What do you believe are the greatest transportation challenges facing the City of Chicago right now?

Everyone who rides the CTA and works for the CTA deserve to feel safe. Riders should be able to count on our public transportation to get them safely to and from work, school, doctor’s appointments and more. We must ensure that our transit system is properly staffed so that service runs smoothly, and that resources are equitably distributed across all our neighborhoods. We need to make sure CTA employees who are on the frontlines have the resources they need to be safe on the job. We could learn a lot about how to improve the system from the frontline bus drivers, train conductors, and station attendants who do the work every day. In fact, meaningful involvement of these Chicagoans in reforming and running the system is essential.

Do you or members of your family regularly use sidewalks, bike, take transit, drive, or a combination of any/all to get around? Does this correspond with your preferred/ideal modes of getting around? If not, what barriers do you and your family face in using your preferred mode of transportation?

I regularly walk in my neighborhood because we have sidewalks. Sidewalks are instrumental in bringing people together and promoting healthier communities. Neighborhoods with sidewalks promote community by allowing people to walk safely outside and meet their neighbors. We need to pay attention to make sure we have safe sidewalks in all our neighborhoods. In the summer, my family and I walk a lot. We walk to the grocery store. Personally, I don’t think I’m a skilled enough biker to ride on the streets. I feel more comfortable biking on the lakefront path. I think more protected bike paths and pathways would encourage people like me to bike more.

Can you share a personal experience that changed your opinion about a transportation related policy matter?

The CTA has kept many of my relatives, including my siblings, employed in good jobs. The CTA is instrumental for my son to get to his job downtown and many of my coworkers rely solely on public transportation. I’ve used public transportation to get to work for many years as well. I couldn’t always afford a car. I think it is critical to have safe and reliable public transportation for working people so they can get to work safely and on time and can continue to support their families.

Chicago is a snowy city, and even one stretch of uncleared sidewalk can make it impassable – particularly for folks with disabilities, the elderly, and parents with young children. What is your position on implementing a universal city-wide sidewalk snow/ice removal service?

We must do everything we can to ensure safe, passable sidewalks in winter. We must ensure that property owners are held accountable for maintaining hazard free sidewalks in a prompt manner. I would like to explore how we could coordinate neighborhood volunteers to help folks who need a hand to keep their sidewalks clear.

It is now widely recognized and understood that interstate highways were used to physically divide urban communities from one another – often along racial and class lines. How do you propose we overcome these divisions to restore the urban fabric of Chicago and reconnect our segregated neighborhoods?

We should encourage the creation and maintenance of safe pedestrian bridges, ideally with murals, encourage walkability and to connect neighborhoods safely across highways. What’s more, we should encourage entrepreneurial opportunities and focus on promoting positive investment in areas that have seen years of disinvestment in the past. We should support the creation of high-quality jobs and job training in these areas, too.

What role do you believe transportation plays in Chicago’s collective greenhouse gas emissions, climate responsibility, and overall environmental health?

We must consider the impacts of transportation as we think about how to address climate change and bolstering out City’s resiliency to the impacts of climate change. We should explore a variety of ways we can encourage residents to live close to where they work. We should also consider how we support the creation of high-quality jobs in our communities so that more people can walk and bike to work.

What is your position on the Illinois Department of Transportation’s current proposals for rebuilding North DuSable Lake Shore Drive? Do you believe the proposed designs will reduce congestion, improve transit access and make pedestrians and cyclists safer? How do you think the current proposals will impact access to the lakefront?

We must continue to engage the diverse voices of the community who will be impacted by any changes and seek to ensure that any changes promote equitable access to the Lakefront and to efficient and reliable public transportation.

What barriers do you believe the Illinois Department of Transportation presents to Chicago pursuing better safe streets design standards and transit investments? How do you plan to work with City Council, the Governor, and State legislators to overcome these barriers?

I plan to bring my experience as an organizer to bring people together to tackle difficult challenges. City leaders, working with labor and community partners, should work together with Springfield to come up solutions that make our streets and transit systems stronger and safer.

The 99-year parking meter deal enacted by former Mayor Richard M. Daley has been a barrier to enacting safe street designs by privatizing large portions of Chicago’s streets. What is your plan to address this?

I would support efforts to establish stronger oversight of city contracts to ensure that cost savings claimed by privatization are real and do not cause lower quality of services for City residents, cuts in employee wages, or the elimination of family supporting jobs. I would support efforts that ensure any further asset privatization be based on demonstrable savings over the long-term, not just short-term gain.

Studies show us that speed and distracted driving kill. What do you think are the most effective ways to reduce driver speed and increase safe driving behavior?

We need to take pedestrian and biker safety seriously and continue to explore ways to make our city walkable, bikeable, rollable, and safe for all residents. We also need to make sure that fines from speed cameras do not disproportionately impact low-income residents.

I will be paying close attention to the Smart Streets and Smart Loading Zone Pilots that were introduced into City Council this month. We should learn from these pilots and work to implement effective pieces more broadly throughout the city.

What is your position on the City passing ordinances that attempt to regulate the size, weight, and/or safety features of personal and private vehicles?

I would like to learn more about this issue.

What is your position on establishing a dedicated funding stream for safe and universal pedestrian and bike infrastructure in Chicago?

We should work with urgency to create more protected bike lanes and bike paths and increase biker safety throughout our City. Too many people had died tragically while biking in our City. We should execute on the plan to create a protected bike land on Clark Street from Irving Park to Montrose. We need to come up with new revenue streams to fund our city services including our public transit system and infrastructure including bike lanes. We should also make sure that the jobs created by these new infrastructure projects are good, safe jobs.

What is your position on creating select pedestrian-only streets?

We should involve the residents and surrounding community who will be most impacted in determining when and how we can make certain streets pedestrian-only.

What policy solutions would you implement to ensure CTA buses operate on schedule, frequently, and quickly?

We must ensure that our transit system is properly staffed so that service runs smoothly, and that resources are equitably distributed across all our neighborhoods. We need to make sure CTA employees who are on the frontlines have the resources they need to be safe on the job. We could learn a lot about how to improve the system from the frontline bus drivers, train conductors, and station attendants who do the work every day. In fact, meaningful involvement of these Chicagoans in reforming and running the system is essential.

Considering the role the CTA, Metra, and Pace play in providing public transportation within the city, what are your plans to address the impending fiscal cliff – a deficit of over $700 million – that the agencies will be facing in 2025?

City leaders should work together with Springfield to come up with revenue streams which can support our public transportation system. A good example of this was how, in concert with other Unions and the Chicago Federation of Labor, my Union and I supported the Chicago Casino which will help provide additional revenue to ensure the City of Chicago is meeting its pension obligations while also creating thousands of high-quality jobs for our City.

What is your position on establishing a network of Bus Rapid Transit lines in Chicago?

We must explore a variety of solutions to achieve a public transit system that is equitable, safe and reliable for all Chicagoans, including expanding Bus Rapid Transit lines. I would like to better understand the outcomes of the Bus Rapid Transit lines that we do have to determine how we can learn from and improve our previous experience as we think about growing them into a network.

Will you commit to securing the funding necessary to implement CTA's plan to become 100% accessible according to ADA standards? (yes/no)

Yes