What is our Agenda for elections

Transportation

In America, we used to excel at building things. Construction on the Empire State Building was finished in 410 days; the first 28 stations of the New York Subway were completed in 4.7 years; in 1942, we were able to build 1,700 miles of interstate in 234 days. Now our construction times are longer, and the price we pay is significantly higher. The first three stations of New York’s Second Avenue Subway took over 16 years to build and cost over $2 billion a mile. San Francisco took 7,600 days to build a new bus lane with a cost per meter of $100,000, while the aforementioned Alaska highway cost $793 per meter. 

This is unacceptable; with the latest technology at our fingertips, we should be getting better at building, not worse. Chicagoans pay enough taxes that they should have a world-class transit system, and we must be willing to take on the challenges to deliver that.

Reorganize the bus system

Improving Chicago’s bus system is key to increasing public transit ridership and reducing traffic. Most cities design bus networks to maximize the number of routes and stops so that there is a close bus stop for you wherever you are in the city. To increase efficiency, we need to prioritize ridership. To make busing a preferable means of transportation, the city needs to increase the frequency of buses. If a bus arrives at a stop every 30 minutes, the cost of missing that bus is quite high, making the ride unattractive. Still, if we could ensure that buses arrive every 10 minutes, commuters would not be punished for missing a bus and could rely on the bussing system for more commutes.

If our goal is to cut wait times by a third with our current bus networks, we would have to triple our supply of buses which would be very costly and add to traffic congestion. Instead, we must prioritize high-frequency bus lines and eliminate our worst-performing bus lines. This will also include consolidating lines that move in similar directions to increase ridership, thus generating more revenue and allowing the city to invest in better and more buses to ease the wait times further. In addition to reshaping our bus networks, we should decrease the number of stops our buses need to take. This will allow for faster busing commute times, further incentivizing new riders to switch to the bus system. Research has shown that the ideal bus stop spacing is between 400-500 yards Link; while this would increase some walking for riders, it would result in much faster commute times overall.

More electric vehicle charging stations

Chicago needs to start investing in the infrastructure to combat climate change to facilitate a greener future. That includes electric busing and more adoption of solar energy, but there are gains we can make without spending taxpayer dollars. We need to remove barriers to electric car charging stations and allow private industry to make owning an electric vehicle in Chicago more feasible. More electric charging stations throughout the city means more electric cars on our road, leading to less pollution and less unwanted noise.

Better staffing

America is a global leader in many things; public transportation is not one of them. There are cities worldwide that far outpace America in transit ridership, commute times, and cost of building new transit. In the spirit of “if you can’t beat em, join em,” Chicago should be staffing our transit agencies with foreign experts who are experienced in building and maintaining a world-class transit system. New York attempted this in 2018 when they hired Andy Byford to lead the MTA. Byford, with experience in rail management in London, Australia, and Canada, quickly became popular for his successes in managing the MTA but was eventually pushed out by Andrew Cuomo, who preferred to centralize as much authority and recognition as possible.

Reducing costs of new public transit

One of the most significant factors holding Chicago back from rivaling the world leaders in public transit is the excessive cost we pay compared to those peers. America ranks as the 6th most expensive country in the world to build rail infrastructure, and this is while we attempt far less expensive tunneling than the rest of the world. In New York, the Second Avenue subway costs $2.6 billion/mile; in Los Angeles, their Purple Line costs $800 million/mile, whereas comparable prices in Paris are $160 million/mile. In Madrid, they are $320 million/mile. We could be getting much more for the same dollars we are spending on our current infrastructure needs, saving taxpayer dollars while also improving our public transit.

Hiring managers from countries successful in building cost-effective transit is an excellent first step in reducing our costs, but we must go further. We need to be streamlining the process for our transit agencies to get permits and close construction areas to traffic. We should also be purchasing our rail cars from foreign manufacturers with far more experience building rail cars due to foreigners’ high transit usage rates. In California and New Jersey, trains cost about 35% and 60% more respectively than our European counterparts. Chicago could be getting around twice as many train cars for the same price, should we search for better products competitively.

Twitter Instagram
Paid for by Botsford for Alderman. A copy of our report filed with the State Board of Elections is (or will be) available on the Board’s official website (www.elections.il.gov) or for purchase from the State Board of Elections, Springfield, Illinois.