement. “Transportation is Chicago’s second-largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. Investing in the future of the environment has the added benefit of creating more jobs.”
“A first step is to ensure we are not leaving any federal transportation money on the table through negligence or lack of foresight,” says del Valle. “An estimated $385 billion in federal, state, and local funds will be available for regional transportation investments over the next 30 years.
“Chicago should also seek a larger share of existing transportation funding by effectively advocating for a fair distribution of state money,” says del Valle. “The Chicago area gets 45% and downstate gets 55% even though the Chicago region represents 70% of the state’s population and 78% of the state’s economy.
Another area of imbalance is the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA); we are not getting our fair share of funding. 82% of Chicago-area transit riders use the CTA, but it only receives 59% of operating subsidies from the RTA. On the other hand, METRA gets only 12% of the area’s riders, but receives 27% of the funding. My administration will advocate for changes in these allocations.”
“Finally, contrary to our goals of sustainability, our state allocations of transportation funds focus too much on roads over other more sustainable forms of transportation,” del Valle says.