Tag: Forest Park

Choosing NITA board members: it needs the best people

February 2, 2026 / / 0 Comments

It’s super important to the success of the forthcoming Northern Illinois Transit Authority1 (NITA, pronounced “neat-uh”) that is has new board members who are forward-thinking, collaborative, and invested in high-quality transit service. Collaboration is almost an inherently necessary trait, as 17 of the 20 new board members will also serve on either the Pace, Metra, or Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) boards! A mind for the future is also obligatory because NITA will take over planning responsibilities from the three service boards and decide on service patterns and expansions with the region in mind, using new-to-the-region operations and capital funding.

The Blue Line to Forest Park desperately needs an overhaul to eliminate slow zones and create stations that are comfortable for riders. Connect 290 Blue is an interagency effort to consolidate planning for the Blue Line overhaul and the reconstruction of the Eisenhower Expressway.

There is going to be an estimated $1.2 billion in new funding for transit service and another $180 million annually for capital projects; I want the new funds to be invested well2 and I think that starts with a well-formed NITA board3.

The authority will materialize on September 1. Good board members should be nominated by their respective choosers and confirmed by the Illinois Senate well in advance.

Mayor Johnson will get to appoint five members to the NITA board, similar to how the mayor of Chicago appoints five members to the Regional Transportation Authority board. The RTA will dissolve on September 1. The same goes for Cook County President Preckwinkle, who will appoint five members to NITA, with “advice and consent” of the 17 commissioners.

New to the process will be Governor Pritzker, who will get to appoint five members to the NITA board. The Illinois governor did not get to appoint any of the RTA board members.

The last key attribute of a NITA board member is their personal investment in transit.

Drake Warren is running for a seat on the Cook County board and at the Abundant Housing Illinois happy hour last week he said that as a commissioner, to ensure that NITA provides the best connectivity for Cook County residents, he will support only the nominations of people who actually ride transit in the region.

This is what Drake said (which is in the video above):

Cook County is responsible for putting some of the upcoming NITA board members on the board, and I have some non-negotiables [in order] to have my support for appointment.

Somebody has to be a transit user and have relevant expertise, whether that’s legal, whether that’s technical, operational, or otherwise.

I’m not going to have a discussion around support unless they can meet those criteria because transit is one of the most important ways for how our city fulfills its function of connecting people.

I think whether one rides transit is a reasonable and preferred heuristic to gauge board member eligibility. So that’s another reason why I think AHIL’s endorsement of Drake Warren was the right call.

Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC), based in Chicago, adds six of their own criteria – vision, regional perspective, financial experience, consistent and recent transit use, commitment to values, and being a transit champion – for good board member choices. They offered this in an open letter to all of the people required by law to appoint NITA board members.

Ensure your voter registration is up to date and request a Vote By Mail ballot.

Footnotes

  1. I think that Austin Busch wrote the best summary of NITA (SB2111), for Streetsblog Chicago. ↩︎
  2. Speaking of good choices in spending: the transit TIF that is funding the local match for the CTA’s Red Purple Modernization Phase 1, which was completed in summer 2025, will likely have generated the necessary amount of monies in 2028. CTA does not yet have a plan for Phase 2 and should not automatically have access to transit TIF funding. City That Works argues that the transit TIF should be terminated at that time rather than continue to divert money from the different city and county governments. ↩︎
  3. Diverging Approach writes about some of what the new board’s mandate comprises. ↩︎

The first raised crosswalk I’ve seen in Illinois

March 17, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The raised crosswalk, a view looking northeast, from the sidewalk. 

Forest Park was a client of mine in 2012 via my work for Active Transportation Alliance; they’re a technical consultant for cities that had grants from the Communities Putting Prevention to Work program. I visited the village with one of their staffers to identify great locations for bike racks (that also included advice on their existing rack inventory, and suggestions for exactly which models to buy).

We would drive around town and then stop and walk a lot. One place where we did a lot of walking was in their downtown, on Madison Street (the same Madison Street as in Chicago). I was pleasantly surprised that their signage reflected the “stop for pedestrians in crosswalk” law, replacing the now-irrelevant “yield for pedestrians in crosswalk” signs. And to top it off, they had talking and lighted signals at some of the crosswalks. I do not support any widespread installation of these: I think they help move our culture in a direction that perpetuates the low respect we have for pedestrians. I believe there are other ways to enforce driver compliance that do not require this kind of equipment.

Forest Park has installed one of those ways: it’s a raised crosswalk (also known as a speed table). It looks like a speed hump, but is much wider, has a flat top, and carries a marked crosswalk (see my article on Grid Chicago “What is an unmarked crosswalk?“). It causes drivers to slow down and has an added – subjective – benefit of intimating that the driver is entering a “protected space”, one for people on foot and that it should be respected. They bring the roadway up to the pedestrian’s level instead of dipping the sidewalk down to the driver’s level.

I don’t know of one in Chicago, but three guys are working to get several installed in a Logan Square traffic circle redesign.

Note: If you are interested in knowing exactly which models of bike racks to buy, learn more at Simple Bike Parking, or contact me directly. I may charge a fee.

The raised crosswalk as seen from a car moving westbound.