Honestly they should try to figure out how to automate the blue line with that money. There will be so much work for the operators on the others…

Is one possible reason for LIHTC projects' higher per unit costs in Chicago vs. market projects that they so often seem to be six stories? My understanding is that's where you can no longer do type III construction and there's a cost discontinuity chicagoyimby.com/2025/10/exte...

Community meeting about this tonight at the Center on Halsted at 5:30PM - come join us!

It's cool that when they think the audience is progressive, the Edgewater residents organizing against the Broadway rezoning say they're fighting gentrification, but otherwise they're pretty open about what they're worrying about

Finally got something out of my head that's been there a while: A capsule history of the mid-density Chicago apartment building daniel-kay-hertz.ghost.io/the-life-dea...

About 1% of US railway mileage is electrified, with only tiny steps taken to electrify more in recent years (Caltrain) www.fastcompany.com/91178844/ind...

Read an article about the RPM TIF's high revenue generation (due to seeing it linked in City That Works news roundup @rsday.bsky.social @conordurkin.bsky.social) and it made me wonder... perhaps CTA should just use the TIF funding as a dedicated fund for local capital projects without fed funding.

Malice, incompetence, or a secret third thing: on bureaucracy daniel-kay-hertz.ghost.io/malice-incom...

North Side folks without plans tonight - come hear me talk about Zoning and Development and tell us what you think we should be doing more [or less]!! Submit any pre-meeting questions you want answered through the link below: airtable.com/appd482bRGwK...

Stone pavings of Helsinki I really would like to know the per sqm cost, the construction and maintenance budget, and who funds what and how because the quality of soil treatment in new developments is incredible. In Montréal, we can't even afford to use stone in our most iconic main street.

Chicago’s Divvy bikeshare shattered records in August: 🥇Highest month in program history: 995K rides 🥇Highest month for e-bikes: 500K+ rides 🥇Highest month for scooters: 200K+ rides The City's efforts to make Divvy more affordable & accessible are paying off!

Just got the hottest ticket in Chicago events.bloomberglive.com/event/9d5b2d...

How could you not support someone with such excellent taste in television???

Argyle, Wilson, and Cermak (Chinatown) are consistently three of the best-recovered CTA stops, while the rest of the Red Line sits at varying levels of average.

The hits keep coming: Another proactive rezoning to B-3 (5-6 stories) on Cottage Grove in Bronzeville between 43rd and 47th

They should have done this for Lincoln Yards and the 78.

SF barely beats NYC for most effective bus system, another place badly in need of rapid transit that actually serves the city. Crazy CTA buses are more productive than the L. Vegas has a better bus system than they get credit for, & the abysmal bus system in Dallas hampers its extensive LRT

What’s happening to the CTA here!? Would be super curious to see this broken down by line. Also wonder what the 2019 stats would look like.

The Subway is the most productive heavy rail system, matching the legendary Newark subway. Not far behind is LA, more evidence they should focus on subways in the urban core instead of slow & sprawling light rail. CTA takes an L here but productivity will improve soon when they cut half the lines

On the one hand this station looks cool and accessibility retrofits (not just elevators but wider platforms etc.) are much needed. On the other hand its hard to see us getting construction costs under control *at all* if a single station renovation costs $440M. blockclubchicago.org/2025/08/20/s...

California is so backward we first need to eliminate ***helicopter*** parking mandates???

More than three years after I went to my first community meeting about this, Clark Street Bike Lanes (Montrose to Winnemac) are finally happening!

This is in no way a dunk, but reading the blurbs of From Boom to Bubble makes it clear how much the discourse has changed - “overbuilding” discourse is the post-recession era replaced by emphasis on its opposite. The question is which part of today’s discourse will be the same in ~10 years!

This bungalow for sale in the 13th Ward has a pre-ADU: - separate kitchen & bathroom in the basement - compliant basement ceiling height - a separate entrance from the outside to the basement without having to go through the main floor Why block the homeowner from renting the basement out?

846 marks the highest CTA Rail staffing levels since 2019. Solid flagger class too. On pace to hit those pre-pandemic numbers just in time for the fiscal cliff to hit.

