Everyday Chicagoans will have to wait for the right to use their cell phones to provide recorded evidence of bus, bike lane and crosswalk parking violations, thanks to concerns raised Wednesday by business groups.
Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st) initially had proposed a measure that would allow citizens to report parking violations by both commercial and passenger vehicles.
On Wednesday, La Spata agreed to limit the proposed two-year citywide pilot to commercial vehicles only, and push back the enforcement date for three months. He also agreed to keep his citizen reporting ordinance on hold in the Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety he chairs, in hopes of striking a compromise that could appease the Illinois Retail Merchants Association and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.
Chicago streets are already a maze of protected bike lanes, bump-outs and “changes in parking and turning patterns” that have severely limited curb access for commercial deliveries and repair vehicles, said Michael Harris, manager of government relations for the retail merchants group.
“When curb space is tight, even well-intentioned drivers can struggle to locate legitimate, legal loading zones,” Harris told the traffic safety committee Wednesday.
Harris said his goal is not to exempt commercial vehicles entirely from the ordinance. It’s simply to “ensure that the enforcement tool operates in a balanced, realistic way” that bolsters both “safety and economic activity.”
Harris suggested the ordinance should provide for a first-offense warning to commercial vehicles, “at least when they are in legal loading areas or actively loading or unloading,” and add a “clear, codified defense for active loading and unloading when the vehicle is not blocking crosswalks, curb ramps or bus stops.”
Harris also suggested that La Spata’s revised ordinance “prohibit any financial incentives that could encourage over-reporting or misuse of the system” and include transparent reporting requirements that would pave the way for a balanced assessment of how the pilot impacts safety, curb access and retail operations before the program is made permanent.
“These adjustments do not weaken the ordinance. They strengthen it. They ensure that the program is fair, enforceable and in line with real-world curb conditions in Chicago’s commercial corridors,” Harris said.
Carl Gutierrez, vice president of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, applauded La Spata for “allowing for more time” to “hone the ordinance and land at the right note.”
Earlier this year, a divided City Council put the brakes on La Spata’s efforts to reduce the city’s default speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph.
The 28 to 21 vote against lowering the speed limit followed an emotional debate that pitted traffic safety advocates, many of them on the North Side, against African-American alderpersons concerned about uneven enforcement and a surge in pre-textual traffic stops targeting Black motorists.
The vote disappointed La Spata, an avid cyclist who represents Bucktown, Wicker Park, West Town and Logan Square, where several fatal accidents have occurred.
To prevent a repeat of that earlier defeat, La Spata agreed to take testimony at Wednesday’s committee meeting, without holding a vote on his revised ordinance.
“We are not asking Chicagoans to go out and enforce the law. We are creating a means for the complaints they can already submit through 311 to have a different channel of governmental enforcement,” La Spata said. “It would only allow for enforcement of commercial vehicles. We do not want to create conflicts neighbor-to-neighbor, Chicagoans to Chicagoans, which is why residential vehicles were taken out.”
Citizen-generated reports of sidewalk, bus and bike lane vehicle blockages would “first be routed” to the city’s in-house staff of parking enforcement aides who would get first crack at issuing a violation before the matter is referred to the Department of Administrative Adjudication.
“We’re not trying to take work responsibilities from any city of Chicago employee,” La Spata said. “We want to give our parking enforcement aides the opportunity to do the job that they signed up for.”