Chicago has been making major strides toward becoming a safer, more connected city for cyclists. That’s why the new bike lanes on Long Avenue on the Northwest Side are more than fresh paint on the pavement. They are a lifeline for residents, especially our teens, who deserve safe and reliable ways to travel between neighborhoods.
Parents worry every time their kids leave the house on a bike. Without safe routes, young riders are forced to navigate busy streets next to fast-moving traffic, making what should be a simple, healthy activity, dangerous. The Long Avenue bike lanes begin to change that story.
This project doesn’t just benefit one block or one community. It builds on Chicago’s growing bike network that links Belmont Cragin, Portage Park and surrounding neighborhoods. It creates safer corridors for families, reduces barriers between communities and encourages more people, especially first-time riders, to choose biking as their first option for traveling to school or work or just exploring the city.
Last year, I was riding on Diversey Avenue near Laramie Avenue, and for the first time since I started riding my bike, a driver struck me. I walked away with a couple bumps and bruises, but I felt scared for the first time to ride my bike again. I started to really realize the importance of how protected bike lanes, neighborhood greenways and lower speed limits can save lives. I tested out the Long Avenue bike lanes, and they felt safe.
If we truly want to transform mobility on the Northwest Side, we need to continue to invest here. The city should continue listening to residents, who shouldn’t have to worry about a car hitting them while biking.
Bike lanes are not just about transportation. They’re about equity, safety and connection. The Long Avenue project is a step forward, and it’s also a call to action.
Let’s keep pushing for the infrastructure that will allow every Chicagoan — from teens to grandparents — to move freely, safely and confidently across our city.
— Jeremy Cuebas, executive director, Grassroots Empowerment Mission, Chicago
Youths’ mental health
On July 31, I stood behind Gov. JB Pritzker as he signed Senate Bill 1560 into law. Cameras flashed, hands clapped, and yet the weight of that moment settled deeper than the ceremony. This isn’t just a policy win. It is a refusal to let youth mental health remain an afterthought; it is a powerful declaration that students should no longer be the last ones asked or the first ones forgotten.
SB1560 is the first law of its kind in the U.S. It requires that Illinois public schools offer annual, voluntary, no-cost mental health screenings to students in grades three through 12 starting with the 2027-28 school year. Parents will be able to opt out, and the program will be implemented with privacy, consent and care.
This kind of system is long overdue. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021, over 40% of U.S. high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, the highest level in over a decade. In Illinois alone, nearly 39,000 high school students attempted suicide in 2021, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
This law doesn’t replace therapy or fix every broken system. But it does open a door, shifting the culture from silence to support, from reacting after collapse to stepping in before the cracks form. And it affirms something too long denied: Emotional health is not optional.
Pritzker was right to call this issue “too often overlooked or ignored,” but if Illinois wants to stay ahead, SB1560 must be the foundation, not the final chapter. That means fully funding school counselors and social workers. It means investing in trauma-informed training for every teacher, coach and staff member. And it means treating youths not as subjects to be studied but as stakeholders — and co-authors of the systems meant to serve us.
Because when young people are included, we don’t just speak — we organize. We write legislation, draft testimony and build coalitions that outlast us. From climate strikes to student-led mental health summits to youth advisory boards, we are not waiting to be rescued. We’re shaping what comes next.
That’s why this work matters. Because the future of tomorrow begins with the courage we show today, in how we listen, how we legislate and how we love. Healing is not a solitary journey. It’s something we do together. And together, we’re rewriting the story.
— Abhinav Anne, global health researcher and incoming senior, Neuqua Valley High School, Naperville
Philly’s transit system
The article (“Transit cuts in Philly may offer lessons for Chicago Transit,” July 27) comparing Philadelphia’s Septa transit system with its counterpart in Chicago cites two of the most vocal Philadelphia activists for public transit to suggest that vast public support exists for devoting more tax money to funding Septa. Relying on such sources is misleading and muddles the comparison with Chicago, which has better public transit than Philadelphia.
The article misses the point of Septa’s funding crisis, which boils down to this: Not enough people ride Septa to justify subsidizing bus and train rides to the massive extent that Septa claims is required to avoid service cuts. Marketing efforts have not changed the ugly truth that Septa is unreliable and expensive and often doesn’t go where people want to go when they want to go there.
People have voted convincingly with their feet. Low ridership means that the per-passenger cost of operating many of Septa’s routes requires taxpayer subsidies that make the amount of the fares collected look very small by comparison. Low ridership also means that there aren’t enough voters who are as outraged by the proposed cuts as the vocal transit activists interviewed for the story.
Too few people use Septa’s services to make shrinking the system the catastrophe that the agency and advocates have sought to portray.
— Chris Bordelon, Philadelphia
Stop nuclear harms
Aug. 6 and 9 are the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, in the closing days of World War II.
On Aug. 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people. On Aug. 9, 1945, at 11:02 a.m., a second bomb exploded in Nagasaki, and 74,000 people perished. In both bombings, the great majority of victims were civilians, with 38,000 of them children.
In the years that followed, many survivors faced leukemia and other cancers or other terrible side effects from the radiation. Furthermore, many descendants were born with deformities and mental conditions.
When I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in spring 2003, I had a conversation with some of the survivors. They described a Dante-esque scene, with dead children floating in the river and people of different ages running, screaming and falling down in pain while their bodies were melting.
While the impetus for the bomb’s development was the fear that Germany was working toward one, three months had passed since the Germans’ unconditional surrender when these two Japanese cities were bombed. Were these necessary acts? The U.S. government defended itself by saying that the bombings were to prevent more deaths.
Predictably, the United States couldn’t maintain a monopoly on nuclear weapons. Currently, eight other countries possess nuclear weapons: Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea.
Activists in Japan and worldwide advocate for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Some groups are the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
No more Hiroshimas. No more Nagasakis!
— Carmen J. AgoyoSilva, Chicago
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