Chicago-Milwaukee Corridor vs NYC-Philly corridor (Naperville, Joliet: 2015, university, vs.)

[BlackHawksfan102]

Hi guys,

I hope that you all are well and in the best of health.

Okay so, I've been thinking of asking about this from Chicagoans perspective and I guess I'll go for it. How would you all evaluate the Chicago Milwaukee Corridor to NYC-Philly?

To elaborate more, The Suburbs between NYC and Philly are mostly in New Jersey but they also have a commuter rail line which connects both Big Cities and the suburbs in between to either one. Theres also interstate 95. Princeton University and The Brunswick area along with Rutgers.

With Chicago-Milwaukee, There's Waukegan, Kenosha, And Racine as the cities in between. Commuter rail extends to Kenosha but doesn't go any further. More and more infill development is happening between the two cities and it's become more similar and resembling the Philly-NYC corridor. I've heard there's plans to extend the metra Kenosha line all the way to milwaukee which would connect both big cities and all in between. Certainly I assume people from milwaukee would then ride that line and it would benefit Racine and Kenosha. Also there's the 53 extension in Lake county which would open up Western and North Lake county to the other parts of Chicago and make commuting more convinent.

All in all what do you guys think? Am I crazy to think that Lake and Kenosha counties can be compared to Central/North Jersey? I know of course Chicago isn't NYC and Milwaukee isn't Philly. But they do seem to resemble eachother pretty well.

I think there's still a lot of potential for development in this corridor and it has a ways to go. Amazon has opened up a fulfillment center near 94 in Kenosha. Downtown Kenosha is seeing new development as well with some projects. Milwaukees streetcar system.

Best Regards
-Hawksfan

[damba]

There's already a thread on this. Same idea.

//www.city-data.com/forum/chica...something.html

Arguably, since you are referring to the midwest, I would not use the M-C region as a precise analog of what you see in the more established eastern US corridor.

FWIW, here's a site I hadn't looked at as closely before regarding 53. Nice layout too.
Route 53

[Beardown91737]

45 MPH speed limit? Why bother paving it?

[reppin_the_847]

This is a interesting comparison but at the end of the day, I think the largest disparity comes down to small-market Milwaukee vs. all 3 other mentioned cities (NYC, Philly & Chicago). Look at these CSA (Combined Statistical Area) comparisons:

2015 Estimates:

#1: New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined Statistical Area - 23,723,696 (23.7 Million people)
#8: Philadelphia-Reading-Camden, PA-NJ-DE-MD Combined Statistical Area - 7,183,479 (7.1 Million people)

vs.

#3: Chicago-Naperville, IL-IN-WI Combined Statistical Area - 9,923,358 (9.9 Million people)
#30: Milwaukee-Racine-Waukesha, WI Combined Statistical Area - 2,046,092 (2 Million people)

By this measure, the NYC metro area is 2.39X as large as the Chicagoland metro area. And the Philly area is 3.51X as large as the Milwaukee area. But asides from population figures, check these GDP comparisons out:

Current-dollar GDP by metropolitan area (millions of dollars) in 2014:

#1: New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island, NY–NJ–PA MSA - 1,558,518 ($1.558 Trillion Dollars)
#8: Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington, PA–NJ–DE–MD MSA - 391,118 ($391 Billion Dollars)

vs.

#3: Chicago–Joliet–Naperville, IL–IN–WI MSA - 610,552 ($610 Billion Dollars)
#36: Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI MSA - 97,307 ($97 Billion Dollars)