The day before he pulled the plug on his re-election bid, Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to lead a task force charged with re-imagining Chicago’s transportation system in a fast-changing landscape.
Nobody paid attention because of the political earthquake that Emanuel touched off the following day.
On Thursday, the Transportation and Mobility Task Force held its first City Hall meeting and got marching orders from a mayor who will be long gone before many of the big-picture recommendations can be implemented.
Emanuel noted that, during his 2011 mayoral campaign, the “big issues” in transportation — beyond modernizing CTA, expanding O’Hare Airport and overhauling Union Station— were building more bike lanes and getting rolling on bike-sharing.
“We now have dockless bikes. We have scooters, driverless vehicles. We have obviously the rides of rideshare as a competitor of mass transit as well as the taxi system. And I don’t believe the pace of this change is gonna slow up. I actually think it’s only gonna accelerate,” the mayor told the group.
“How do you look around the corner?”
Emanuel noted that Chicago’s past as the nation’s transportation center was “written by always being on the cutting edge” and it’s time to write a “blueprint for the future.”
That means questioning whether a bureaucratic structure that includes the CTA, the Chicago Departments of Transportation and Aviation are nimble enough for the modern era, the mayor said.
“The world is changing. The driving factors behind that change is we have density. People want to be able to … navigate that density, which is what I think the scooter is about and dockless bikes and high-speed rail is about,” he said.
“How do we invest in a world that is changing rapidly? And are we structured in a way to handle it? It’s hard to to see around a corner. I don’t know if you guys are gonna be able to do it. But we have to start thinking and asking.”
For years, Emanuel has been accused of tilting the playing field in favor of Uber, whose investors include the mayor’s brother, at the expense of the CTA and a now-decimated taxicab industry.
His decision to raise ride-hailing fees by 15-cents-a-ride this year and another nickel-a-ride next year and ship the proceeds to the CTA was not enough to alleviate those concerns.
The taxicab industry’s City Council allies strongly favor an even higher fee. They want to bolster CTA bus service after a 21 percent decline in ridership since 2012 as riders frustrated by the snail’s pace of bus service switched to ride-hailing.
LaHood, one of Emanuel’s closest friends in politics, refused to say if he favors a higher tax or increased city regulation on the burgeoning ride-hailing industry.
“That’s the purpose of the task force — to try and figure that out,” he said.
LaHood said he hopes to come up both short-term and long-term recommendations.
“There’s gonna be a new mayor. The new mayor is gonna face the same problems Mayor Emanuel is facing. How do we get everything sort of coordinated and working together with an understanding of the different roles of different kinds of transportation?” he said.
“Hopefully, we provide a blueprint for the next mayor, but in the short-term, give Mayor Emanuel a few opportunities to implement a few things.”
LaHood also refused to weigh in on the mayor’s plan to rely on an elusive state transportation bill to find at least some of the $2.3 billion needed to extend the Red Line from its south terminus at 95th Street all the way to 130th.
During Thursday’s meeting, it took more than five minutes for the dozens of participants to introduce themselves.
The meeting began with a statement from Deputy Mayor Bob Rivkin. He’s now trying to nail down a contract with visionary billionaire Elon Musk, paving the way for Musk to build an underground transit line to whisk travelers between downtown and O’Hare Airport in 12 minutes.
Last week, Emanuel said he was not worried about either the now-resolved SEC investigation of Musk, or Musk’s self-inflicted wounds or personal behavior.
“I want to make sure the technology works,” he said.
If his successor has other priorities and decides to kill the project?
“Then you’ll just have to get on a train from Washington to Dulles to see what it feels like,” he said then.
