Walking to work. It’s good for your heart, it’s good for your lungs and it’s good for the environment. Strong scientific evidence supports the numerous health benefits of regular walking.

Think you live too far away to walk to your job? It's probably easier than you think.

To get their daily walking in, many people take transit or drive for part of the distance and walk the rest.

As program manager of DriveLessLiveMore at Active Transportation Alliance, I'll be celebrating National Walk to Work Day on April 5 by walking nearly eight miles to work in River North from where I live in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood!

Join me along the route by using the mile-markers on this map or follow along as I post Twitter updates to @DLLMcom, #brianswalk2work. I'll be starting at 7 a.m. 

To say thanks to our generous Bike Commuter Challenge 2013 sponsors (yes, it's coming!), I'll be stopping in for Caribou Coffee, grabbing Clif Bars at REI Chicago and dropping in at Village Cycle along the way.

Those who @ reply or use the hashtag on Twitter are eligible to win a drawing for 2013 MB Financial Bank Bike the Drive registration —a $45 value!

Pictured above the are walkers who joined Brian Morrissey last year for Walk to Work Day. 

Correction: The address for the April 10 expo in the 49th Ward has been corrected since this was originally posted, to 1709 W. Lunt.

There's an exciting opportunity coming up for Chicagoans to make their neighborhoods a better place for biking, walking and transit. This May, four Chicago wards will use "Participatory Budgeting" to give residents the chance to vote on how to spend $4 million in ward "Menu Money" on infrastructure.

The mulit-ward process kicked off last fall with neighborhood meetings that solicited thousands of ideas from community members in the participating wards. Over the winter, ward residents formed committees charged with evaluating those ideas and deciding which to put on the ballot.

In April, residents in Ald. Joe Moore’s 49th ward, Ald. Leslie Hairston’s 5th ward, Ald. John Arena’s 45th ward and Ald. James Cappleman’s 46th ward will come together at ten  expos to unveil projects they have proposed to build in their neighborhoods. The expos, which combine elements of a high school science fair and campaign event, will feature volunteers pitching their proposals to other ward residents before voting begins in early May.

If you live in one of these wards, please attend one of the upcoming Project Expos below in your ward. Learn more about all the projects that will appear on the ballot for a public vote in the first week of May. (Look up your ward here.)

5th Ward, Alderman Leslie A. Hairston

• Wed., April 10, 5 p.m.6:30 p.m.-8 p.m., Gary Comer Youth Center, 7200 S. Ingleside Ave., Chicago, IL 60619
• Sat., April 13, 10 a.m.-12 p.m., Location to be determined. Sat. April 20, 12 p.m.-3 p.m., Catholic Theological Union, 5416 S. Cornell Ave., Chicago, IL 60615

45th Ward, Alderman John Arena

• Tue., April 9, 7 p.m.-9 p.m., Filament Theatre, 4041 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL 60641
• Thur., April 11, 7 p.m.-9 p.m., Saint Constance Church, 5843 W. Strong St., Chicago, IL 60630
• Sat., April 13, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence Ave., Chicago, IL 60630

46th Ward, Alderman James Cappleman

• Sat., April 6, 10 a.m.-12 p.m., Uplift High School, 900 W. Wilson Ave., Chicago, IL 60640
• Mon., April 8, 6 p.m.-8 p.m., Preston Bradley Center, 941 W Lawrence Ave., Chicago, IL 60640

49th Ward, Alderman Joe Moore

• Wed., April 3, 7 p.m., United Church of Rogers Park, 1545 W. Morse Ave., Chicago, IL 60626
• Thur., April 4, 7 p.m., Pottawatomie Park, 7340 N. Rogers Ave., Chicago, IL 60626
• Wed., April 10, 7 p.m., St. Jerome's Church Parish Center, 1709 W. Lunt, Chicago, IL 60616 (Spanish Language Expo)

For more information, visit PB Chicago or contact your alderman.

If you read Wednesday’s Tribune headline, "CTA's Ventra debit option rife with fees," you might wonder why CTA is sticking transit riders with a bunch of new fees. Read beyond the headline, and you’ll find that’s a bit overstated.

Let’s start with this: The new Ventra card will be very similar to the current Chicago Card as a touch-and-go, reloadable transit fare card for CTA and PACE. There are two big changes coming that we know of.

1. People with state-of-the-art credit cards will be able to use those to pay transit fares and won’t need a Ventra card. Fewer cards in your wallet and streamlined payment — nice!
2. You will have the OPTION to use the Ventra card as a debit card to buy things like food, clothes, etc. from retailers. In short, Ventra gives you a transit account and an optional debit account for other purchases. This is what the Tribune story focuses on, and we can thank them for alerting us to these fees, which will help people decide whether to opt for the debit feature.

As with any debit card you would get from a bank or Master Card, you'll pay various fees — fees that are often lost in the fine print until you get your bill — to use and manage the debit function. So, if you don’t want to deal with the fees or just don’t need another debit/credit card, then don’t activate the debit function on the Ventra card. Let’s hope this is clear and people don’t accidentally register for the debit feature.

At the same time, I fear some people might read the news articles and think all these new fees apply to paying for transit with Ventra, which they don’t. So how does Ventra compare to the Chicago Card in that respect? Lose your card, pay $5 for replacement — same as the Chicago Card.

There are some new transit account fees we don’t like, including the “dormancy” fee of $5/month that would be assessed for accounts that are inactive 18 months or more. And we hear employers will be charged $1.50 per month for making pre-tax transit benefit payments on behalf of their employees. Currently, RTA charges 50 cents per month and the CTA/Chicago Card nothing. This fee increase makes the transit benefit less attractive for employers to participate in.

There is much discussion about what Ventra means for “unbanked,” low income people. CTA says it gives them access to financial instruments they don’t currently have or that they have to pay more for at currency exchanges. Others worry that low income people will sign up for the Ventra debit card feature, not understanding that they have to pay the fees.

That’s a fair concern. We also worry about low income people paying the escalated $3 fare for single use cards rather than getting the Ventra card, which requires going through the registration process and making a minimum $5 purchase.

Ideally, everyone will switch to touch-and-go Ventra cards and personal credit cards (which means faster loading of buses and trains), avoid the single use cards, and knowingly decide whether to opt into the debit feature. CTA needs to step up the outreach to make this happen.

This blog post was updated March 28, 2013 to clarify that the $1.50/month charge for transit-benefit administration is paid by employers — not customers. 

The Cook County Forest Preserve District has just released its new Recreation Master Plan. The plan sets forth recommendations for improving and enhancing existing facilities, like walking and biking trails, as well as creating new recreation opportunities.

Highlights from the plan related to walking and biking include:

• 26 percent of people using forest preserves arrive via walking, biking and public transit;
• Walking/hiking and biking are the top 2 ranked activites in which people participate at forest preserves;
• Walking/hiking and biking are also the top 2 ranked activites prioritized by users for future use.

The plan also calls for the creation of a Trails Master Plan, which (among other things) would outline ways to improve trail crossings and connectivity, as well as develop trailhead standards and a wayfinding/mileage sign system.

Download the full plan here.

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