Earlier this month, the Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago Department of Transportation hosted one of their community involvement events at Avondale-Logandale Elementary School for feedback on the Bus Priority Corridor Study. The event was informative and interactive, with staff informing community members of the plan.
Chicagoans have been begging for more improvements to the CTA. A struggling bus network — with traffic causing slower speeds and reduced reliability — needs improvement. The buses play a huge, undervalued part of the network and deserve projects that will improve service.
While the Trump administration’s threat to cut off federal transit funding is worrisome, there’s some hope with our state lawmakers’ recent passage of a major transit reform bill. Focusing on five key crucial corridors is not only a good way to soft-launch a project but a necessity after a proposed bus rapid transit, or BRT, for Ashland Avenue was killed by community pushback 10 years ago.
The proposed corridors for improvement are: Pulaski Road, Western Avenue, Cottage Grove Avenue, Fullerton Avenue and 55th Street/Garfield Boulevard. The Western Avenue plan has support, according to a 2024 letter from City Council members demanding improvement. Dedicated, center-running bus lanes and priority signaling would dramatically improve speed and reliability, and give residents living near the corridor access to true rapid transit.
So what’s the tradeoff? On some streets, a reduction of parking, travel lane or left turns. This will undoubtedly raise community concern. The hope is that by garnering community support and addressing concerns, the project can prove its worth.
And there is public support out there for a revitalized transit system, as my grassroots petition Chicago 2100 shows.
With this support and the successful completion of these corridors, the CTA can further inspire Chicagoans to fight for a better-connected network. This starts with these five corridors but shouldn’t stop there. The priority corridor study won’t fix the CTA’s problems, but it signals a brighter future ahead.
Dan Gentile, Bucktown
Meaning, hope through children’s songs
I was in Japan last month. An opportunity arose to spend a day in Nagasaki, the second site where the United States dropped the atomic bomb in August 1945. I decided to go. In my own feeble and fumbling way, I hoped — or did I resolve? — to achieve some measures of empathy and contrition for the horror and terror and unspeakable suffering.
On the day of my visit, the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum was packed with visitors. I saw artifacts, photos, exhibits and carefully curated explanations. But I found myself feeling hollow and numb. Somehow, I could not relate to any of it.
I trudged — or perhaps stumbled? — out the door and into the adjoining garden. Meticulously groomed, it was filled with statuary and monuments gifted to the city of Nagasaki by nations and people from throughout the world.
Listlessly, I walked — or did I shuffle? — through the grounds. Draped under — or perhaps smothered by? — a sullen November sky, the sculptures seemed merely to be drab and inanimate forms. Or were they shapes without form? They were cold — cold beyond cold, I thought, in ways that only bronze and granite can possibly know. I was just like them. I was devoid of feeling.
Suddenly, I heard singing. Were my ears deceiving me?
Singing it was. The lilting voices of a children’s choir were taking flight. The children of Nagasaki were singing!
It was then that I realized that my quest for meaning and understanding was not to be through the museum. My pilgrimage for forgiveness and atonement was not to culminate in the garden. Redemption was to be had through the children.
Sometimes terror and hope can be bound up as one. The children of Nagasaki taught me that.
So perhaps it will be children who help us back away from the precipice. Perhaps it will be children who guide us from the abyss.
The children. We dare not betray the children.
Scott K. Summers, Harvard
Medicaid cuts ‘catastrophic’
As nurse practitioners serving uninsured and Medicaid-reliant patients in Chicago, we’re sounding the alarm: Proposed Medicaid cuts represent a catastrophic threat to our community’s health.
While our clinical care is philanthropically funded and free to patients, Medicaid provides the essential tools — medications, equipment, lab services — that make our work effective. Together, this tandem approach has transformed lives by managing chronic conditions that would otherwise send patients to emergency rooms repeatedly.
Take diabetes care. We’ve helped patients reduce dangerously high blood sugars, discontinue insulin and return to work free from disabling neuropathy and vision changes. We’ve reduced the occurrence of stroke and heart attack, cutting mortality rates and preventing life-altering disabilities. But these victories rely entirely on Medicaid-covered resources: continuous glucose monitors, insulin and oral medications, access to specialists like endocrinologists and cardiologists and basic lab tests like hemoglobin A1c to track progress. These advancements in diabetes care can change lives and should be accessible to all.
Without Medicaid, we scramble for stopgap solutions — scraping together donations for one glucose monitor or convincing a family member to cover one month of medication. But what happens the next month? Donations cannot sustain an entire neighborhood’s health care needs indefinitely.
The situation is already dire. Some patients earn just above Medicaid’s threshold yet forgo employer insurance because, as one told us, “It’s the premium or my car note, and I need the car to get to work and take care of my kids.” With subsidy removals and the rumored return of high-risk pools, even more will be priced out of lifesaving care.
