Chicago’s Department of Transportation (CDOT) today announced the launch of a new subscription feature on ChiStreetWork, a web-based tool that leverages the Google Maps interface to track projects in the City. The update makes it easier for residents to track upcoming road construction work and special event permits in their neighborhoods.
“We’re very excited to announce this major upgrade to our ChiStreetWork website,” CDOT Commissioner Gia Biagi said. “Not only can you discover what construction projects and special events are happening in your neighborhood, you can set alerts to keep you up to date. It’s a free service that helps improve transparency and accountability.”
The new subscription feature on the ChiStreetWork site – https://chistreetwork.chicago.gov/map – is being launched ahead of the 2020 construction season and allows residents to subscribe for permit information within a boundary they specify (by pointing and clicking on a computer screen), define the type of impacts they want information about, and choose whether they want alerts daily, weekly or monthly. This new feature gives residents insight into activities in their neighborhood and on frequently traveled routes and builds on Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot’s agenda to increase transparency in the everyday operations of City government. (See below for screen shots of how the new feature works.)
ChiStreetWork was launched in 2019 and allows the public to search for CDOT permits for work in the right-of-way and special events by Ward, neighborhood, intersection or street address. Once the search terms are entered, the map populates one month past, current and up to one year of future construction projects and infrastructure upgrades, including street re-paving as well as water, sewer, gas and electrical projects.
Special event permits are also listed. A user can click on an active project or event to pull up the CDOT permit, which includes details such as company name, street or lane closure impacts, work-hours and more. Along with project and event information, users can find which streets have been repaved in the past 5 years.
The map also provides users with features such as bus routes and stops, parking impacts, bike lanes, viaduct heights, speed and red light camera locations, and current traffic conditions.
ChiStreetWork is the public facing result of years of planning and modernization of the way CDOT’s Division of Infrastructure Management issues permits, coordinates and tracks the use of the public way. The initial goal was to reduce instances in which newly repaved streets would have to be cut into to perform additional underground work.
The division created a new Project Coordination Office (PCO) to ensure projects are planned and coordinated more effectively. This required partnering with utilities and builders to efficiently coordinate overlapping work. CDOT has closely tracked these coordination efforts and estimates they have led to savings of $183 million since 2012.
The new subscription feature makes it easier to manage the flow of data and tailor it to suit the user’s needs.
CDOT and the PCO worked with Google and its longtime partner SADA to create an internal database in order to track and coordinate all of the work that was planned in the public right-of-way. In order to improve transparency and accountability, this internal database was turned into the public-facing website ChiStreetWork in 2019.
