Jeff Smith will be a forceful advocate for an expanded and fiscally sound public transit system, decreased congestion, and greater support for bicycles and pedestrians.
- Representative Activities:
- Over 30 years using public transit in Rogers Park, Evanston, and the North Shore
- Lifelong bicyclist
- Transportation and Land Use group, Evanston Climate Change Action Plan
- Planning process participant, Central Street Master Plan
- Participant, Evanston Multi-Modal Transportation Plan
- Attendance at CTA hearings and public meetings
- Research and writing on transportation issues
The area where we live— the area where I grew up — owes much of its past growth and present vitality and livability to ready access to public transportation, and to the alternative routes offered by an "urban grid." Our collective environmental future, as well as the vitality of our urban areas, depends on leveraging and improving our multi-modal transportation system.
Mass transit needs to be treated as necessity, not afterthought. Why must our transit systems continually lurch from crisis to crisis? No one ever talks about a "doomsday" scenario for our roads and highways, which every taxpayer subsidizes heavily; we need to accord as high a priority to modes of transportation other than the automobile. That includes support for healthy and less greenhouse-gas-intensive modes such as biking and walking.
Recognizing, however, that our society is in fact automobile-dependent, and that independence and mobility play an important part in the freedom our society enjoys, we also need to work to counter decisionmaking that has created enormous costly and frustrating vehicular traffic congestion in the Chicago area.
I believe in the right to travel. I oppose privatization of roads and the outsourcing of essential governmental functions. It's critical that decisionmakers on public transportation be accountable to the public.
Our current state representative, Julie Hamos, has played a critical part on the Transportation Committee in the Illinois House. It's important that this district, with its roots so connected to transit, continue to have the benefit of an advocate knowledgeable on the issues.
My perspective on transportation issues is deeply grounded in real-life experience. I've ridden trains from the East Coast to the Rockies, and have logged tens of thousands of hours on commuter train, light rail, bus, and bicycle in Chicagoland. I've driven a bus in this district and still hold a "C" class license. That experience has been augmented by extensive research and study of transportation planning and the interrelationship between transit, housing, and jobs. I've been an ardent supporter of readily accessible and affordable public transportation for all my adult life, and will continue to advocate for its realization at every level of government.
- Jeff Smith
More Ideas and Info from Jeff About Transportation:
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