Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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"Fighting injustice, one victory at a time."
One of the top Projects of RS Advocacy is Transportation. On Monday, the Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS), a government Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), held a public meeting to receive suggestions on how to improve transportation in the Chicago area. I offered eleven proposals, which are described below.
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The clout of CATS and the nation's other MPO's stems from the 1962 Federal Highway Act, which requires that transportation planning be comprehensive, cooperative and coordinated (known as "The 3C's"). MPO's are the organizations that Congress designate to do the 3C's for each of the nation's major metropolitan areas. Transportation projects must be included in the plan approved by a region's MPO in order to be eligible for federal funding.
Here are the suggestions that I offered to the Chicagoland MPO at Monday's meeting:
1. Require seat belts on all forms of mass transportation, and in particular, school busses. (That one shouldn't surprise you.)
2. Link major regions of the metropolitan area and major destinations by long-distance, point-to-point, high-speed rail service. Major regions of the metropolitan are would include such places as the Elgin area, the Schaumburg-Woodfield area, Vernon Hills-Libertyville-Mundelein, Skokie-Evanston-Morton Grove, Aurora-Naperville, Oak Brook-Elmhurst, Tinley Park-Orland Park and Harvey-South Holland. Major destinations would include such areas as downtown Chicago, area airports and places like the Great America amusement park. If O'Hare and Midway Airports were linked to other major airports such as Gary (Indiana), Rockford (Illinois) and Milwaukee (Wisconsin), then we wouldn't need to spend billions pf dollars building an airport near Peotone, Illinois, as a third Chicago-area airport. The same dollars spent to link existing airports, instead of building another one in the middle of nowhere, would also dramatically slash the time that it takes to get to downtown Chicago from distant suburban areas. If you could get between places like O'Hare, Midway, Skokie, Elmhurst and downtown in just ten minutes by high-speed, regional, non-stop rail links, you bet people would give up their cars for transit, and be more than willing to pay for it.
3. Separate the grades between railroads and highways, and between north-south and east-west arterial streets. (Separating the grades means one travels over or under the other.) Separated grades would dramatically lower travel times by eliminating the stop-and-go caused by having east-west traffic crossing the paths of north-south traffic. When traffic intersects at the same level, only one can get through at a time while the other one waits. It might take us a hundred, two hundred or three hundred years to do all of the intersections that would benefit from separated grades, but let's start, now.
4. Whenever crowded roads with two lanes in each direction are re-built, re-build them with three lanes in each direction. When three- or four-lane expressways are rebuilt, expand them to five or six lanes each way where space permits. Concrete roads and bridges typically have a thirty to forty-year life span. Asphalt roads usually last fifteen years before needing resurfacing. If we start soon, traffic flow could be substantially improved by the middle of the century. Most arterials in the Clearwater, Florida, area are three lanes in each direction, and traffic breezes by. Most roads in the Chicago area, however, are only two lanes in each direction. Some Chicago-area roads, such as Golf Road (Illinois Route 58) in the north and northwest suburbs and North Avenue (Illinois Route 64) in the western suburbs are already three lanes in each direction, and they flow far more smoothly as a result. We need much more of that. (In case you were wondering, Golf Road got its name because it runs through the Village of Golf; that village got its name because a major golf equipment manufacturer was located there. North Avenue, on the other hand, got its name from the fact that from 1837, when Chicago was incorporated, to 1889, when Chicago annexed the City of Lakeview, North Avenue formed the northern border of Chicago. The City of Lakeview stretched from North Avenue to Devon Avenue and from Lake Michigan to Western Avenue. On the same date, which happened to be 113 years ago tomorrow (August 15, 1889), Chicago also annexed the Town of Jefferson (North Avenue to Devon Avenue and Western Avenue to Harlem Avenue), the Village of Hyde Park (39th Street to 87th Street and Lake Michigan to Western Avenue), the southwest side, which I believe was the Town of Clearing (39th to 87th and Western to Harlem), as well as the west side (North Avenue to 39th street and from Western Avenue to Austin Avenue north of Roosevelt Road and to the railroad tracks just east of Cicero Avenue south of Roosevelt Road. That made Chicago five times as big as it was, and that's how Chicago got to be so big. The annexations were done under the premise that better municipal services could be achieved through the economy of larger size. What a mistake that was! Now, people understand that better municipal service is achieved by having smaller communities, because local officials are more responsive when they live in your own neighborhood rather than someplace twenty miles away.)
5. Double-deck the expressways and some major arterials. The expressway system was built in the 1950's and 1960's. The population has increased by about 50% since then, from about 5,000,000 to about 7,500,000, and is expected to double from the 1950 figure by 2030, up to about 10,000,000. Travel times have increased dramatically. Rush Hour used to be from 7 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m. Now, Rush Hour goes from 5 to 10 a.m. and from 2 to 7 p.m., with very heavy traffic continuing between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Yet, the capacity of most Chicagoland expressways hasn't increased one bit. Where there isn't space to add lanes in the urban and suburban areas, go up! Build new express lanes above the present lanes, without on or off ramps for twenty miles to carry, to and from downtown, traffic that isn't going to exit the expressways until they get well out into the suburbs. The same thing could be done over arterials for traffic that is traveling five or ten miles from downtown. Man, would traffic be smoothed if we simply added capacity by going 3-D with our road network. Think of the time we'd save if we could get where we're going during the rush hour in fifteen to forty-five minutes (depending on distance) rather than one to three hours.
