Comments on: Chicago Crosstown Expressway

By: Susan David

Susan David — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:57:44 +0000

“Many Chicagoans don’t own cars, and many more use them only occasionally. It is not fair to make people pay for that much for something they will not use. ”

Oh yeah? Well using that arguement, I almost never use the CTA (and I live in the city). So why should I then have to pay for a transit system I never use?

The above poster was right. The biggest mistake Byrne made was cancelling the Crosstown. It’s impossible to get from the North Side to the South Side. Expressway congestion has grown exponentially and the Crosstown would have relieved a LOT of that from the Kennedy and the Ryan. Besides that, the Crosstown would have served Midway Airport, the use of which has also grown exponentially.

Oh, but we got the Orange Line instead, which is useless unless you’re going Downtown.

By: Andrew Cone

Andrew Cone — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:25:54 +0000

The two pro-highway posters fail to respond to Jake’s point about the cost burden. Many Chicagoans don’t own cars, and many more use them only occasionally. It is not fair to make people pay for that much for something they will not use. If the cost of construction were financed entirely by tolls or gas taxes, I would have less of a problem with it. But I don’t want to pay $100 billion for a highway, especially when the CTA’s annual public budget is less that $1 billion.

The two posters also fail to respond to the environmental effects of creating more car dependency. Encouraging more car use is environmentally irresponsible, as it leads both to lower air quality and increased carbon emissions.

The argument about Chicago needing this highway for the Olympics is nonsense. The IOC has made no indication that they care about Chicago’s highway infrastructure. The have, however, expressed concern about the CTA. The IOC is right to be concerned about the CTA. A safe, cost-effective Olympics would involve lots of people walking and taking public transit. It is hard to imagine that many visitors getting around Chicago by car without causing huge cost overruns and and aesthetically repugnant profusion of parking lots.

The argument about Chicago needing this because it’s spaced out is backwards. The reason Chicago is laid out in a way that mandates cars has little to do with people’s preference for more space, and more to do with federal spending priorities and urban decay. In the latter half of the 20th century, the government spent mindboggling quantities of money on highway construction. At the same time, many American cities became dangerous as racial ugliness and bad management ruined the inner-cities. Those with money were basically forced out of the decaying cities to the suburbs, where the government had bought them massively expensive infrastructure. If you ask most suburbanites why they live in the suburbs, they typically say “better schools” and “less crime.” Sometimes, they also express fear of all the, what do you know, *cars* in the city, which they (quite rightly) fear might kill their kids.

The solution is to *stop* wasting all this money on highway construction, and start getting far more mileage out of it by investing in transit.

By: james williams

james williams — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:43:44 +0000

I am in complete agreement with the previous poster. However, I think he is underestimating the capacity needs of this super-highway. I believe the highway should be based on the design of the dan ryan expressway. It should include a CTA EL line in the median with four tracks (two for local trains and two for express trains between the airports). It should include space for a metra line with two dedicated tracks for metra trains from the north/north central/and northwest lines. It should also have two additional tracks for increased freight capacity. Next, the traffic design should include three local lanes in each direction, another auxilary/collector lane between entrances and exits, much like the eisenhower expressway at sacremento/western. Next should be a dividing wall and 6 express only cars-only lanes, 3 in each direction with a right safety shoulder. Next should be 2 trucks-buses only express lanes, one in each direction, with a right shoulder. And finally, there should be a reversible express lane area with three or four lanes, which are either HOV or toll lanes. That totals, with the merge lanes and crossovers, at 20 lanes. Next to the highway, they also need to build 2 service/frontage roads, one on each side, which should be one way in the direction of traffic on the highway, with least two lanes in each direction. They need to have multiple accident investigation areas off of the highway completely, along the service roads to avoid gapers delays. To allow for future growth, they also need to have wide sloping grassy medians. The entire highway with frontage roads should be able to be confined to the one mile area between Pulaski road and Cicero ave. The service road/frontage road will probably run directly adjacent to Pulaski on the east and Cicero on the west. There should be ramps buit to connect the service roads with the adjacent surface streets. The total number of homes and bussineses destroyed shouldn’t be more than 80,000, with no more than 110,000 people displaced. Total cost in today’s money will probably be contained at 100 billion US dollars, which is well worth it for the benefits of building a world-class super-super highway and gateway to the 2016 olympic games.

By: andrew lewis

andrew lewis — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 16:51:12 +0000

I live about 1.5 miles from the proposed expressway corridor and i support it with minor reservations about the displacement of people.
But we must look at the facts.
Chicago needs the crosswtown expressway badly, and Mayor Burns’s biggest blunder was to kill that idea. She was not the smartes person to be in office for a city like chicago in my opinion.
The national models for the Urban Planning of every and any urban center in the united states requires a major freeway/expressway to be spaced every 6 miles in both north-south and east-west directions, and the crosstown should have at least 4 lanes in each direction and should be accessible for cars. Chicagoans already know that our existing freeway system is very badly designed, aligned, does not have enough lanes and is not up-to-par for a world class city like chicago.
There is no way to get from north to south sides of chicago without going through downtown or too far west to I-294.
The idea of more roads adding capacity and adding more cars to the road is an urban myth., and that theory is called “Induced Traffic.” New studies have shown that induced traffic is merely a speculation that holds no more weight than speculating that building an el line is the answer and that people will actually take the el. Statistics show that the overall EL ridership has dcrease significantly over the last 40 years because the design of american urban areas have changed drastically since the 1950’s. The “american dream” has encouraged americans to want more land space to feel more comfortable causing urban centers in the united states particularly to grown and spread horizontally as opposed to vertically. The issue and truth is that the united states, including chicago has become a driving nation, and at this point building el lines are not going to convince chicagoans to get out of they’re cars and jump on the train. In the advent of large suburban shopping malls and commercial/industrial corporate centers moving to the suburbs requiring more space, this makes the “el” outdated because it cannot connect all these points because of its large property size.
Chicagoans can make efforts to make vehicle commutes more efficient, with the development of hydrogen and hybrid vehicles. Also, with the cooporation of IDOT, CDOT and the Tollway, we can build more efficient roads.
A very good example is Los Angeles, California. They have a beautiful freeway system that works the way it should, and it built to standards spaced maximun 6 miles apart in every direction. Why can’t chicago do this? I think IDOT is thinking like we are still in the 1950’s and we are not, can’t they see the big traffic problem picture?
For the crosstown i would suggest at least 4 lanes in each direction, with a combination of at grade and elevated sections, jogging between the railroad properties and the cicero ave corridor. These 4 lanes should include a carpool/HOV lane in the far left lane, in both directions with a minimun fine of $700.00 for drivers who disobey the carpool lane. Eliminate shoulders along the center dividing wall to save on right-of-way space.

By: jake

jake — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:09:44 +0000

there’s two problems with the crosstown – it would require tearing down a lot of people’s homes and businesses, and it just adds more capacity for cars to fill up. study after study has shown that new roads don’t decrease congestion, they just add cars. we need a city that’s environmentally sustainable and that doesn’t force everyone to pay all the costs of owning a car (including hidden ones like road-building subsidies, pollution cleanup, and higher health insurance premiums).

the best idea is to build a new El line on the crosstown route, connecting o’hare and midway, the blue, green, pink, orange, and red lines, and bringing the El to huge parts of the city that have never had it. if we have to accept daley’s truck lanes to get it, i suppose that’s better than nothing.