The heavily-trafficked Archer-Kedzie intersection on the Southwest Side has been left without significant changes to safety measures in decades, making it the site of rising traffic incidents. Nearly 600 people have been injured or killed in the last five years across over 2,300 total crashes, accounting for nearly half of all traffic injuries in Brighton Park.
When attempting to go downtown from the southwestern edges of the city by car, bike, or on foot, this risky throughway is the only street that runs from city limits all the way to State Street. Along any other route, you’d run into physical barriers: a street that dead-ends, industrial yards, or other infrastructural snags.
After years of advocacy and a steady rise in fatalities on this stretch, Chicago Department of Transportation presented a long-overdue proposal this summer for major changes to the Archer-Kedzie corridor to address these traffic safety concerns, which are “ranked one of the top two issues in the 12th Ward,” according to Alderwoman Julia Ramirez (12th). Walking down the street today, the sounds of traffic and speeding make it near-impossible to hold a conversation, with long intervals between crosswalks (the proposals for changes include added pedestrian crossings), and stressful to use regularly.
The design changes would update Archer Avenue from 47th Street to Western Avenue (the entire stretch running through Brighton Park) with amenities such as protected bike lanes and bus boarding islands, making life safer and more feasible for many to use alternative modes of transit.
Dixon Galvez-Searle, a transportation advocate for Southwest Collective and lifelong local cyclist, is hopeful that these changes would encourage a stronger sense of community between neighborhoods. “I live in Archer Heights, and if I want to go to McKinley Park, which is not far away…I could easily bike there if Archer was safer,” he said.
The sentiment in neighboring McKinley Park was similar. Kate Eakin, president of the McKinley Park Development Council, pointed out that while the improvements technically end at the border of her neighborhood, many residents “will use them to get to those everyday services that they need, but that are just over the line” in Brighton Park.
The proposed updates resemble changes made to Milwaukee Avenue on the Northwest Side in the mid-2010s. (According to Galvez-Searle, “Archer is the Southwest Side version of Milwaukee.”) As an arterial street that follows a CTA train line and is full of thriving businesses, there are clear parallels. To residents like Galvez-Searle, it’s evident that investment in infrastructure “isn’t nearly at the level that it’s been on the North Side.” The equivalent changes to similar streets on the North Side have cut injury crashes in half and drastically decreased speeding.
Alderwoman Ramirez, who came into office in May of 2023, supports making changes, and names traffic safety as one of the most important concerns to be addressed in the ward. “Through our ward office, we had our first community meeting this summer, and have asked the collective and CDOT to coordinate with us,” she said.
According to Ramirez, the community meeting was better-attended than most, thanks in large part to outreach from community-based organizations like The Southwest Collective that have been raising awareness about the issue. Attendees included parents, local school principals, nonprofit representatives, and business owners.
“I think that we were probably in the, like, seventy to eighty people that attended,” said Ramirez. “It allowed for people to see those very specific details, block by block, and make suggestions.” Representatives from CDOT and other neighborhood organizations also attended, with members of The Southwest Collective giving opening remarks. Also present were members of the McKinley Park Development Council and Equiticity.
To make larger-scale changes than this, the responsibility will need to be shifted to the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). While the stretch of Archer running through Brighton Park is under the jurisdiction of the city, the portion running west of 47th Street and east of Western Avenue are under the state’s purview. Many residents involved share the idea that these developments will put pressure on the state to continue this work along other parts of the Southwest Side.
Galvez-Searle said that though the proposed changes are a good start, “we need to go beyond that, and in order to do that, we have to get IDOT on board” to make the area truly accessible. Eakin echoed this, naming the importance of having the support of larger state departments and government agencies.
“Implementation occurs under city jurisdiction, and we can see that it’s helping to reduce accidents and making it easier for people to walk and bike,” Eakin said. “That will give us more leverage to put pressure on the state to do it on our section through McKinley Park.”
The plans are not quite in motion yet. CDOT officially lists the Archer Ave. project as active, but Ramirez said that she “did not feel comfortable enough to start the project with just one community meeting under our belt.” Some in the neighborhood have lingering concerns, particularly those who use Archer as a way to commute. An employee of Thomas Kelly High School who is a former Brighton Park resident said, “In just those peak hours, there’s so much traffic and it would really increase everyone’s time to get to work.”
Jose Manuel Almanza, Director of Advocacy and Movement Building for Equiticity, highlighted the need to encourage greater dialogue between CDOT and the people who have such concerns. The responsibility of doing this outreach falls to community-based organizations like Southwest Collective, McKinley Park Development Council, and Equiticity.
“We need to be investing in doing real outreach to get to the people that haven’t been at these meetings before and get their feedback and buy-in,” Almanza said. “It takes a lot of work and effort and capacity to talk to people and walk the neighborhood [so we should] attach funding so that CBOs [community based organizations] are getting paid to do the hard work of getting community members to come to a meeting.”
The task of increasing community buy-in is ongoing, and continues to be driven by neighborhood advocacy organizations. While it is unclear when exactly construction would begin, the wheels are in motion as CDOT completes the process of gathering feedback on their detailed maps (which can be sent to completestreets@cityofchicago.org). Looking forward, after these changes are implemented and the resulting benefits are shown, Eakin anticipates that they would have “more leverage to put pressure on the state to do it through McKinley Park.”
As a longtime resident and activist in Brighton Park, Galvez-Searle remains optimistic.
“The more that we can do to help people navigate the space between those neighborhoods, the more we can connect those neighborhoods,” he said. “Those are the kind of connections that we really want to be establishing, period, on the Southwest Side.”
Mrittika Ghosh (she/her) is a reader, writer, and arts journalist living in Chicago.