Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
Actually it looks like this development will close off the option of a Polk St bridge for the foreseeable future. It will be extended into the site, but as a cul-de-sac for access to the lobby of the building... as part of the bridge approach, you'd have to elevate Polk St and do some major redesign to the podium of that building as well as River City.
The Riverline plan does include preparations for the Taylor St bridge... the buildings around there will be set back and have blank walls facing the future bridge. Honestly Taylor is not the best spot for a bridge... Taylor does extend west all the way to Western, but east of Wells you have to build a new underpass below Metra and then you still run into the Dearborn Park Chinese wall. Polk is narrower but at least it connects east to State...
Maybe Polk could still get a pedestrian bridge with a smaller footprint?
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The corner of Clark and Polk is already massively over-crowded and on any given morning and afternoon traffic is backed up way beyond Roosevelt, and often to 18th. Maybe extending Wells St. through will help, but doing anything to put more traffic in that area would be carmageddon. The whole traffic flow between Congress and Roosevelt and the River and State St. needs a total rethinking but Chicago seems unable to engage in those large-scale conversations these days.
One small suggestion - make Clark two-way one more block to Congress, eliminating the bottleneck where people are forced to turn left or right onto traffic-clogged Harrison as this seems a major factor in the huge backup on Clark.
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