Recently completed Community Planning projects to improve mobility in Bronzeville, Sauk Village

June 11, 2026

This spring, two projects wrapped up that will make communities throughout the Chicago region more equitable, accessible, and transit-friendly, thanks to support from the RTA Community Planning program. This program provides funding and technical assistance to local governments to help foster growth of sustainable, equitable, walkable, and transit-friendly communities. Since 1998, more than 200 projects have been completed.

Equiticity Mobility Hub in Bronzeville

Selected as part of the 2023 Community Planning program, Equiticity seeks to develop a Mobility Hub in Chicago’s South Side Bronzeville neighborhood called the Go Hub. Equiticity envisions that the Go Hub will serve as a welcoming space where people can access transportation devices like bicycles and e-scooters, establish a sense of community, learn about bicycling, transit, and low-emission transportation options, and receive supportive services from Equiticity, with resources to meet all the transportation needs of the neighborhood centralized in one place.

Equiticity is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and racial equity movement. This project, in partnership with the RTA and Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), was a feasibility study with the purpose of completing visioning, planning, site selection, and financial analysis for a future Go Hub location in Bronzeville. The scope of the study included establishing a deep understanding of community preferences, concerns, recommendations, and constraints related to mobility hubs and multimodal transportation, translating community feedback into a unified vision, identifying potential sites, and developing a financial plan and implementation strategy that includes funding opportunities.

One of the primary goals of the project was to identify a suitable location for the Go Hub in the Bronzeville neighborhood. To begin the site selection process, criteria were developed to address key priorities for The Go Hub site location. These criteria included transit and multimodal access, density of nearby housing, proximity to local retail and commercial uses, and lot size. These criteria, in addition to a zoning analysis and conversations with staff from the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development and Alderman Pat Dowell, determined three preferred sites along 51^st Street near the CTA Green Line station.

Another goal of the feasibility study was creating conceptual drawings of the Go Hub. Based on the feedback from community engagement activities, Equiticity staff developed a list of spaces, rooms, program areas, and features that were important to include in The Go Hub so that it adequately meets the community’s needs and preferences. In response to community feedback, The Go Hub is designed as a two-story, mixed-use civic building with a partially programmed basement and an accessible rooftop terrace, totaling approximately 8,084 square feet of interior space and 4,915 square feet of outdoor space. The building is conceived as a community-centered mobility and cultural hub that supports active transportation, workforce development, health, and social connections while strengthening the public realm.

Finally, the feasibility study features a financial analysis and implementation plan to assist Equiticity in moving forward with the Go Hub’s Bronzeville location. The financial analysis determined estimated costs to construct the Go Hub and sustain its operations, while the implementation plan presented a suite of potential funding sources to close the gaps identified in the analysis. Although funding sources and a location for the Go Hub Bronzeville have yet to be secured, the feasibility study provides Equiticity with valuable information to guide the Go Hub’s future development.

Sauk Trail and Torrence Avenue Corridor Study

The RTA partnered with the Cook County Department of Transportation and Highways (DoTH) to analyze the Sauk Trail and Torrence Avenue corridor through Sauk Village, a south suburb of Chicago. The corridor runs on Torrence Avenue between US-30 (Lincoln Highway) and Sauk Trail and Sauk Trail between Torrence and Cottage Grove Avenues. The scope of the corridor study included documenting the existing conditions of the corridor; conducting two phases of public engagement with the residents of Sauk Village; and developing a set of recommendations for projects in the corridor that can improve the safety of transportation for all road users, especially pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users.

The study includes a set of 42 recommended projects in the corridor, such as new bus stops, sidewalks, crosswalks or pedestrian signals, roundabouts, pedestrian refuge islands, boulevards, pedestrian activated signals, and multi-use paths. Throughout the corridor, the recommendations seek to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety through new sidewalk/crosswalk construction and improvements to existing crosswalks, encourage transit use by making bus stops more easily accessible, and reduce the frequency of speeding and the severity of crashes through new intersection and roadway designs on Sauk Trail.

The corridor study also offers project prioritization and implementation strategies, including funding opportunities.

Learn more about the RTA’s Community Planning program.