6. Complete the network of expressways. Build the Route 53 north extension through Lake County, from Lake-Cook Road to Illinois Route 120, connecting with I-94 near Gurnee to the east and with the Route 12 expressway at the Wisconsin border at Richmond to the west. Build the I-355 south extension through Will County, crossing I-80 east of Joliet, I-57 near Peotone and going all the way to I-65 near Lowell, Indiana. Wouldn't that be a great way for through traffic to bypass the congestion of the Tri-State Tollway (I-294)? Right now, if you want to go, by expressway, from points north and west of Chicago to I-65 in Indiana, the next expressway bypass outward from the Tri-State consists of using I-39 and I-74, which goes from Rockford to Bloomington to Indianapolis. That's a full 303 miles, quite a long way to go for people who want to bypass both the Chicago area and the Tri-State while going from Interstate 90 to Interstate 65. We can do better than that by implementing my proposal.
7. Implement a Speedpass-type system on all Chicago-area transportation services. "Speedpass" is a hand-held, 1.375-inch-long, cylinder-type device that customers wave at a computer receiver to activate fuel pumps at Exxon and Mobil stations and have the transaction automatically charged to their credit cards. Many McDonald's restaurants now have Exxon/Mobil Speed-pass transceivers. Chicago-area transportation facilities should do the same thing. Get on the bus, wave your thing at the fare box and your fare is paid. Get on the train, same deal. No need for quarters at the parking meter. Just push a button to indicate for how long you wish to park, wave your thing at the meter and your parking fee is paid. Same deal at parking lots.
8. Convert commuter trains from diesel locomotive engines to faster-accelerating electric motors. About fifty years ago, railroad trains converted from steam locomotives to diesel locomotives. The problem, besides air pollution, is that they accelerate at a very lethargic pace. It takes about a mile to get up to speed, yet many stations are only about two miles apart. By the time they get going, it's time to stop again. Rapid transit electric trains go from zero to 55 mph in about a block, and can stop just about as fast. The time it takes to travel by commuter trains, which travel much longer routes, could be reduced substantially if commuter trains could accelerate and stop the way rapid transit trains do. You literally could cut travel time in half if the time between stations, typically about two miles apart, were cut from five minutes to two minutes.
9. Provide security at Park-n-Ride facilities. A lot of people won't park at Park-n-Rides and go by transit because of fear that their cars will be vandalized at no-security parking lots while they're gone. They don't want to come back to their cars to find out that their cars have been broken into or had all four wheels removed. They know that thieves know that the owners of cars parked in no-security Park-n-Rides will be gone all day, so there's nobody around to stop the bad guys from stealing. It's easy pickings at the no-security Park-n-Rides, and most Chicago-area Park-n-Rides are no-security affairs. Hire security to protect the cars at Park-n-Rides and more people will use them. That will improve traffic flow. Fewer cars will be clogging up the roads if more people parked at Park-n-Rides and used transit.
10. Establish Shuttlebug service to get people to and from regional bus routes. "Shuttlebug" is the name that Pace, the suburban bus division of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), has given to busses that meet reverse commuters (people who travel by train from Chicago to jobs in the suburbs) at suburban commuter train stations and deliver them to major employers that are located within a few miles of the train stations. We need to do that for regional bus routes. One of the biggest problems with regional bus routes is that the busses wander back and forth to cover wide areas of the communities through which they travel. (See, for example the map of Route 234, which travels from my home town of Buffalo Grove to Des Plaines.) This slows down the regional busses substantially. Instead of wandering back and forth, east and west, on a north-south regional route, Pace should have shuttle busses meet commuters at regional bus stops in each community to shuttle passengers locally within a community while the regional bus continues on its way directly. This would substantially cut down the time that it takes a regional bus to cross the region, which would make the service more attractive to riders, which would increase ridership. The increased ridership would offset the cost of providing the Shuttlebug-type services, so everyone would win, including motorists, because more bus riders would mean fewer cars on the road.
11. Create an over-the-road (literally) electrical (trolley-type) system and let cars and trucks connect to it (for a fee, of course). One of the biggest drawbacks to cleaner, battery-operated cars is that cars generally can go only 75 to 100 miles on a charge. If arterials and expressways had trolley-type electrical systems over the roads, and if cars and trucks would be allowed to connect to it, you would only need to use the on-board battery for the last few miles to your destination. The on-board batteries could even be recharged as you go while connected to the trolley, or similar, system. Air pollution would go way down because cars and trucks could get where they're going without burning fossil fuel.
Linda Bolte, one of the top officials of the CATS, the Chicagoland MPO, will be the guest on the October edition of the Rob Sherman Television Show to present the top suggestions that CATS has received from the public. I'll also ask her what she thinks of each of my proposals. Be sure to tune in for that show.
Meanwhile, if you like some of my transportation ideas and would like for me to be your agent to try to get these ideas implemented, please become a supporter of Rob Sherman Advocacy so that I'll have the financial resources that will enable me to spend my time advocating these ideas instead of doing something else to earn the money that I need to pay my bills. Here's how to contact me to become a supporter:
Rob Sherman P. O. Box
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Telephone: (847) 870-0700
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E-mail: rob followed by the at symbol followed by robsherman dot com