The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) and the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) announced Wednesday they had reached a safety improvement agreement for local roads and state routes within the city.
The Memorandum of Understanding, signed by IDOT Secretary Omer Osman and CDOT Commissioner Gia Biagi, creates a preapproval process for certain infrastructure designs to improve road safety on Chicago’s urban streets for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists. The MOU covers some 400 miles of road inside the city limits, officials said.
“Today’s MOU builds on our partnership with CDOT and outlines concrete steps that we are taking to address safety while further enhancing our ongoing collaboration and joint commitment to making roads safer for all users,” said Osman. “Together, we will continue to work towards our joint goal of zero fatalities and to make Chicago and Illinois roads as safe and accessible as possible.”
The collaboration improvement will help streamline the approval and delivery process, officials said, and help implement proven safety countermeasures to address rising traffic fatalities, particularly amongst pedestrians and bicyclists. Effective immediately, the MOU will standardize traffic safety infrastructure designs, clarify standards concerning the largest vehicle likely to use a road to ensure pedestrian safety, and create an IDOT-CDOT group to further collaborations.
“As set out in the City of Chicago’s Strategic Plan for Transportation and funded through Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago Works local capital bond, CDOT is leveraging all our projects to implement high-impact safety solutions,” said Biagi. “This MOU is an important step forward in creating safer streets for our most vulnerable road users, such as children, people with disabilities, older adults, and people walking, biking, and rolling.”