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.