This is the moment for health care reform — but not through cuts. People are making impossible choices to survive as it is. Illinois should, at a minimum, look to Massachusetts’s 2006 reforms creating a near-universal coverage system as a model for meeting the challenges of 2025. Low-barrier, cost-effective preventative care saves money by avoiding expensive chronic disease complications. If we truly care about efficiency, accountability and sustainability, we cannot forget humanity and holistic care.
We beg policymakers to consider this: We should invest in Medicaid, not cut it. Our patients deserve better.
Erin Miller and Angela Moss, nurse practitioners, Rush University College of Nursing
For-profit care sinks the most helpless patients
Thank you to the Sun-Times’ Kaitlin Washburn for her outstanding article about the substandard medical care provided to prison inmates by Centurion Health, one of the country’s largest correctional medical companies. Pursuant to a contract with Illinois, Centurion is responsible for delivering health care to people housed in every prison in the state. Centurion’s history of poor care has caused preventable harm and death to inmates and is the subject of litigation across the country.
About a decade ago, Illinois decided to privatize medical coverage for children in foster care by entering into a contract with Centene Corporation, another huge provider. The results were equally unacceptable. As a story reported in this paper revealed, Centene often failed to deliver basic medical care for the children such as dental visits, immunizations and assessments. Foster parents frequently had to wait months to get appointments for needed care.
We have also experimented with injecting a profit motive into nursing home care and, once again, the results have been dismaying. Abundant research shows that for-profit nursing facilities have substantially inferior outcomes for their residents than not-for-profit homes.
Most recently in Illinois and across the country, there has been a proliferation of private entities providing guardianship services for mostly older individuals who have no family and struggle with cognitive disabilities, such as Alzheimer’s disease. While there is no comprehensive research on the efficacy of for-profit guardianship, there are examples of mismanagement and even corruption across the country.
It’s past time that we rethink the wisdom of infusing a profit motive into critical care for the most vulnerable and helpless members of society.
Charles P. Golbert, Cook County Public Guardian
‘Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden?’
An Associated Press story of President Donald Trump’s Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, speech reported him replaying some of his greatest hits on immigration, including, “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden — just a few?”
I’ll take that question.
According to the World Population Review, Sweden is the fourth-happiest country in the world, and Norway is No. 7. Both, by the way, are saturated with the socialism that Trump tries to terrify us of.
The U.S. ranks No. 24. As things stand, why would somebody from Scandinavia want to move here?
It gets worse. A recent Gallup Poll concluded, for the second year in a row, that 20% of Americans would move to another country if they could. This was driven by a quadrupling in the last 10 years to 40% of women under age 45 who said that they would move. This suggests that the happiness trend here is downward, which is unsurprising.
On Election Day 2024, I was visiting a happier country. If, after the election result was known, I had been invited by somebody with authority to stay, I might not be here now.
Curt Fredrikson, Mokena
Bring on a boycott
The Trump administration is proposing to require foreign visitors who are coming from countries that are part of a visa waiver program to submit additional personal information, including five years of their social media history.
It is time for people from these countries to boycott travel to the U.S. Canadians have been doing this, in large part, for the past year. Hopefully, those from other countries will join them. Causing a financial hit to the U.S. tourist economy is probably one of the few things that has a chance of bringing back some sanity to the governance of our country.
With the U.S., Canada and Mexico hosting the World Cup in soccer this coming year, I would urge people to boycott any match in the U.S. Stay home and watch it on television. You’ll probably get a better view of the match, anyway. Want to attend a live match? Go to Canada or Mexico.
The dictatorial Trump administration needs to see that the world will not acquiesce to its fascist and idiotic demands.
Bob Wagner, Naperville
Businesses will flee with corporate head tax
Mayor Brandon Johnson doesn’t understand that the millionaires and billionaires he loves to criticize are the people who own the companies that employ many Chicagoans. Forcing a corporate head tax on them is a job killer, plain and simple. I am proud of the many City Council members for standing up to him. At a time when our city is in dire need of more businesses to call our city home and provide much-needed jobs, our mayor is suggesting that we make it even less desirable for companies to operate in the city.
The funds raised by this head tax are supposed to go toward violence prevention groups, but not the Chicago Police Department, which was almost 2,000 officers below where it should be in 2024. It will be so easy for companies to relocate just beyond the city limits to Oak Park or Niles, where they will be welcomed with open arms. The word “birdbrain” comes to mind when considering the mayor’s proposal.
Mike Kirchberg, Little Italy
Pigskin prophecies
It’s been said that Nostradamus predicted a major conflict to occur between old enemies in 2026. Many interpret this to mean that Russia and Ukraine will continue their struggle well into the new year.
On the other hand, it could mean that Da Bears and Packers will meet for a third time in the playoffs. However, since the 16th century soothsayer was not known as a football fanatic, there is good reason to be worried.
Bob Ory, Elgin