Emanuel wants to expand and improve the city’s biking network

Along with allied transportation advocates, I met with Rahm Emanuel yesterday to encourage his support for our Sustainable Transportation Platform and to provide feedback on some of his preliminary ideas. While we didn’t have time to discuss all 10 platform recommendations, he was supportive of the transit, biking and car-sharing topics that we discussed.

A priority for Emanuel is repairing and extending the CTA Red Line (he made an announcement about this today). Active Trans fully supports this idea. My understanding is that the Red Line extension is one component of Emanuel’s broader transportation agenda, which has yet to be released. My hope is that more elements of the Sustainable Transportation Platform will be included in his agenda.

During the meeting, we learned that Emanuel is an avid cyclist and he wants to significantly expand and improve the city’s biking network and its capacity. I told him that New York City’s recent addition of separated bike lanes and other biking improvements carried a price tag of roughly $2 million — a drop in the bucket compared to most transportation projects.

Emanuel demonstrated that he has thought about bike lane design. While showing Emanuel photos of separated bike lanes and other bike facilities, he commented that none of the separated lanes in the photos had the design he had in mind. All right!

Active Trans is meeting with Carol Mosely Braun next week and hopefully Gery Chico shortly thereafter. Stay tuned for blog posts about these coming meetings.

Learn more about the candidates' reactions to the Sustainable Transportation Platform in this recent Time Out Chicago article.