Good morning, Chicago.

Getting around Chicago has long been difficult for David Zoltan, but nonetheless he once would have jumped on a bus to get a bite to eat. He would take public transit to meet up with friends, and to doctors’ appointments in Streeterville.

Zoltan, 46, has spinal stenosis that causes severe back pain and one leg is amputated below the knee, and he qualified for a transit pass that allows him to ride CTA, Pace or Metra for free. But since the start of the pandemic he has rarely used it, limiting trips outside his Rogers Park apartment. When it was necessary to leave, he often turned instead to more private services like ride-share or programs that provide rides, unwilling to get back on public transit because people with disabilities remain at higher risk for COVID-19.

He didn’t renew his ride-free pass when it expired in 2022.

“Why would you renew a ride-free permit that you’re not using, especially when it’s so much trouble go to through?” he asked.

For years, eligible Chicago-area seniors and people with disabilities have been able to apply for permits to either ride transit for free or at reduced fares. But the number of free and reduced-fare transit passholders in the Chicago area dropped sharply in 2022, falling by about 23% from the prior year, according to Regional Transportation Authority data obtained by the Tribune.

Read more on this story by Sarah Freishtat.

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For 15 years, Chicago has tried and failed to win a federal grant to rebuild the principal dock at its main Lake Michigan port.

During this time, the 113-year-old dock has never stopped crumbling.

Dark vertical cracks appear at several points along its 3,000-foot facade. They get wider and deeper as they reach down into the Calumet River, likely releasing toxins from blast furnaces and coke ovens that operated on the site for decades.

As climate change increases the severity and frequency of wildfires in North America, experts say many Americans are at risk of experiencing one in their lifetime. But even more may be affected by the unhealthy air quality from the smoke the fires produce.

There are answers to common questions about how Chicagoans can protect themselves next time the air quality index ticks up.

The conviction of former Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan’s longtime chief of staff on perjury charges last week exposed more than just the extraordinary set of lies that Tim Mapes told to try to protect his boss.

The nearly three-week trial at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse also ripped a deeper tear in the veil covering the secretive Madigan political machine that prosecutors have called a criminal enterprise.

Paul Sullivan writes that the unthinkable happened Friday night at Guaranteed Rate Field when two women were hit by gunfire in the left-field bleachers during the fourth inning of the Chicago White Sox’s loss to the Oakland A’s.

One day after the shooting, a Chicago Police Department investigation still had no answers as to how the incident occurred or where the shots came from.

Nneka M. Okona writes that 60 years after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Stone Mountain, Georgia, shows what King’s dream was about.

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Alice Cooper, the former Vincent Furnier, former high school track star, former resident of Detroit and Chicago, did not die this week at 75, writes the Tribune’s Christopher Borrelli. Despite a half-century of horrifyingly playful onstage executions, he was not hanged, beheaded, impaled or electrocuted. He just released “Road,” his 22nd solo album, and plays Tinley Park on Sept. 1.

Tribune critic Louisa Chu writes that Scofflaw has a legacy of culinary overachievement.

So you’d think with the success that preceded executive chef Fred Chung, who took over just about a year ago, Chu writes, he might have kept the fan favorites on the menu a little bit longer.