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Miami-Dade County has a very nice set of highways/expressways for it's population size (2.6 million). It has the Airport Expressway, Dolphin Expressway, Don Shula Expressway, Florida Turnpike, Gratigny Expressway, Hialeah Expressway, I-95, I-75, I-395, John F Kennedy Causeway, Julia Tuttle Causeway, MacArthur Causeway, Palmetto Expressway, Rickenbacker Causeway, Reagan Turnpike and Snapper Creek Expressway. While shorter runs the expressway conversions from ordinary surface streets has helped considerably in terms providing through options that didn't exist prior.
Sorry...traffic can be a huge nightmare in MiamiDade if you travel the typical commuter patterns. Add to the traffic the horrendous Miami drivers. If I wasn't able to telecommute, I'd shoot myself.
Chicago is a disaster. If you're not sure why, just look at a map. or a series of maps. Start with a highway map and you will notice the entire expressway system is virtually designed to do one thing only: get people into and out of the greater downtown Chicago area. Within the city of Chicago, every expressway is part of the spoke and wheel system that filters all traffic through the circle interchange (where the Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Dan Ryan expressways meet) downtown. No by-pass exists within city limits.
Throughout the entire area, the only real beltway highway, the only one truly designed to by-pass the city is the Tri-State Tollway. On the whole (with a couple of exceptions) most expressways in suburbia are extensions of the ones emanating in DT Chgo and are designed to connect with the Chicago Loop, not to tie together other portions of the metro area.
A rapid transit map shows the same problem. The entire CTA el/subway system is laid out to connect downtown with the city neighborhoods and inner ring suburbs (Evanston, Skokie, Oak Park, Cicero, etc.). Here's an amazing fact: if you treat the purple line (Evanston) as one line instead of two (since it does have a local and express component), that means that only one transit line in the entire CTA rapid transit system doesn't go to the Loop. That would be the yellow line (Skokie), but its main purpose is to get to Howard Street to allow transfer to Loop bound trains.
And to complete the mess, take a look at a Metra (commuter rail) map and you will see every single line in the system ends at one of the downtown terminals.
Chicago and Chicagoland choke on this hub and spoke system.
^^ Agreed I have spent many an hour from O'Hare to the downtown all hours or even further afield from say lake cook to O'Hare starting mid afternoon most days is no fun not sure is the worst but certainly not the best
^^ Agreed I have spent many an hour from O'Hare to the downtown all hours or even further afield from say lake cook to O'Hare starting mid afternoon most days is no fun not sure is the worst but certainly not the best
right you are. And early enough in the afternoon, as you note, traffic on 294 from around Lake Cook can be backed up all the way to O'Hare.
However, if you really want to turn this into the nightmare-from-hell, imagine being at Lake Cook and 294 and going on, past O'Hare on the Kennedy all the way downtown. That might cost you 2 hours easily...maybe a bit more.
Keep in mind, too, that a person in Lake Forest on the North Shore may find it easier and have a shorter time to get to the airport if he chose to fly out of Mitchell Field in Milwaukee rather than going to O'Hare.
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