I first caught wind of possible renovations to the Skokie Swift late last year (see "Mystery of the Skokie Swift").  Then I was more concerned with the choice of architects - why pay federal tax dollars to an out of state entity to help build Illinois infrastructure?  Why not instead employ the same team that brought us the Brown Line renovations (short answer: because they were unnecessary for the most part and expensive to boot).

Recently I attended the second public meeting on the Yellow Line renovation.  The four hundred plus respondents to their first survey indicated the desire for a stop at Dodge, across from the Jewish Reconstructionist Synagogue, Levy Senior Center and James Park.  However preferences were all over the map, with many people indicating Ridge and Asbury as preferred.  Their presentation in September helped provide additional information.  It also eliminated the Ridge stop as my preferred option.  No mystery here however.  While the Ridge stop would entertain close to 280,000 boardings a year (number of times someone walks in trains at that stop), the most boardings of the three, its lack of a dedicated bus stop lane, proximity to Howard Street and distance from identified Evanston bike lanes makes it not-quite-as-preferrable.  What we of the ninth ward may do if and when the CTA demolishes the South Blvd is anybody's guess..

(Asbury stop circa 1925 - dig the retail space!)

Asbury seems the next logical choice.  The Yellow Line Feasibility Study site offers information on boardings, proximity to local attractions, and connections with bus and bicycles.  Asbury is closest to major attractions like the Howard Street commercial corridor, stands on a bike lane, directly connects to the 206 bus and indirectly with the 97 bus (travelling to Old Orchard) and the 49B Western Ave bus. Most important it would entertain an estimated 263000 boardings a year - thirty percent more than Dodge Ave.  No mystery there either, but I'll let you be the judge of that.  Their second survey is ready for your feedback.

Before you send this Mystery Van packing however a few unanswered questions remain for this meddling kid -

1. Ann Rainey, Coleen Burrus and others have assured me they would stoutly defend the South Blvd stop from any CTA plans to close it.  The CTA scoping report on Red/Purple line renovations however require closing the stop for anything but the most basic repairs.  This makes some sense from the view of train speed, as would closing stops at Dempster and Foster in Evanston.  Of course, if speed were all that important we wouldn't have the CTA we do today, but simply lots of 'Swifts'..

2. Where is Citizen's Greener Evanston in this discussion?  Now flush with $15000 in grant money from the City and provided in large part by Wal Mart, the ostensibly grass roots organization would conceivably chime in on this development, using it as an opportunity to encourage greater mass transit use, and incorporating it into their Community Agenda.  I'm a part of CGE, and have asked board members.  They tell me the ridership isn't substantial enough.  Hm, 263000 boardings a year.  If each of those equated instead to entrances of an automobile, and we appended X as the carbon footprint of the resulting trip, how much CO2 would we avoid with such a train stop?  What am I missing?

3. Has the City actually received the blessing and support of the CTA in this venture?  You will note the feasibility study is a City website.  The September presentation indicated this was mainly the domain of Ann Rainey, 8th ward alderman.  And she indicated this wasn't yet a CTA project.  Hmm.  I wondered about the first of many stops on a renovated Yellow Line last December.  Perhaps we should question insead the availability of funds for just one stop, especially with a Tea Party House bent on destroying the federal government.

4. I hate to sound like one of those youngsters occupying Wall Street god-bless-'em, but really, why have we let the Skokie Swift make just one stop for fifty years?  There's this city along the way see, and the train runs through it, but doesn't make a single stop.  Why?

To celebrate Earth Day Coleen has among other things reintroduced her bag tax ordinance.  It differs from the one she avoided introducing in September.

1. This bag tax ordinance levies both paper and plastic bags, avoiding legal hurdles that have stymied such clean up efforts in cities like Oakland CA.

2.  Bag tax revenue collected would go towards educating Evanstonians to get over the Paper vs Plastic paradigm, and help businesses get in on the act.

3. Fifty percent of revenues would go towards the Evanston Ecology Center.

4. This bag tax ordinance charges one fifth the previous proposed bill; just a nickel bag.

5. This ordinance clearly defines the candidate objects for taxation, leaving dry cleaning bags, bags for produce, poultry, fish and deli meats untouched.

