Did I-94/Edens Traffic Recently get Much Worse??? (Chicago, Skokie: college, live)

[PuzzledDriver]

Hello, I apologize for my lack of knowledge (and possibly for this stupid question), but I'm very curious about this, and would appreciate input from anyone who might know.

I recently started at a job in IL this year (early Jan to be precise). I live just north of Chicago, and work in Lake Zurich. During the morning, I get on the Edens/I-94 Northbound from IL-41 near Skokie, and get off near IL-22. During the afternoons, I get on near IL-22, head South, and get off at IL-41.

I usually get on around 7 AM in the mornings, and between 5-7 PM in the afternoons. For the first several months, I really didn't experience terrible traffic at all. Maybe a few days when we had some bad snow, but that was it.

Suddenly however, right around the start of April, my afternoon commutes became terrible. A substantial stretch of the SB Edens, starting from its intersection with the Edens Spur/I-94 and ending at my point of exit at IL-41, came to a standstill every afternoon. Is there any reason for this? I know the direct cause of the standstill I'm experiencing is that the Edens Spur is horribly backed up, but it wasn't like this until more recently (at least to my knowledge).

I've been pondering over this for some time, and I'm almost positive that it's not just my imagination. I thought commutes should have gotten better when winter ended and the icy roads went back to normal, but I was clearly wrong.

**Note: I wasn't sure if this belonged in the Chicago Suburbs section, but I figured someone here must know the reason.

~Thanks

[Drover]

Inbound afternoon traffic from the north has always sucked, though it's usually not "standstill" territory until about Old Orchard. Fridays are the worst; also when there's Cubs night games, all bets are off.

[chet everett]

There are some researchers that have determined the difference between a barely flowing roadway and one that has literally stopped cars can come down to just a handful of added cars. There very likely was some roadwork on a parallel or feeder route that was the "trigger" for this shift. If even a moderate sized employer has switched locations or adjusted start / stop times that can have a snowball effect. Toss in the fact that a significant number of college kids do internships and such and the root causes are probably not worth worrying about.

If you can find a way to alter your own start / stop time or switch to a set of alternatives you may be able to reduce your travel times, but even with realtime traffic and other technology tricks there are simply limits to the capacity that you have to just accept...

[Lookout Kid]

Warmer months typically have elevated traffic volume too.