Pete Buttigieg spotlights Red Line South extension while in Chicago to push for Biden infrastructure

Pete Buttigieg spotlights Red Line South extension while in Chicago to push for Biden infrastructure deal


U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg held up the long-discussed extension of Chicago’s Red Line south to 130th Street on Friday as reason to get behind President Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package.

He was not alone.

Jammed into the sweltering 95th Street station where the Red Line currently ends, Buttigieg was joined by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and nine members of Congress in a symbolic showing of solidarity behind one of the key items on Biden’s domestic agenda — rebuilding the nation’s roads, rails, bridges, airports and more.

But in choosing to highlight a project that would expand public transit access to tens of thousands of low-income Chicagoans on the city’s predominantly Black South Side, Buttigieg also contended the infrastructure package before Congress could help make the nation’s transportation more equitable.

The former South Bend mayor and presidential candidate displayed dismay at a fact CTA President Dorval Carter gave him on a tour of the station: It can take a Chicagoan living in Altgeld Gardens near 130th Street more than an hour to get downtown because of the lack of transit options.

Read more: https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-pete-buttigieg-chicago-infrastructure-bill-20210717-zrpfwknwuzfwhga65ukw7aj7xq-story.html