Renew America Success Stories

Transportation and Air Quality Program

Description

The Transportation and Air Quality Program works to promote quality mass transit, community planning and other transportation strategies as an alternative to the automobile. The program is a component of the Campaign for Sustainable Chicago, a multi-year effort to promote a healthy environment, empowered communities and productive work as core values of Chicago's development strategy. The Campaign for a Sustainable Chicago is a project of the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), a group that works toward promoting public policies that encourage sustainable, just and vital urban communities.

Automobiles are a major source of environmental problems in cities like Chicago. In the form of roadways, cars consume valuable agricultural land, which reduces our ability to grow food.  Roadways add to pollution because as impermeable surfaces they create runoff and facilitate erosion and auto emissions are a source of ozone precursors and greenhouse gases. CNT's Transportation and Air Quality Program seeks to redirect Chicago's transportation strategy to a hierarchy that promotes first and foremost walking, followed by bicycling, mass transit and, where unavoidable, autos.

Densely populated urban environments are ideal models of sustainability from a transportation perspective.  Properly structured, the majority of urban transportation can be accomplished on foot, dramatically reducing energy consumption and pollution production. Fighting for a "place-centered" strategy, the program is also working to produce safer neighborhoods so residents can walk and bike in safety. Finally, the program is working to provide employment for low-income inner-city residents in transportation infrastructure projects.

By implementing an alternative transportation policy, Chicago will improve air quality, reduce energy consumption and ensure that suburban green spaces and agricultural lands are not converted into auto-based urban sprawl.

Program Highlights

Alternative Regional Transportation Plan

• The Transportation and Air Quality Leadership Commission, a citizen transportation initiative, is developing an alternative transportation plan for the metropolitan Chicago area.  This plan will provide an analysis and critique of Chicago's current transportation strategy and will specify transit alternatives.
• The plan will help ensure that funding received under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Act will be used for transportation programs that help create jobs in low-income communities and help achieve environmental objectives through compliance with the Clean Air Act.

• Under the Lake Michigan Ozone Study, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin have been examining transportation control measures as mandated by the Clean Air Act.  CNT will develop and model alternative transportation control measures and incorporate such measures into CNT's Alternative Transportation Plan for Northeastern Illinois.

• This effort works to encourage the revitalization of Chicago's urban neighborhoods. By directing development money toward dense, urban environments, mass transit evolves as the most efficient form of travel.
• Additional goals of this effort include improved community mobility, increased neighborhood stability and safety, improved air quality and expanded job and housing opportunities for lower-income residents.

Midwest High Speed Rail Network

• CNT has sponsored a conference to examine the possibility of developing high-speed rail throughout the midwest.  CNT will continue to identify opportunities for and barriers against creating such a transportation network.

• CNT is working with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to encourage lending institutions to recognize the increased economic resources available to those who live close to mass transit.  An NRDC study found substantial savings were enjoyed by residents living close to mass transit compared to those living farther away. CNT seeks to convince lenders to offer larger mortgages to families located near mass transit because of their decreased family expenses.
• This effort will help counteract the historic bias toward suburban lending and against lending in established urban neighborhoods.

• The Transportation Reader, a compendium of state-of-the-art analysis of transportation policy and technology.
• The Transportation Update, a summary of transportation and air quality issues for citizen activists.

Vital Statistics

Program Management/Partnerships: The Transportation and Air Quality Program Strategy is a component of the Campaign for Sustainable Chicago.  Partners of this initiative include the Natural Resources Defense Council, Metro Seniors in Action, Access Living, Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, Community Workshop on Economic Development, Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, Chicagoland Bicycle Federation and the Open Lands Project.

Budget: In review.

Community Served: The residents of Chicago, especially residents of urban neighborhoods, which are historically low-income communities of color.

Measures of Success:

A CNT study finds that 90% of Chicago's energy dollars leave the local economy. Every dollar saved by converting from less to more energy-efficient transportation means that $.90, which otherwise would have been lost, is recycled through the local economy.

Since the implementation of the program, there have been improvements in the health of Chicago neighborhoods.

Lower-income communities are gaining in the capacity to influence the direction of their neighborhoods.

The program has provided employment opportunities in lower-income neighborhoods.

Success stories designed by Mark W. Nowak

Back to Top