Matching Transit to Economic Need

The history of transportation planning in our region has been mired in decades of racism in governmental policies and corporate investments, from the construction of highways and major thoroughfares that displaced and disconnected communities of color, to the neighborhood disinvestment and redlining that drove the dismantlement of our transit network on the West and South sides.

These conditions have made it very difficult for people of color without cars to access employment and services, furthering the cycle of poverty that so many people work hard to avoid. Health conditions triggered and aggravated by auto-oriented neighborhoods (such as obesity and respiratory and heart ailments) underlie 90 percent of severe and deadly COVID-19 cases.

It is no coincidence that the Chicago communities hardest hit by the pandemic are the same affected by decades of neighborhood disinvestment and disconnected from transit and active transportation options. Virus transmission is fueled by overcrowded homes and disinvestment, not by density: Our transit-rich, denser North Side lakefront has the lowest number of COVID-19 cases per capita.

These entrenched inequities explain the virus's prevalence in our black and Latino neighborhoods, and the grief, anger and calls to protest by South and West Side residents. People there have been literally cut off from transit networks and development for decades, and endure daily expressions of the systemic racism that pervades every aspect of our city.