It’s time for Mayor Johnson to fund the #PlowTheSidewalks Pilot Program

This year, the City of Chicago released the 'Plow the Sidewalks Pilot Program Recommendations Report,' outlining a year's worth of work by advocates alongside the City to develop a feasible pilot program for municipal sidewalk snow and ice removal. This was a profound step forward in the years-long #PlowTheSidewalks campaign, providing a clear roadmap and outline for the City to begin implementation. But right now, advocates are left fighting for this program to continue – and we need your help.

Since February 2021, Better Streets Chicago has been advocating for the City to make sidewalk snow and ice removal a municipal service. What started as two of us with shovels and a point to make, our campaign quickly gained momentum as we highlighted the disparities in how things currently do – and most importantly don’t – get cleared, caused by the jurisdictional mess that is created by the City’s existing policy, which leaves the job up to adjacent property owners and businesses. We were proud to have our partners at Access Living join the campaign in December 2021. Together, we have been making the case clear that when the job doesn’t get done, it has a real human impact.

Over time, we have built a broad coalition of community, transportation, civic, and advocacy organizations, and City Council allies who have all agreed that it’s time the City take responsibility for the sidewalks in the winter. Together, we successfully passed the Plow the Sidewalks Pilot Program ordinance in July of 2023. This ordinance established a working group of the Mayor’s office, various City departments, the Committee on Pedestrian Traffic Safety, and organizations like Better Streets Chicago to work together over the span of a year to develop recommendations for a pilot program.

After a year of bold advocacy, collaboration, and compromise, the City released the result of this working group in the ‘Plow the Sidewalks Pilot Program Recommendations Report’ on May 31st, 2024. This report was the result of significant effort by advocates to ensure the feasibility and viability of the program, and to ensure it would be equitably distributed. Even the pilot zones in the report today are reflective of the zones proposed by advocacy during the working group, designed using our pilot zone metrics tool.

Unfortunately, since then the City has missed key deadlines for implementation, and has failed to provide the necessary funding in the Chicago Department of Transportation's budget to move the pilot forward. While the City faces significant challenges, eliminating this pilot program does not address those challenges.

Instead, it perpetuates the continued neglect of the needs of people with disabilities, seniors, parents with children, and beyond to participate in society when it snows. This means Chicagoans will continue to be unable to run errands, go to the doctor, buy groceries, and otherwise participate in our economy and in their communities – oftentimes left trapped at home for days until the snow is cleared or melts.

We have been tirelessly advocating for the Mayor to make this right by including the pilot in this year’s budget. Mayor Johnson has publicly stated that he still believes in this program, but a pilot recommendations report is ultimately meaningless if it's not implemented. We need to see plows hit pavement.

Now is the time for Mayor Johnson to make clear his commitment to #PlowTheSidewalks, and there is only one way for him to do that: fully fund the Plow the Sidewalks Pilot Program.