^ well for passanger transport, no...

Although if you think of the air, truck freight and train freight that moves through northeastern Illinois - we definitely have to be right up there in the "transportation" category.

He expands on this thought a bit more in the second link provided by Chicago 3rd. In it, he (sort of) breaks down dependence on transportation region by region. To be honest, though, I'm not sure what he uses to define the region boundaries.

Anyway, based on those regions, he compiles the percent of industry and commerce dependent on transportation infrastructure. He argues that our region has a lot of industry and commerce particularly dependent on transportation infrastructure.

But I agree it is a stretch to say we are the most dependent area in terms of transit.

Taft

I found these renderings on the IDOT page, thought you guys might like them

51st St. Before and After

http://www.danryanexpressway.com/ima...st-before2.jpg

http://www.danryanexpressway.com/ima...1st-after2.jpg


79th St. Before and After

http://www.danryanexpressway.com/ima...t-before-l.jpg

http://www.danryanexpressway.com/ima...et-after-l.jpg

57th St. Before and After

http://www.danryanexpressway.com/ima...e-before-l.jpg

http://www.danryanexpressway.com/ima...ce-after-l.jpg

The blue line is pathetic. A little over a week ago I decided to take it from downtown to Wicker Park. I was astonished how incredibly slow it was going through the subway considering it was just traveling in a straight line. I really think I could have jogged from downtown to Wicker Park in a shorter time than the train got me there. I mean it literally just crawled along the tracks. But that's probably nothing compared to the sh*t I'll be dealing with for the next 2.5 - 3 years from Belmont to Fullerton when the 4 tracks are reduced to just 3.

http://www.danryanexpressway.com/ima...e-before-l.jpg
http://www.danryanexpressway.com/ima...ce-after-l.jpg

Are they moving one of the express lanes over to local or are they adding a lane?

Adding a lane. Viva expressway!

Yeah no kidding, now try taking it to work and school everyday for the past 9 months with the same shit and you will know how I feel. The nearly entire stretch from Jeff Park to Harlem is still one giant slow zone, its really annoying, Thankfully I do not travel beyond Jeff Park often, but still the 6 MPH in the subway tunnel is obsurd, but at least its being worked on. The Montrose-Jeff Park-Harlem slow zones meanwhile have no end in sight.

:haha: There are 14 too many boobs and 7 important appendages missing in that photo for my tastes. ;)

(though I'm not sure any type of hug would improve the city's rail transit, lol)

Do you think if we sent this group to screw Madigan he'd make the Crosstown proposal go away? I think that he brought the whole thing up because he's insecure about the size of his off-ramp.

double post

That or the powerful trucking lobby. Can't they just widen 294 or something?

Can anyone tell me why they want to expand I-190 to/from O'Hare? The amount of lanes it has seems fine to me. I've never gotten stuck in traffic on it, except when merging onto I-90 inbound. And that's not a I-190 problem, that's a I-90 problem (only 3 lanes both ways).

I think a lot of the work is being done on the interchanges as opposed to just adding lanes to 190.

Don't waste that group on Madigan - Daley, the toll authority, and the Belt line (owners of the ROW) have crushed his testicular fortitude already. We need that group to get more funding for the CTA.

294 does take care of through traffic through Chicagoland, but much of the traffic on the Dan Ryan/Kennedy is due to local industry. Believe it or not, but there is a shitload of factories/warehouses/intermodal facilities in the city, and they are generally concentrated around this Cicero corridor that 294 doesn't really affect.

You know 294 really is a HUGE tollway for how much it's always overlooked. You never hear anything about it for the most part, but it's basically Chicago's beltway for all through traffic going past Chicago. It's probably the only impression of chicago anyone would have who's just passing through to their destination.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/roe...eder28.article

In this Crosstown Classic, an unwise route leads to ruin

February 28, 2007
BY DAVID ROEDER Sun-Times Columnist

So House Speaker Michael Madigan wants to resurrect the Crosstown Expy., and Mayor Daley cheerily assents. Let's drive a stake through the heart of this idea right now. The sooner the Crosstown proposal dies, the better, because: • • A crosstown already is being built. It's called the Interstate 355 extension from I-55 to I-80. Together with the Tri-State, also crosstown-like in its route, it will serve the needs of truck traffic bypassing downtown. So what that it's in the suburbs and that the plan was hatched by a Republican governor whose pals got to share the contracting spoils? They did it first. Madigan should get over it.
• The last time the Crosstown was floated, it froze private investment along its proposed route near Cicero Avenue. Who in their right mind would invest to improve commercial property if the city was only going to take it anyway? The effects still can be seen on Cicero near Midway Airport, Madigan's electoral backyard and a stretch that only now is starting to get back on its feet.

I wrote a story on this area last May in which James Capraro, executive director of the Greater Southwest Development Corp., said: "The motels on Cicero didn't used to be fleabag. After the Crosstown was announced, they became fleabag." Does Daley want to reverse progress so long in coming?

• The route using the Belt Railway Co. of Chicago right-of-way sounds logical, but it isn't wide enough for a new highway and mass transit line without huge dislocation of homes and businesses. It's only 50 feet wide in some places. And the railroad isn't going anywhere.

