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Originally Posted by Mr Downtown
^Yes, but the main problem resulting from lack of the Crosstown is that truck traffic is either forced through downtown or all the way out to the Tri-State. A transit line does nothing to fix that problem.
An expressway that could help lure skilled manufacturing and logistics back from Elk Grove Village and Des Plaines to Franklin Park, Cicero, and Bedford Park would do a lot more for South Side workers stranded far from good jobs than building a new train line they could spend 75 minutes riding.
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Isn't this a zero-sum game? I mean, I support a truckway or some other scheme to speed goods movement, but these industrial corridors are already full of businesses, just not high-value-added ones. You could goose the vacancy rate down a bit maybe.
Manufacturing isn't like residential or office, as far as I know - they don't build up to use land more intensely, or at least they haven't done so since the 1950s. They can add additional shifts if they are successful, but generally manufacturing operations grow by moving to a larger site in an area with cheap land. That means you might be able to lure businesses with better-paying jobs to these urban corridors, but you probably won't do much to the raw number of jobs. Given the trend in manufacturing away from multi-story buildings, I doubt you would ever achieve the Hawthorne Works employment density those areas once had.
That's setting aside the fact that the industrial corridors, long-term, are the city's escape valve for residential growth, since they are the only place where developers can build significant density without NIMBY opposition. The PMD concept is ultimately doomed for this reason...