I wrote about how to get deeply affordable housing, and the duality of housing programs daniel-kay-hertz.ghost.io/how-to-get-d...

For all the HHN fans out there you can thank local advocacy groups like @betterstreetschicago.org and activists like @foxyjewishmama.bsky.social for winning faster buses and safer bike lanes so hopefully the only horrors you have are on purpose and fun.

The rolling dismount #RealBiker

One thing that is interesting here: It doesn't seem like the modern conception of aldermanic prerogative had taken hold yet. No one would ever say this today--it assumes that the decision is the administration's, which they would have to fight to overturn, as opposed to the other way around

"If passed, Baltimore would join dozens of places around the country that already have eliminated minimum parking requirements." www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/tr...

Awesome to see ONE Northside endorse the largest upzoning in modern Chicago history. If you believe in the efficacy of inclusionary zoning, it only makes sense to support large scale increases in zoned housing capacity

Chicago's got a live single stair bill now, from Alder Matt Martin chicityclerkelms.chicago.gov/Matter/?matt...

saw a couple of dudes sitting on folding chairs on their bare 3-flat rooftop overlooking the L tracks and drinking a case of beers, this is what chicago is all about

Lord, I see what you have done for others (Berkeley's public rental registry to track unit-level rents)...

I HATE this narrative around Cuomo. The retort to “he got a lot done” isn’t “but he harassed women and was a bully,” it’s “actually he didn’t do much at all – it was just an act – and he let a lot of problems fester with his inaction and awful management style.”

This coach house was built in 2023 by the couple who own the property to have a place for their mother in law to live in and help take care of their newborn child. The “granny flat” is real.

This looks like a great project, but pretty high parking ratio for rentals in that part of town, and a five story podium..! 🫠 chicagoyimby.com/2025/04/rend...

Pretty funny that the Romance of the Three Kingdoms ends with the triumph of Jin, who [offstage, after the book] fall apart after just 36 years, and end up re-establishing themselves just controlling what used to be Wu.

"Down with the BRT, long live the bus." I've just published an unusually polemical, argumentative post on my Substack explaining why I think Bus Rapid Transit is a failed planning concept. open.substack.com/pub/marcochi...

Chicago’s stagnation here is pretty notable and very worrying, and suggests that their post pandemic bounce back is nearly over. They need more funding, but *also* management that is laser focused on nuts & bolts of operations - hiring, frequency, reliability, safety, cleanliness!

CDOT opened another one of 100 planned electrified bikeshare stations in Chicago yesterday. Electrifying just a fraction of Divvy stations will eliminate dramatic amounts of battery swapping, VMT & CO₂ emissions each year! chi.streetsblog.org/2025/04/03/a...

Hanging this left vs. center-left abundance debate on elevator standards is funny because the actual people in the US elevator industry writing and defending the US standard have no clue what a YIMBY is (nevermind an “Ezra Klein”), and mostly voted for Trump resnikoff.beehiiv.com/p/the-abunda...

New from me! The hidden costs of CTA's $5.75B Red Line Extension. A story of forgotten finances, risk, and opportunity costs. citythatworks.substack.com/p/the-red-li...

⚛️ GREAT NEWS: this week, a bill to allow Large Modular Reactors in Illinois will be in committee! There are just two states in the country with an arbitrary limit on the size of a nuclear reactor. Sign all four witness slips: HB3603 is.gd/cvfIZn is.gd/vHoeqe HB3604 is.gd/6LIQ9C is.gd/QrpgPz

I’d have a lot more sympathy for the CTA - and be willing to believe that it really is a money issue more than a management/leadership issue - if the CTA themselves had been ringing the alarm about this. On the current course the system will be more than half slow zone by 2030!

What may surprise folks is civil servants are directly *subject to* common irritations with government: delays, red tape, arbitrariness. They’re regularly at the mercy of funding shortages and threats of political retaliation. Many work under policy-enforced risk aversion. DOGE dialed all of it up.

When the tribune tower was built there were two and three flats directly behind it

Parking requirements in Chicago exist on paper but functionally are non-binding in ~99% of developments post-2022 reform; they do create an administrative burden, however