Daley said he's not talking about tearing out homes and that the "railroad is consolidating a lot of land." In the real world, railroads here are struggling with traffic tieups and would add track capacity if they could. Timothy Coffey, general counsel at Belt Railway, declined to comment about the Crosstown but confirmed his line has no plans to sever one of its freight links at the request of politicians.
The mayor's grasp of this business is lacking. Despite his accomplishments as he sails toward his father's record tenure in office, he still has to answer for letting the CTA rot down to its railroad ties.

Capraro, by the way, said he's undecided about the new Crosstown plan. "Either way, you've got to do it or not do it and decide fairly quickly if you don't want the deterioration," he said. He also said he hasn't heard "the kind of rancor that we heard in 1972" when the idea previously came up.

Daley's Crosstown vision: trucks only, CTA line
Says project wouldn't displace homes

February 22, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN AND DAVE MCKINNEY Staff Reporters

Following Daniel Burnham's advice to "make no small plans," Mayor Daley said Wednesday he wants to revive and update his father's Crosstown Expressway dream by building a two-lane, truck-only route with a mass transit line down the middle.

"It's a great idea. Yes. It was a great idea in the '70s. That was the best time to build it. Now, I bet it costs 10 times as much," said Daley, who hopes to use the 2016 Summer Olympics as a catalyst to attract federal transportation funds.

"But you need public transportation with it. You have to be able to move people north and south. We don't move people north and south unless you go downtown -- by car or by public transit. That's what's wrong with the city."

One day after House Speaker Michael J. Madigan (D-Chicago) put the Crosstown chip on the table in the game of legislative poker, Daley piled on with a more costly and elaborate proposal.

Madigan, who declined to take questions about his proposal Wednesday, wants to authorize the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority to finance, build and operate a Crosstown Expressway. It would run along railroad rights-of-way -- near Cicero Avenue -- from the Kennedy/Edens junction south to 75th Street, then east to the Dan Ryan Expy.

Daley favors a two-lane, truck-only "freeway" -- with a mass transit line down the middle -- built on a platform to avoid displacing hundreds of homes and businesses in the Cicero Avenue corridor.

"We have a lot of railroad beds. The railroad is consolidating a lot of the land. That's what you really want to look at. We're not talking about displacing anybody. We're not [talking] about tearing anybody's homes down. It's a concept. We have a lot of railroad property going north and south. That's what we have to look at," Daley said.

"You have to eliminate trucks. Trucks is the major issue. One lane going north. One lane going south. That's all you need. And you have public transportation in the middle."

Gov. Blagojevich offered only a tepid response to the Madigan plan but stopped short of ruling it out.

"At this point, it's a concept, and there could be some merit here," Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said. "We think it's worth exploring the idea."


Plan 'bordering on impossible'
Dave Schulz, director of Northwestern University's Infrastructure Technology Institute, said he "almost fell out of my chair" when he learned of Madigan's attempts to revive the Crosstown.
Schulz said the Crosstown is "undeniably" an expressway that "should have been built." That's evidenced by the fact that the northbound Dan Ryan approaching the Circle interchange "probably runs congested for 14, 16 hours a day," he said.

But there's also a political reality that is more true today than it was in 1979, when then-Mayor Jane Byrne, for whom Schulz once worked, killed the Crosstown.

"It would be extraordinarily difficult, bordering on impossible, to hack an expressway through that corridor, as much as I would welcome the transportation benefits. The social, engineering and environmental costs would just be huge. The environmental impact statement for that thing would take 15 years. I can't think of anyplace doing something like that in a developed city."

Whats next for Daley
 

I posted the complete article in General Developments thread but thought this also needed to be posted here.....

THE CTA

"Daley defended CTA President Frank Kruesi after a pair of aldermen called Chicago a world-class city with a "third-world transit system." But the mayor knows better than anybody that the time has come to remove his longest-serving adviser. Kruesi has made so many enemies in Springfield -- including powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan -- state lawmakers won't even think about helping the CTA until he's gone. Look for Kruesi to make the long-rumored move to the O'Hare Modernization Program and Aviation Commissioner Nuria Fernandez to replace Kruesi at CTA, where she got her start. Kruesi's first job at O'Hare would be to persuade major airlines to finance Phase 2 of Daley's massive runway expansion plan."

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If this ends up being true what are the opinions of those who are more knowledgeable about the CTA of Fernandez taking over. Does she have what it takes to truely turn the CTA around?

I don't think even a two lane truck road could run along much of that route without displacing homes...you'd have to anchor the platform to something (what, straddling and hovering over the Belt way since the freight lines don’t want to give it up?), and that would logically be the property on either side which is mostly residential from Jefferson Park through Grand Ave on the North side. And where would the entry and exit ramps go?

As I truly despise David Roeder, it pains me to say that he seems to get what the issues are here. Also, in reference to Mr. Capraro’s comment about not hearing as much rancor as in 1972, I’d say that’s because, at least in my neck of the woods, people right now are really uninformed. When I asked some of my neighbors about this (who are one block East of the Belt Way), the majority hadn’t even heard about it let alone understood the possible consequences. And don’t assume it’s because they are generally uneducated people: sample careers of two of the uninformed – a lawyer for the IRS and an Economist for the Federal Reserve Bank. When it was explained to them, they did get it, and they weren’t too happy.

Give it some time – the rancor will grow as more concrete information becomes available…or not, depending on what Daley has in mind. It’s all been pretty vague up to this point.