Veteran urban planner is Lightfoot’s choice to serve as transportation commissioner

A 20-year veteran of urban design and planning is Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s choice to lead the Chicago Department of Transportation.

A University of Michigan graduate with a master’s in urban planning from UIC, Gia Biagi got her start in the late 1990s as a policy associate under former Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Biagi then spent 11 years with the Chicago Park District, where she moved up the ranks — from project manager, deputy director of operations and director of planning and development to director of strategy and policy and finally as chief of staff.

She left the Park District nearly five years ago to join Studio Gang, the firm run by famed Chicago architect Jeanne Gang. There, Biagi led Gang’s Urbanism and Civic Impact practice that specializes in urban design, planning and strategy.

That makes her the perfect fit to lead the Chicago’s Department of Transportation, according to Metropolitan Planning Council President Mary Sue Barrett.

“Gia is known to be creative, unflappable, consultative and a visionary. And those are very strong qualifications for the job of a transportation leader headed into 2020,” Barrett said.

“She’s super-smart and networked into some of the best ideas nationally. That’s very refreshing to have in this role….CDOT commissioners have to be operational leaders. But, they also need to be driving the art of the possible. Rethinking cities. Rethinking mobility.”

Biagi could not be reached for comment. The mayor’s office said she would be made available for interviews only after her appointment is confirmed by the City Council.

The new commissioner takes the reins at a time when the city is on the verge of implementing a $40 million congestion fee that was the most controversial element of Lightfoot’s 2020 budget.

It would more than triple the tax on passengers riding solo to and from downtown and slap a 74% increase on ride-hailing trips in Chicago neighborhoods that go nowhere near downtown.

The initial steps will tide the city over pending a long-term study on how a more complicated and broader London-style congestion fee might work in Chicago.

Barrett can’t wait to see what she calls the “next version of a mobility charge” in Chicago.

“We need to look at how the market responds to different pricing and data that wasn’t available to the city when they had to make this budget decision. We now can compel that data be collected and analyzed. That was pivotal to New York,” Barrett said.

“The smartest thing New York is doing is to make it a living policy. It is constantly re-calibrating in price and incentives — the carrots and sticks — as the market responds. That’s the kind of thing I see Chicago moving towards. Learning. Adjusting. Are we encouraging more people to take transit during rush hour in the central area? Great. How do we encourage more?”

Biagi will also need to make some long-term decisions about the future of red-light and speed cameras and deliver on Lightfoot’s promise to remove those cameras that are there for revenue — not safety.

Yet another focus will be reversing the precipitous decline in CTA bus ridership — triggered, in part, by population losses — by “giving people options” that include “a range of innovative bus services beyond LoopLink and Jeffrey Jump.

“There are experiments in places like the Belmont Blue Line, where they had multiple-door boarding. Maybe we need different vehicles to experiment with that,” Barrett said.

“Think about an L car pulling up. You’ve got 10, 20 doors opening where people can board quickly and they have already paid. How do we apply that approach to our articulated buses and have dedicated lanes, signal prioritization, prepaid boarding and multiple-door boarding? That’s what would make bus travel more attractive.”