Furthermore the context for such an ordinance has changed.  Over a dozen more states and municipalities have passed or announced consideration of laws regulating or banning disposable carryout bags.  The city council of Santa Monica CA recently banned plastic bags, taxing the remaining paper carryout bags and provided for a reusable bag exchange to help shoppers kick the Paper or Plastic paradigm.  Prince Georges Co. Maryland is considering a tax on bags as is Toledo OH.  Bag It the movie went from winning film awards to giving pointers on how to become Bag It towns.  To see their interactive map showing bag bans and regulations worldwide click here.

This March the Evanston Environment Board recommended city council adopt an ordinance "to eliminate if not seriously reduce disposable shopping bag use," a call now taken up by the activist group Citizens' Greener Evanston.

Now that Evanston has language to consider, and a committee to consider, what should the next steps be?  Well the city itself has called for increased waste reduction efforts in its Climate Action Plan, specifically recommending the consideration of a tax on disposable carryout bags.  It should follow through with specific plans for educating businesses and consumers to bring their own bags.  Helping folks change their behavior will save the environment.  The bag tax revenue will help the fifty thousand plus shoppers in Evanston change those behaviors.  Mandating that the disposable bags provided be made of recycled material, and in turn prove recyclable would also help.  And for the sake of realism the bill should account for how businesses should handle folks who reuse disposable shopping bags.  Those plastic bags last a long time after all..

You can tune into the Bag Tax conversation during the Administration and Public Works Committee meeting tomorrow night at the Civic Center.  See you there!

Given the success rate of most bills Coleen shouldn't feel too down about her bid to bring one before the A&PW Committee this fall. Nationwide the expected lifespan of ordinances designed to curb disposable bag use don't far outstrip the period between when you pick up the bag at check out and drop off the bag in the bag bin. Blame for the failure of proposed bills in Seattle and the state of California falls squarely, but not exclusively on the shoulders of the American Chemistry Council. Their crack team of lobbyists shut down both efforts faster than you can say 'paper or plastic' using arguments that could arise around any kitchen table. How can you ban plastic bags when paper bags require four times the energy to create? Shouldn't the ultimate decision of how to carry your groceries rest with the people? Why punish people for shopping? Although each of these reasons have serious merit, should they prevent us, the community, from taking action to protect the natural heritage we hope to bequeath our kids?

Ironically we have to visit the other coast, in fact the nation's capitol for a good working example of an ordinance for reducing disposable bags. Rather than shout louder into the bullhorn community activists in Washington DC attended to each of the above points, responding to the input of citizen's groups and the city council to craft the Anacostia River Cleanup Act .

Point #1: Draft a bill that aims to improve the community

Note the title points to the purpose of the bill, not its effect. This bill aims to generate the funds Washington DC needs to clean and maintain a healthy river. The Anacostia River Cleanup Act will fund education, provide reusable bags to the needy and disadvantaged, and prevent further degradation of the river.

Point #2: Identify the guilty culprit

Yes, reducing the number of disposable bags we use will certainly decrease our contributions to landfills. It also could make bringing home the fish filet rather tricky. We could go back to wrapping the ground chuck in newspaper, or simply recognize we may need plastic bags for some tasks. Rather than penalize the use of all plastic and paper bags, the Anacostia River Clean Up Act clearly targets disposable carryout bags (ie the bags to carry your take out, not garbage bags or that sack of granola from Blind Faith Cafe).

Point #3: Help fund the solution, not more government

Revenue from the surcharge goes to the Anacostia River Cleanup Fund; a dedicated source of revenue generated from a nickel surcharge on the provision of disposable carryout bags. The District of Columbia collects surcharge revenue, but only for deposition to the fund. Now make no bones about it – the City of Evanston could use additional revenue. We seem to like world class police and fire protection, visiting lots of libraries and having healthy trees and nice parks. But in this case the cost should match the solution, not simply cover a budget hole.

Point #4 Cover all the bases.

The Cleanup Act raises awareness of the impact our choices have at the checkout counter. But it also actively involves retailers in the solution by mandating the provision of recyclable and recycled disposable bags. So even if you left your reusable bags at home (and don't feel like buying more) you will know the bags you're carrying won't outlive your grandkids.

