Metropolitan Planning Council is out with a report that says traffic congestion in the Chicago region is costing $7.3 billion per year in needless commuting time, wasted fuel, environmental damages and other effects of gridlock.
How much attention do you pay to these types of reports? We all know traffic stinks. How much do the findings in a report that took months or years to research and write affect your opinion on the topic?
The real questions remain: What will it take for you to change your driving habits? Have you ever considered car-pooling, using public transportation or other means to reduce the amount of time your vehicle is on the road? If the government wanted to get serious about reducing congestion, what incentives should it offer or investments in mass transit should it make to get vehicles off the road?
Yes, I do believe "gridlock" is costing this area $$. When I sit on Jefferson Street for 4 stoplight cycles to get across Ogden Ave, that's gasoline just being burned for nothing. This is just one example. Multiply it by thousands of other locations this happens at and thousands of cars. . . . I already use public transportation (train) and the PACE bus as much as possible. And with the high price of gasoline, we bike whenever feasible as well. What would it take to get people out of their cars -- my guess is free public transportation, increased bus service. In Chicago there are tons of bus routes. A person can basically get around without even having a car. But out in the 'burbs, day-to-day life is nearly impossible without one.
Well, if we could get the proposed STAR line in Naperville running to O'Hare that would alleviate a ton of traffic woes.
People could finally start taking the train to go to work not to mention the thousands who are driving to O'Hare for a business trip.
Oh, yeah, CN is forcing the purchase of EJ&E so we won't be able to ever have the STAR line. Our last hope of alleviating traffic woes will be gone, gone, gone. It will be worse, worse, worse.
Traffic gridlock costing billions--do you buy it? YES
Post WW2
After WW2, the USA was worried about drifting back into the depression which was prolonged by Roosevelt for years with tax hikes every time the economy picked up a little bit.
To avert drifting back into a depression, the USA adopted the short-term-fix Keynesian model of "stimulating the economy with government spending financed by debt and letting the future take care of itself" This is the future and we are drowning in debt and credit bubbles, but that is a different story.
After the war, the Oil, Car and Tire companies were allowed to purchase and close most of the effective mass transit forcing everyone to buy a car and keep the workers busy at the former war production factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler and their parts suppliers. These companies became the most powerful lobby ($$$$$$) in Washington as they are today.
The Post Office hired perhaps as many as a million to deliver mail twice a day, the gas stations hired as many as they could and so did the phone companies (1MM +).
The GI Bill allowed many to go directly to college bypassing the shaky job market and keeping them busy preparing for the future.
Suburbia
The combination of automobiles, the autobahns AKA interstate highways in the 50s, the GI housing bill and growing crime problems in the cities led to the creation of suburbia. Naperville.
Naperville and most suburbs are still operating on the post WW2 model of transportation and we should be grateful we have the commuter trains or the roads would be completely gridlocked. Stopping and starting (city driving) causes my mileage to go from 34 MPG highway to 21 MPG in town; A 39% loss of efficiency. Multiply this by 150 million (?) vehicles in the USA and the numbers become big, really big.
Mexico, the 3rd largest supplier of oil to the USA has announced that “due to declining production they will stop exporting oil to the USA in six years”. OIL IS RUNNING OUT!
What’s next?
The batteries required to make electric cars viable are no slam dunk, so this is an open engineering question. Also, there is no electricity available to power the cars since we stopped building Nukes and now rely on coal which everyone is now realizing may not be a good idea.
Hydrogen may be the car fuel of the future since it kind of fits the existing distribution model and probably allows the oil industry to continue to dominate transportation distributing the “new gas”, once they have been allowed to buy up the new sources of energy. This is their stated goal. Since they (oil and banks/finance) own both political parties, this is probably how it will go down.
Since the Federal elected officials are going to do nothing that interferes with their pay masters, the local governments will probably have to do the best they can to provide their own solutions. A situation akin to the 30 million illegals and hundreds of tons of drugs the Feds are dumping on local governments to appease the Chamber of Commerce cheap labor monkeys. “If you can’t export the job, import the cheaper worker!” Preferably workers with no rights, here or there.
Local Solutions?
Riding the buss around town never seems to fly since no one wants to stand outside when it is -20. In some areas the question is whether you will be robbed, beaten then murdered. This is why we see empty bus after empty bus passing by.
Naperville, in cooperation with Aurora, could build a massive transportation center at the RT 59 rail station that would include side rails for more commuter trains to wait on (more appropriately sized express trains that fit the platforms in Chicago). Massive new parking decks that would pay for themselves, an indoor bus terminal and covered docks for those that ride the busses (local, Greyhound and the airport busses that pass by every day, room for taxi cabs, rental cars, and airport mini busses and limos, and some shops that cater to commuters like a convenience store, dry cleaner, drop off area for auto repairs etc.. Every viable option if you don’t want to drive.
Bus service in the morning and evening from this station to the I88 businesses might just work for reverse commuters.
My guess is that developers would be attracted to build condos and offices near the new and improved station linking Naperville to the world.
Sure gridlock costs money in wasted gas. For the most part, there is no way to cure it unless you limit when and where people can drive. They have done this in London with a vehicle tax for every trip into that city. Personally, I don't want to be charged to drive in any city. Bus routes in the far flung suburbs are not feasible, as people live to far apart to make it work. It doesn't really even work in the city as the constant doomsday route cuts and bailouts show.
Car pooling might work for a select few, but how many people live next door, or even within 5 miles of those they work with? Mass transit just means mass taxation, and as noted above, is not really a viable answer. Those who use bikes are limited to close places; not really the answer for people who drive 15 or more miles to work.
In all honesty, I think we are stuck with the transportation system we have just because of the way the suburbs grew out of the city.
How many east/west and north/south thru streets does the city have?
That is why we have grid lock. (You really can't use the term "grid lock" in Naperville, because there is not a "grid" of streets.)