Shared Path 2030 Regional Transportation Plan

Friends of the Park, a Chicago-based park advocacy organization, is writing to submit the following comments on the Shared Path 2030 Regional Transportation Plan:

• Select projects that cause the least damage to parks, open spaces and natural areas
• Establish an open and transparent process that prioritizes open space, historic venues, and natural areas Use context sensitive design Protect and preserve scarce public parkland
• Put in place an evaluation procedure that would allow for elimination of projects based on assessment of damage to parks, natural areas, and open spaces
• Support transit and non-motorized modes, such as bicycling and walking, as less damaging to the environment, and more beneficial to public health by creating livable communities and a high quality of life.
• Support retaining a strong 4(f) review of transportation projects.
• Support development of bike lanes and safe connections for pedestrians and greenways. Planning for bike trails north and south and east and west with safe connections throughout the State should be a top priority for the 2003 Shared Access Transportation Plan.
• New pedestrian bridges to connect adjacent communities with the south lakefront, such as bridges at 35th Street, 41st Street and 43rd Street.
• Extension of the lakefront pedestrian path and bikeway from Hollywood to Extension of the lakefront pedestrian path and bikeway between 71st and 75th Street on the South lakefront.
• Extension of the lakefront pedestrian path and bikeway from Rainbow Beach Park to Calumet Park on the south lakefront.
• Oppose roadway projects which entail taking dedicated parkland.
• Eliminate the expansion of the Eisenhower, which entails taking a section of Columbus Park.

Friends of the Parks opposes the expansion of the Eisenhower, which involves taking a section of Columbus Park. Columbus Park is an historic, publicly owned park in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. The park was designed by Jens Jensen, one of America’s foremost landscape architects, between 1915 and 1922. Columbus Park has been listed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks since 1991, and has more recently been nominated as a National Historic Landmark. Further in a dense urban area where Chicago does not even meet the minimal standard of two acres per 1000 residents, parkland should not be taken for roadway projects.

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