Is your Chicago Drive to Work a Nightmare?

[jdiddy]

Considering the nature of the growth in Will County, I highly doubt expanding 55 to 4+ lanes would do anything but provide a temporary reprieve in travel times. In a year or two, the travel times would return to their current level of gridlock.

As Skip said, you want to get to Chicago without sitting in traffic, take metra.

[cubssoxfan]

Originally Posted by jdiddy

Considering the nature of the growth in Will County, I highly doubt expanding 55 to 4+ lanes would do anything but provide a temporary reprieve in travel times. In a year or two, the travel times would return to their current level of gridlock.

As Skip said, you want to get to Chicago without sitting in traffic, take metra.

Disagree. Problem is, they will expand it to 4 lanes once the demand for 6 lanes occur. Expanding 294 to 4 lanes helped a lot. The reasoning of "We can't expand the capacity because it will just exeed capacity again in the near future" is a bunch of hooey. With that logic we would still be traveling on 2 lane country roads with no 4 lane roads or expressways. Chicago area has done a crappy job off keeping up with infrastructure needs and the capacity expansions have been lacking. There was a Burnham plan 100 years ago and subsequent plans that if fully implemented would have made getting around a lot easier. But between the NIMBY's and city-suburb turf wars many needed plans still lay on the drafting board

[marothisu]

Nah...I get on the red line a block away, transfer to another train at Clark/Lake and get off in the Loop and walk another 1.5 blocks.

Max of 30 minutes if I just miss both trains I take and have to wait.

[jdiddy]

Originally Posted by cubssoxfan

Disagree. Problem is, they will expand it to 4 lanes once the demand for 6 lanes occur. Expanding 294 to 4 lanes helped a lot. The reasoning of "We can't expand the capacity because it will just exeed capacity again in the near future" is a bunch of hooey. With that logic we would still be traveling on 2 lane country roads with no 4 lane roads or expressways. Chicago area has done a crappy job off keeping up with infrastructure needs and the capacity expansions have been lacking. There was a Burnham plan 100 years ago and subsequent plans that if fully implemented would have made getting around a lot easier. But between the NIMBY's and city-suburb turf wars many needed plans still lay on the drafting board

There's a plethora of studies, not to mention the reality of life in other large cities with extensive highway systems (LA, Atlanta, Miami) who have found themselves unable to highway themselves out of congestion.

Expanding highways results in longer and more frequent use of the road, until eventually the congestion equilibrium is reestablished.

[SJaye]

Originally Posted by oakparkdude

I read somewhere that the Chicagoland has fewer expressway lane-miles per capita than any other metro area. I wish I could find the citation to back that up. Perhaps the crosstown expressway would have made things better?

I can believe that, sometimes it even seems like Minneapolis has more highway mileage than Chicago.

[SJaye]

Originally Posted by jdiddy

There's a plethora of studies, not to mention the reality of life in other large cities with extensive highway systems (LA, Atlanta, Miami) who have found themselves unable to highway themselves out of congestion.

Expanding highways results in longer and more frequent use of the road, until eventually the congestion equilibrium is reestablished.

I've read some of these studies, and I am kind of skeptical that they don't consider anything on a broad enough scale. By this I mean that they will look at one road and determine that expanding it's capacity does not reduce traffic on that one road. My concerns that don't seem to be addressed in these highway expansion studies are:

What are the effects of expanding the highway's capacity on the entire highway system?

Maybe that road experiences just as much traffic as more cars "appear" as these studies always say, but does it reduce the traffic on other roads that are no longer carrying these cars.

What about expanding the capacity of the entire highway system on a broader scale?

Expanding one road may just be too small an effect, but it does seem like cities with a much more elaborate highway system for it's population (New York, Minneapolis) have less traffic than cities with much less (Chicago, Atlanta).

What about the economic effects?

A highway expansion causing more cars to "appear" may have some positive economic effect.

Just some things to think about.

[cubssoxfan]

Originally Posted by jdiddy

There's a plethora of studies, not to mention the reality of life in other large cities with extensive highway systems (LA, Atlanta, Miami) who have found themselves unable to highway themselves out of congestion.

Expanding highways results in longer and more frequent use of the road, until eventually the congestion equilibrium is reestablished.

Well my eyes see better traffic flow on 294 since they 4 laned it starting about 10 years ago. My eyes see much less gridlock going north south in DuPage county since the built 355 and took the gridlock off of IL 53. Friend who live in Lemont and Homer Glen tell me traffic is MUCH better since the 355 south extension was built. I see I-55 flowing better since they 3 laned it south of Weber Rd. The studies are biased.