Chicago #4 in Commuter Pain Index

[Drover]

It's a lot easier to synchronize lights on a narrow island where 80% of the traffic flow is oriented along one axis. It's not quite as easy when you have a grid with nearly equal traffic volume along both axes.

[NorCal Dude]

I don't see how the rail hub of America could have a more painful commute than Sf, dallas, or atlanta

[Avengerfire]

^Easy. Dallas and Atlanta are not locked in by a huge mass of water. Chicago has almost three times the population as San Francisco and Oakland COMBINED.^

[NorCal Dude]

I don't know if water has anything to do with it. Most of Nyc is made up of various islands and they have the most effeciant transportation system in the country. I'm not really sure population has anything to do with either. New York has more than 3 times as many people as Chicago.

I donno, it just seemed to me that autocentric places such as Texas, atlanta dc, and LA seem to be much more of pain driving in during peak commute hours than Chicago. You can pretty much make it from Chicago to schaumburg or most other suburbs for that matter in an hour door to door if you catch the right metra. Outside New York I've never seen such efficiant public transit in this country.