A dedicated bus lane on Western Avenue? Nearby aldermen support overhaul plan to make CTA less ‘Loop-centric.’

Chicago’s neighborhood-connecting north-south spine, Western Avenue, could be in for major surgery if a coalition of public transit backers have their way.

A push to install the city’s first extended bus rapid transit lanes along its longest street is well underway. Its supporters hope a lane on either side of the busy 27-mile street will be carved out exclusively for faster bus travel — a setup they say helps buses function almost like trains.

The proposal will certainly face complaints. A similar idea floated by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel for Ashland Avenue flopped about a decade ago amid opposition, including from drivers who decried the project they said would slow car traffic to a crawl on the major thoroughfare.

But the coalition pushing the latest plan for so-called BRT is stepping on the gas. Their aspirations, if realized, would amount to the most dramatic reimagining of a Chicago roadway in decades.

“I think it’s a way to redefine the way our city operates,” said Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, a chief backer of the rapid bus lane push. “We are pivoting in a different direction and really being a city for the future. I think this is a way to get there.”

Vasquez in late May sent a letter calling for a study on a Western Avenue BRT to the mayor and leaders of the Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago Department of Transportation. Seventeen other aldermen — including all but one of those whose wards include Western — signed the letter and urged city leaders to “move quickly.”

Their wishes seem to have been answered. The CTA and CDOT have since recently selected Western as one of five roadways to get a “bus priority corridor study.”

Any implementation remains far off, and it is unclear what a Western Avenue BRT would ultimately look like. In April 2013, the CTA proposed center-running dedicated bus lanes on Ashland Avenue after also studying Western as a potential site. The lanes for that never-built route would have flanked bus stops built into medians about every half-mile.

The CTA predicted riders would save eight minutes on each 2.5-mile Ashland Avenue bus trip, and said new buses traveling nearly twice as fast as old ones would almost match Red Line train speeds. Meanwhile, the $160 million proposal would also have squeezed car traffic into one lane and removed most left turns for drivers.

Then the plan hit a road bump. While Emanuel moved ahead with the $32 million “Loop Link” system that added short rapid bus lanes to Madison, Washington, Clinton and Canal streets downtown, he failed to advance the Ashland Avenue BRT amid pushback.

One vocal opponent who helped stop the Ashland Avenue BRT was Roger Romanelli, executive director of the Fulton Market Association. He pumped the brakes when asked if his organization would again oppose a bus rapid transit system.

“This is 2013, 11 years ago,” Romanelli said.

The Fulton Market leader shared frustrations with the area’s public transportation. He still thinks potentially simpler improvements to nearby bus lines — like additional express routes, better shelters and more connections — could more efficiently improve transit rides.

But Romanelli also sees change in the way people are thinking about their commutes. He said he has no stance on a Western Avenue BRT and will look to the opinions of his association’s business and resident members.

“People are striving to have less of an automobile-dependent Chicago,” he said.

The one Western Avenue aldermen who did not sign on to the recent support letter, Ald. Matt O’Shea, 19th, worries losing a lane of traffic could worsen the car bottleneck in his Far Southwest Side ward. He does not buy the idea that many suburbanites driving through Beverly will take the faster bus.

“I would imagine I have less CTA ridership than any other ward. Probably no one’s even close to me,” he said.

However, O’Shea said he does not oppose the project. Still, he does not trust the struggling CTA to make sure “it is done right.”

If built, a BRT lane might not even make it to the Beverly neighborhood O’Shea represents. A CTA spokesperson confirmed the agency and CDOT plan to study bus infrastructure additions on Western from Howard Street to 79th Street, eight blocks short of his ward.

The changes the agencies will consider involve many components typically used in bus rapid transit, like median-protected bus lanes, as well as smaller tweaks, “with the goal of developing bus priority streetscape plans that could be advanced to detailed design and construction.”

For Vasquez, the crucial difference between the Ashland Avenue proposal and the new Western Avenue effort is “probably just the moment.”

“Now there’s more openness to that conversation. I think it’s a really good time to revisit it,” he said.

His letter cites support from the Active Transportation Alliance, Better Streets Chicago and Commuters Take Action, among the mix of progressive urbanism nonprofits and activist groups building a growing foothold in Chicago politics with the aim of centering commuting infrastructure less around cars and more around pedestrians, transit riders and cyclists.

In a similar effort last month, 14 aldermen joined a push organized by activist group Bike Grid Now calling on the Illinois Department of Transportation to dramatically reconsider a planned reconstruction of North DuSable Lake Shore Drive. The iconic thoroughfare’s overhaul should include BRT or light rail, the aldermen wrote.

The Western Avenue plan comes with “consensus,” said W. Robert Schultz III, an Active Transportation Alliance campaign organizer. While advocates maintain that Chicago should build dedicated bus lanes citywide, Western is the “leading contender” and “a logical place to begin,” he added.

“It’s going to take building political will to make this happen,” Schultz said. “Nothing ever changes just because people think it’s a good idea. You have to sell it.”

Vasquez is joined at the helm of the push for a Western Avenue BRT by Ald. Matt Martin, 47th. Both have already prepped for the transit change with rezoning proposals for stretches of the road that would make larger housing projects easier to build.

“It goes hand-in-hand,” said Josh Mark, Martin’s chief of staff. “What we’re talking about is transforming our urban environment to make sure that it is the most equitable, the most sustainable and the best for our economy.”

Mark cast the Western Avenue proposal as a way to better serve the lower-income Chicagoans who take the bus and make the city’s transit system less “Loop-centric,” a potential key selling point for Mayor Brandon Johnson, whose administration has placed a premium on equity-focused efforts. Johnson’s administration did not comment when asked about the potential for a Western Avenue BRT.

In a city where the train lines all head into the Loop, bus rapid transit could increase connectivity between neighborhoods, said Omer Verbas, transportation system engineer at Argonne National Laboratory.

Verbas is part of a team examining transportation with regional planners, and BRT is one of several options that could boost transit, he said. Their discussions have involved some of the big questions facing such a project: how many cars it might remove from the road, and what it would mean for the surrounding areas.

Vasquez and Mark are unsurprised by the wariness of car drivers who hear they might soon have less space on the road. But if bus speeds jump from around 10 mph to 18 mph with a BRT, they say roads will ultimately become decongested.

“The goal is to convert a lot of current drivers to bus riders,” Mark said. “The cities that are built fully around cars have the worst congestion.”

Any grand opening of a Western Avenue BRT remains “several years down the line,” potentially even a decade off, Mark said. The project would be far cheaper than building rail, he added.

Vasquez said a well-done BRT would end up with more people on transit, allowing Chicago to “reach an equilibrium.”

“It clearly requires more money than the city has, so it’s going to take some state and federal funding,” he said. “The goal is not just one street of bus rapid transit, it is figuring out the feasibility of that kind of network.”

But as other Midwestern cities get their own routes with big federal aid — like Madison, set to soon open the first of a network of BRT lines supported by nearly $230 million from the Biden administration — competition for much-needed money will only grow more difficult, Mark said.

“We’ve been taking too long already, we are falling behind the line,” he said. “We need to make sure that we don’t miss that boat. Or train. Or bus.”

Chicago Tribune’s Sarah Freishtat contributed.

jsheridan@chicagotribune.com