In a nutshell the Anacostia River Cleanup Act charges consumers the true price cost of their disposable bags, offsetting the choice by funding conservation activities, and reducing the impact of that choice by making the bags recyclable and recycled. It actively and positively engages the community in improving behaviors and reducing impacts.  The Evanston City Council would do well to heed such a precedent.

This September Coleen put an ordinance on the Administration and Public Works Committee agenda that would tax consumers a quarter for each plastic shopping bag they received while shopping in Evanston.  The blogosphere surrounding Evanstonnow.com immediately lit up with accusations of another "knee jerk tax" forwarded by "elite green PC cultist savants" designed to drive consumers straightaway to the retail outlets of Skokie and Wilmette.  Some sarcastically celebrated the perservative powers plastic bags have on dog poop, while others criticized placing an "unnecessary financial burden" on poorer residents to bolster the city's general fund.  Many readers wondered why folks couldn't just BYOB to avoid the tax, and those read in the plastic bag tax literature (Bill Smith for one) pointed out the low success rate such bills have had elsewhere.

Coleen pulled the ordinance before the committee date for further consideration.  A $.25 tax on plastic shopping bags would curb their use if it passed, and given the current political environment regarding "Big Government" and taxes you have to wonder.  Precedent elsewhere suggests it wouldn't survive passage.  Oakland, CA tried the same thing several years ago, only to have the chemical industry charge the tax did nothing to address paper bag use.  So given the noise and bluster around this apparently straightforward legislation you have to wonder; what was Coleen thinking?

Coleen was thinking we should discuss how to reduce the use of plastic bags in Evanston.  Being our alderman she took action to start the conversation by bringing it to committee; the place conversations start on future legislation.  Bill Smith at Evanston Now brought it to our attention, not because of any personal animosity towards bags, but because that's what news guys should do; inform public discourse.

As a small businessman and community activist I was heartened by Coleen's action, and worried about its success.  So I took it to Citizens' Greener Evanston (CGE) and the Governmental Affairs Committee of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce.  To round out the conversation I included ISEN-SE, the environmental umbrella student group at Northwestern.  Perhaps not surprisingly both CGE and ISEN-SE liked the idea of reducing plastic bag use.  Both also leaned towards education rather than taxation as the main tool for making it happen.  As an environmentalist I'd heard the argument before; people will stop using plastic bags if you demonstrate the bags' impact.  Whole Food eliminated their plastic bag use, and had substituted donations to reward those BYOB folks.  Couldn't we apply the model elsewhere?

Paper bags require four times the resources in production and distribution than plastic bags, and take more space in the landfill.  Unless we really want to tussle with the US Chemistry Council we need to consider both paper and plastic.  Which made the reaction of the Chamber of Commerce that much more surprising, because after a long and spirited conversation they came away thinking Evanston businesses could survive a bag ordinance.

I should stress spirited.  Noone would readily entertain a tax.  They saw such a spigot to the general fund as punitive and detrimental to Evanston business.  So we kept talking.  As it turns out most of the folks at the Governmental Affairs Committee routinely carried reusable shopping bags in their cars, and even admitted to using them on occasion.  Everyone admitted an honest and abiding concern for the environment.  And most agreed Evanston would need some help in changing shopping behaviors.  They even helped identify specific tools (Trash-o-Saurus; how about check out displays) for moving customers past the paper-or-plastic paradigm.

So where have these conversations led?  Seems like most folks want to move past paper-or-plastic, and recognize the need to educate their neighbors to do the same.  Most important; they wanted to make a difference.  If we were to keep using disposable plastic bags, Jonathan Perman wondered, couldn't we use recycled, oxo-biodegradable bags?  Why not reintroduce the Trash-o-Saurus, or for that matter check out displays hawking Jewel-Osco's cheap reusable bags?  And if a modest surcharge for the use of disposable bags went to fund sustainability efforts in Evanston, perhaps it would help remind folks to pull the reusable bags from the back seat next time.

Coleen will hopefully reintroduce legislation this January that accounts for the conversation thus far.  It won't go directly to City Council; may in fact take a few months of percolating through the A&PW Committee first.  And that's a good thing, because after many years of attending to this issue I've come to realize that, above and beyond inspiring documentaries, effective legislation or grass roots organizing, its the conversation including all those things, incorporating all those ideas that brings about positive change.

