In a new document released through Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office, Chicago’s mobility and transportation undertaking pressure outline their tips for how the city has to contain and modify new types of tech-enabled transportation—from electric powered scooters to driverless motors.
Released Thursday, the file includes extra than 50 recommendations, compiled thru input from educational establishments, startups, transportation vendors, and advocacy groups.
The report asks that Chicago prepare for connected and automated automobiles by launching a self-sufficient automobile pilot that exposes Chicagoans, traffic, and agencies to the new tech while additionally giving AV businesses a place to check their automobiles.
Additionally, the file requires the town to make bigger its shared-motorcycle and dockless bike applications. Last summertime, Chicago prepared a dockless motorcycle pilot in South Side neighborhoods for motorbike-sharing agencies, along with Lime, Pace, and Uber Jump. The pilot resulted in October, and the town has been collecting remarks from riders on account of that.
In addition to motorcycle packages, the record calls particularly for carrying out a scooter-sharing pilot this year in a described area of the town to collect facts on the way to experience them in Chicago safely. To assist make sure a smooth rollout and reduce sidewalk muddle, the challenge force asks that clear rules be in the area to modify how and where they may be used. The report recommends scooter speeds be capped at 15 mph.
To fund the brand new plans, the assignment pressure has proposed new taxes on vehicle leases and parking and a multiplied state fuel tax.
“Transportation is not unfastened,” said Raymond LaHood, the assignment pressure’s chairman, at a press convention on Thursday. “If you want transportation properly, you need to spend good money.”
The idea is that taxes on single occupancy styles of transportation, like vehicles, will inspire the use of shared alternatives, like the CTA, pool cars, and public motorcycles. In 2017, forty-nine percentage of Chicago commuters drove alone, with the alternative half opting for public transportation, bikes, taxis, and carpooling, in line with the record.
Though Emanuel’s administration has spearheaded the mission force and its document, whether or now not those proposals end up fact is in the long run-up to Chicago’s subsequent mayor. To ensure that they may, the challenge pressure recommends that the new mayor allow you to both be former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot or Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle establish the chief mobility officer.
“I’m hoping that whoever is elected mayor will … hire a major mobility officer—anyone who gets up each day and thinks approximately transportation and a way to coordinate it,” LaHood said.
The town’s mobility task pressure, which was introduced ultimate 12 months, is fabricated from up of 20 individuals, consisting of Brenna Berman, the govt director of City Tech Collaborative, and CDOT Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld.
The venture force and its guidelines within the document are designed to assist the metropolis in including new mobility technology into Chicago’s existing transportation panorama because it keeps adapting to new techniques.
“We have been not discussing in 2011 dockless bikes or motorbike-sharing,” Emanuel said at the click convention. “We weren’t discussing journey-share vs. Taxis. We weren’t discussing scooters vs. Electric powered motors. All of this is in just eight years, and it’s not going to gradual down. It is simplest going to boost up.”
