Alleys can be a forgotten component in a big-city landscape.
Aside from giving us a place to house our trash and park our cars, we don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the cavernous mini-roads. That’s not the case in Chicago, however.
A recent article in The New York Times highlighted Chicago’s Green Alley program, a plan to transform the city’s alleys with environmentally friendly materials, including permeable concrete, asphalt and pavers, and energy efficient lighting. Yes, green alleys.
Chicago has, “more miles of alleyways than any other city in the world,” according to the Chicago Department of Transportation’s (CDOT) The Chicago Green Alley Handbook, so flooding and polluted runoff are all-too-common byproducts of traditional, impermeable-concrete surfaces. But with green alleys, a permeable surface will allow water to infiltrate the soil below, which avoids flooding and provides an environmental benefit – recharging and cleaning the groundwater – at the same time.
So, is this taxpayer dollars well spent? Could the money be used to improve CDOT buildings or other services provided by the department? Maybe. But we constantly hear facility managers talk about tight budgets, the bottom line, doing more with less. So while it seems like the money could be better spent elsewhere, the issue again comes down to cost.
As the handbook says, something needs to be done with the city’s 2,000 miles of alleys. And if making alleys green is cheaper than reworking the city’s sewer system to reduce flooding, as the CDOT suggests, maybe this is the proper solution for the alley capitol of the world.