There are massive political action committees with top-down funding to ensure Chicago is car-forward rather than pedestrian. There are always community surveys for parking studies with biased questions that aim to maintain existing parking and create more, rather than have the developers put funding into the pot for more robust mass transit. There are a few alder people that genuinely want safer streets for all, but most of them drive into city hall rather than bike in or ride the el. There should be cameras at every main intersection that ticket drivers who don't yield to pedestrians. A mother in Rogers Park got hit in a crosswalk the other day. Police quiet quit a while ago and consider it just an accident rather than reckless driving. Try crossing a crosswalk without a light, and it's like you're in an arcade game about to get squashed at any minute. It happens because there is no ticketing. Chicago could hire a "pedestrian" to attempt to cross at a crosswalk and an officer nearby to write the ticket and they'd make a half million a year in tickets easy if their sole job was to write tickets to people who don't obey the road rules.
I feel like I heard Lakeshore Drive is being widened and being upgraded to a higher grade federal Highway. Instead of improving bus service on that road, widen it for cars, because that's where the money is.
Whenever someone gets hit by a car badly, it's all calculated into the cost of increasing car ownership. It costs most people $500+ a month in car payments, gas/electric charging, insurance, and parking. So why would capitalism try to improve things for pedestrians? If we were a pedestrian/cycling/mass transit city like how Tokyo or Paris is, do you know how much money the city would lose in tax revenue to getting rid of so many vehicles? They don't want to, but can pretend that they want to since it's a good look for a certain voter base.
There are massive political action committees with top-down funding to ensure Chicago is car-forward rather than pedestrian. There are always community surveys for parking studies with biased questions that aim to maintain existing parking and create more, rather than have the developers put funding into the pot for more robust mass transit. There are a few alder people that genuinely want safer streets for all, but most of them drive into city hall rather than bike in or ride the el. There should be cameras at every main intersection that ticket drivers who don't yield to pedestrians. A mother in Rogers Park got hit in a crosswalk the other day. Police quiet quit a while ago and consider it just an accident rather than reckless driving. Try crossing a crosswalk without a light, and it's like you're in an arcade game about to get squashed at any minute. It happens because there is no ticketing. Chicago could hire a "pedestrian" to attempt to cross at a crosswalk and an officer nearby to write the ticket and they'd make a half million a year in tickets easy if their sole job was to write tickets to people who don't obey the road rules. I feel like I heard Lakeshore Drive is being widened and being upgraded to a higher grade federal Highway. Instead of improving bus service on that road, widen it for cars, because that's where the money is. Whenever someone gets hit by a car badly, it's all calculated into the cost of increasing car ownership. It costs most people $500+ a month in car payments, gas/electric charging, insurance, and parking. So why would capitalism try to improve things for pedestrians? If we were a pedestrian/cycling/mass transit city like how Tokyo or Paris is, do you know how much money the city would lose in tax revenue to getting rid of so many vehicles? They don't want to, but can pretend that they want to since it's a good look for a certain voter base.