How Chicagoans Get To Work...

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by chet everett

They have done all kind of car counts and mailed surveys to track those kinds of things. The bottomline is that despite the desires of some folks, even in the adminstration of IDOT & Toll Authority, to increase ride share / transit aggregation points most commuters do have schedules that, whether by choice or necessity, make single vehicles the prefered option...

Take a day like today -- if you have to be work but they have a delayed opening that might push you out of the normal window for a lot of transit options. If you are in some kind van pool / ride share that would get screwed up. Add in factors like some late hours work for a presentation or a need to deal with childcare issues and pretty soon the "exceptions" start really explain why getting more shared modes of commuting / suburban transit is so futile.

The other side of things is, of course, cost -- for every mile of railroad tracks & equipment spent in transportation dollars you get so much more normal roadway built that it is not even funny. Toss in the fact that even though sprawl is not a good thing there are always paving guys, strip malls builders and tract home developers that will donate to politicians for widening roads out in the hinterlands while far fewer large transit projects will have as many obvious "poltical champions"....

Despite the biases some ascribe to me I really do enjoy prefer taking Metra into the Loop over all but the shortest vehicle drives and if there was a way to redo all the hinderances there are to even more connections between the various transit options I think there could a lot of good BUT it would be such a risky / super long payback that it is all but impossible to see happening in the region.

Yeah, I've seen the data before for average daily traffic counts on certain major arterials in the area. I don't disagree that commuting in your car in certain areas is absolutely needed.