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2020 Resolution: Supporting Chicago’s Walking Infrastructure

Elaine-Lehman

By: Elaine Lehman

 

We all recognize that motorized vehicles are an important component of Chicago’s transportation and economic systems, we also recognize that motorized vehicle exhaust emissions are a significant source of pollution, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons. These pollutants can be harmful to human health and the environment and lead to the formation of ground-level ozone (smog). Exhaust emissions from cars and trucks are one of the single greatest sources of air pollution in the Chicago area (IL-EPA).

In 2019, a report released by INRIX, a mobility analytics company, ranked Chicago third in the nation for traffi c congestion, with drivers losing 138 hours a year to backups, and considered worse for congestion than either New York City or Los Angeles, two cities notorious for their traffic tangles. Chicago drivers lost $1,920 due to congestion. The study found that congestion had worsened in the city by 4 percent in 2018 compared with 2017. The 2019 Urban Mobility Report released by Texas A&M Transportation Institute found that Chicago drivers consumed an excess of 30 gallons of fuel due to travel in congested conditions rather than free-fl ow conditions. The total congestion cost, including the cost of delays for trucks, for the region, is $6.53 billion annually. The seven-county metropolitan Chicago region is in “nonattainment” with federal standards, meaning that air pollution levels do not meet Clean Air Act standards intended to protect human health and the environment. On September 23, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) re-designated eleven ozone nonattainment areas from moderate to serious, including the Chicago-Naperville (IL-IN-WI) ozone nonattainment areas under the 2008 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).

We are grateful that our state and city offi cials acknowledge that progress, modernization, and increasing environmental pollution necessitate that our urban mobility architecture will have to undergo fundamental change – and that an integral component is to build supportive environments to promote pedestrian mobility effi ciency. Each administration has a rising awareness of pedestrian issues in transportation planning and has made improving pedestrian safety and increasing pedestrian mobility collective transportation goals for inclusivity, community livability, public health, economic growth, and environmental sustainability. Such strategies improve not only pedestrian safety and mobility but also help reduce cost; improve the interconnections and reliability of our multi-modal transportation network; help achieve social equity and economic opportunity objectives and can help cut carbon footprints by reducing congestion and gridlock. Mayor Lightfoot’s environmental policy aims for Chicago to become a local and regional leader on environmental issues and to promote environmental justice through inclusive decision-making.

These strategies require cooperative collaboration between and from the state and city offi cials and constituents, as constituent engagement have a cumulative effect on the city and the state as a whole.

The Filipino American Council of Greater Chicago supports these endeavors to make our City of Chicago greener and to be more fair and inclusive. We believe that further strengthening walkability concepts is a realistic means for expanding travel, mobility, and accessibility opportunities, and that a multi-level and iterative participatory design approach would better connect the urban form and walking by enhancing perceptual qualities that may affect decision-making to walk by city residents and yield high potential for increased day-to-day pedestrian mobility and binomial pedestrian land use.

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