This Chicago resident used Metro Map Maker in a way I'd always hoped for
I know many of you signed up earlier this year for Metro Map Maker updates, and while I haven't posted much since releasing version 7.1, I'm restarting development! I'm almost finished testing, and soon, Metro Map Maker will be faster on Firefox. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this post!
A week or so ago, I came across this petition to expand the Chicago metro and was delighted to see that Metro Map Maker was used to imagine a better, more connected transit future for Chicago.
In truth, this is one of the things I'd always hoped for when creating Metro Map Maker: that it would be used to turn dreams into reality.
Every city deserves world-class transit that serves its residents, and I'm delighted to see people like Danny G starting this petition as a first step toward creating that change.
Change begins when we can imagine different futures and raise our expectations. I saw a lot of comments from people saying that we shouldn't have to wait until 2100 to achieve something like this (I agree), others saying it's not ambitious enough (perhaps), and still others saying it'll never happen (not with that attitude).
In the US, Projects like this take much longer than they should. In the 15 years I lived in Washington DC, the Purple Line expansion still hadn't been completed. The Purple Line is currently expected to open in 2027, after first breaking ground in 2017, and prior to that was decades of relentless community organizing.
I'm hopeful that Danny G and the petition signers can build momentum around expanding the Chicago metro. Each person who sees a fantasy map and asks "Why don't we have that yet?" starts to imagine something better. Each person who signs that petition now expects more. That's a good start, and necessary if we're to see this dream become reality.
This was exactly what I was hoping people would do when I built Metro Map Maker, and I hope to see organizing like this sprout in cities all over the world! And if you do use Metro Map Maker for something like this, let me know! I'd love to hear all about it.