I've got this.. dissonance to share with you.  The city recently agreed to spend a quarter million dollars for an engineering study to determine the feasibility of building an Evanston stop on the yellow line.  Now at first blush I'll admit this seems pretty straightforward; after all when did general contractors ever come cheaply?  And they're federal funds for the most part, all but fifty grand put up by the city.  So for fifty thousand bucks the city will have Parsons and Brinkerhoff, the same guys currently doing work rebuilding the World Trade Centers estimate the cost of building another train station.  The Evanston Roundtable saw it as a black and white issue; so did eighth ward alderman Ann Rainey.  Even Coleen the other day skipped over my confusion to the main question.  Where do we put the new station: Ridge, Asbury, or Dodge?

This is a trick question.  Evanston should have stops at all three locations along the line.

How then, from this perspective do you explain spending even fifty thousand taxpayer dollars to locate just one station?  After all each location once had its own station. Stilled by the Great Depression, retarded in their use by the quick and convenient automobile, the CTA closed each station in the 1940's and '50's in a bid to recreate the line as a shuttle service coined "The Skokie Swift."  The CTA has a history of the yellow line, replete with pictures of the stations at  http://www.chicago-l.org/operations/lines/yellow.html.

You might consider the changing times as need for a fresh approach to station building, one that warrants the intrusion of a New York engineering firm into the CTA's business.  After all it's hard to imagine building a stop like this on Asbury in 2010; where would you put the trees?

Had the CTA little experience in rebuilding old train stations I would consider it settled.  But the CTA recently rebuilt the Belmont transfer station, employing the respectable midwestern firm of F.H. Paschen to do the job.  And while Early Penitentiary Style isn't my idea of a commuter-friendly train station, steel, concrete and rebar should last until our great grandkids have had enough of it.  And that's just it; the CTA has simply rebuilt Belmont, but in fact is working on the entire Brown Line all the way to Kimball.  According the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky they're doing a pretty bad job of it too (see his recent "Arrogance on Wheels").  But if Ben Joravsky (and many community leaders in Chicago) can imagine a more intelligent, budget-friendly approach to rebuilding a whole line, Evanston can surely figure out where to put one station, right?

Right?

Or have we simply reverted to spending taxpayer dollars on consultants to organize neighbors in the eighth ward because we cannot decide on our own where best to locate a single station?  No, I haven't the stomach for such cynicism, and besides the Citizens for a Greener Evanston (www.greenerevanston.org) showed not simply can we organize to plan for city wide action to fight climate change, we can organize to act on it too.  And yes that includes Ann Rainey.

Being deeply committed to environmental matters I applaud any effort to reduce traffic congestion and our reliance on foreign owned oil distribution companies that shall remain nameless (Johnny Miller, Joe Barton - go apologize!).  Indeed the federal dollars for this project stem from the Federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, grandchild to ISTEA - the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act; born during the hopeful years of Clinton's first term.  But two hundred and twenty thousand dollars to tell us if we can build one train station where one once stood seems kind of stiff, even to a tree hugger like me.

Now do you feel the dissonance?  Heck I could settle for the opportunity to rake Rainey over the coals for political expediency, but something more important is at stake than opining our lost ability to organize as a community.  East-west traffic in Evanston during rush hour, well, it sucks.  Just visit Google Maps and go to traffic; bright red slashes across Dempster, Main and Oakton practically from the Edens to the Canal.  Now visit the neighborhoods where once the Yellow Line stations stood - preferrably using their erstwhile replacement the CTA 97 bus, or just ride your bicycle.  Asbury and Ridge are now thick with multi-unit dwellings, block after block of five story apartment buildings.  Even the modest ranch homes along East Prairie - Crawford or Kostner in Skokie would make someone from Barrington shudder with claustrophobia.  Do you see the fine retail buildings not a block or two a way, still tenanted by the small businesses that continue making America great?  Or my favorite stop - Main Street in Skokie.  You could've fallen off the platform into a barber's chair!

Evanston and Skokie shouldn't wrangle over which neighborhood deserves a cherished train stop.  These neighborhoods have fruited, just as the operators of the Chicago Rapid Transit Company dreamt they would almost ninety years ago.  Contact Ann and Coleen - they're quite responsive.  Ask not where to build the train station, but where to build the first train station in what should prove a busy string of stations relieving congestion and improving the air quality of Skokie and Evanston alike.