Traffic choked chicago

[chet everett]

The basics of the study are just about impossible to disagree in term of Chicsgo region traffic patterns -- the vast majority of roadways in the region are badly over their design limits for an extended period through the rush hour.

The toll authority came to same conclusion about its systems several years back, which is why it decided to do what it could to improve flows with the automated transponders and added lanes, but still major portions just have too many cars in to few lanes.

Blago's IDOT study of seveal years ago said the same thing, and led him to propose HOV lanes, which had the potential to get folks accustomed to car pooling or ride sharing for portions of the trip where it is impossible to add lanes without paving over more homes...

Heck even Ryan's study showed that the efforts tied to unraveling the Hilside bottleneck would be only minimally effective in decreasing rush hour commute times -- the "full package" of what was proposed back then was an Wacker Dr style multi- level re-do of the Ike that would have allowed express lanes to cruise over the sections of worst congestion caused by too many exits / entrances for the near west burbs , but EVEN THAT would still result in terrible congestion at the "spaghetti bowl" and through the Keennedy and Ryan UNLESS a variation on the CrossTown or Central Business District Corridor (around Laramie or Western as I recall) was built out along the rail corridor. Price tags for those were in the BILLIONS and obviously on no one's hot list...

The other side of the coin, is the absolute fact that in terms of total driven miles Chicago is pretty decent, and with the huge load of commuters on Metra already the long term patterns of office workers having decent options is great. The folks on the short end of the deal are those in the freight and labor intensive industries -- when average speeds are barely a third of posted / designed limits that really screws with their logistics and drives costs higher...