Daily Herald opinion: $5 million grant shows slow progress toward safer transportation
The Chicago region last week was awarded a $5 million grant aimed at making streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. It was money pursued by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, or CMAP, as well as the Illinois Department of Transportation in response to the pandemic-era increase in crashes on the roads and resulting fatalities, including the deaths of pedestrians and cyclists. In Illinois, 1,010 people died in traffic crashes in 2019, IDOT data showed. That climbed to 1,334 deaths in 2021 and 1,269 in 2022.
The grant comes as part of a program called the Safe Travel for All Roadmap, dovetailing with U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's Roadway Safety Call to Action. And it marks the slow, slow progress toward creating alternative, safer and healthier modes of transportation.
The $5 million grant is a pittance compared to what's needed for safer transportation in the suburbs, considering that even a single pedestrian and bicycling overpass can easily cost $2 million or $4 million.
The Safe Travel for All Roadmap has some interesting focuses. One of them is to reduce speed limits not just by posting signs to go slower - as if that ever works - but by actually refraining from widening roads, or at least limiting their drivable area while also accommodating alternatives like bicycling and walking, maybe with different lanes separated by medians. All kinds of road designs could be considered, but the idea is wider roads make drivers more comfortable going faster, and that increases the risk of crashes and, worse, deaths. A person who is hit by a vehicle moving 20 mph has a 10% of dying, while a person hit by a vehicle going 40 mph has an 80% chance of dying, CMAP reports.
The program also suggests speed cameras to keep people in check - maybe that makes you groan, but in the most dangerous areas, they may not be such a bad idea - as well as data collection to accurately gauge those most dangerous spots.
But to a great extent, the grant is just helping CMAP continue its mission of advising municipalities and various agencies on how to design safer and overall better transportation systems. It already has the Complete Streets program that it's been pursuing with the Chicago-based Active Transportation Alliance and the National Complete Streets Coalition, founded in 2005. It already has been addressing road design, such as the width-speed issue, and pedestrian and cycling gaps, which we know are abundant in the suburbs - consider how difficult it is to get, by bike or on foot, from Schaumburg to Bloomingdale, or Schaumburg to Arlington Heights, or Bloomingdale to Naperville, or even some parts of Naperville to some parts of Lisle.
Thankfully, a lot has already been done and planned, such as improved intersections and new paths and bridges. But a lot more work is needed, as is a lot more dedication to the safe-road concepts. So keep the funding coming; it's good to see little successes mounting, slow though they may be.