Swami:
A friend of mine forwarded this story about Chicago's traffic being the third-worst in America, behind Los Angeles and New York. Forget all those computers -- what's your take on Chicago traffic vs. the rest of the country?
Daniel B. Ryan
Dear Dan:
Third place? That means Chicago is just the second loser. Or maybe the second winner, as the case might be.
While The Swami is tempted to invoke the Local Bias Privilege and recklessly claim that Chicago's bad traffic is second to none, the words of a former News-Sun editor who lived in both northeastern Illinois and Southern California ring in the ears: "Don't ever say that Chicago traffic is gridlocked. Los Angeles is gridlocked. Everything else is just a traffic jam."
Nevertheless, The Swami isn't convinced that this Global Positioning Satellite analysis is infallible. True, it ranks the eastbound Eisenhower Expressway at Mannheim Road as the worst bottleneck in the Chicago area. To deny this is to deny that a bear relieves itself in the woods.
But Lake County is nowhere to be found on the study's ranking of the 25 worst bottlenecks in the Chicago metropolitan area. Have these robots never been in downtown Barrington or downtown Libertyville at rush hour? Or on the northbound Tri-State at Grand Avenue when Great America opens for business? Or on Route 45 through Wildwood when the College of Lake County is in session? Or on Route 120 through Grayslake and Hainesville during any rush hour, but especially when the sun is setting in the faces of drivers?
Nay, none of these local headaches made the cut, nor did they have any apparent bearing on Chicago's overall ranking. Which, come to think of it, might be a good thing after all ...
Upon further review, let's all keep quiet up here in Lake County about our relatively tame bottlenecks. The poor saps going 13.1 mph on the Dan Ryan for 95 hours a week might move up here -- and bring their hell with them.
Wisconsin has fewer people, less taxes, and better, bigger, and wider roads. Why? Mainly because of unions and politics of IL. Where is all this money going?
I look at projects like the intersection at Delany and Sunset. What in the world have they been doing for the past 2 years? Its not constructing a new expressway, it was supposed to be simple widening of an intersection.
Then there is absolutely no planning of any sort. Zion re-surface the heavily traffic area of 173 from Sheridan to Lewis. Do you think it would have been wise to go ahead an make it 4 lanes??? I mean you want people to come to downtown Zion, at least that is what local politicians claim, and yet no keep it 2 lanes.
That goes for the entire stretch of 173. And signs of this are all over Lake County. Green Bay Road 2 lanes??? Are you serious. Yet go north and its 2-3 lanes all the way to Racine. Again, less revenue, less people, less taxes, but nicer roads? Wow, when will people wake up to the obvious and starting voting out incumbents?
Wisconsin understands (or rather, understood, when they put this plan together) that in order for WI to get revenue, they had to get people from Illinois where they wanted to go, safely, and quickly. They put together this plan called the Corridors 2020 plan that basically links up all of the even minor population areas together (and this includes all of the places we like to go to "up north."
Here's a map of the state with the major biways labelled as Backbone or Connectors. They've done a ton of work on the backbone, and they're working on projects with the connectors, all to be finished in the next 12 years.
http://www.dot.state.wi.us/business/econdev/docs/corridors2020.pdf
This was enacted in 1999 and they've made a ton of progress. I don't know the pricetag on it, but it can't have been cheap.
Wisconsin is banking on road travel to carry it through in the future.
http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/projects/state/docs/hwy2020-plan.pdf
Now, that said, people in Milwaukee aren't thrilled about all of the road work that's been done... with no commuter rail in place in Southeast Wisconsin. Amtrak is currently the only passenger train carrier that runs in the city, and plans to have rail traffic west through Waukesha have all stalled, and it appears that the same is happening with the Milwaukee, Kenosha, Racine plan that's been discussed... but nothing else.