traffic congestion

Adding new asphalt on the 22 miles of the Tri-State between Rosemont and Oak Lawn would be a waste of money because highway expansion inevitably induces more traffic.

Two local politicians have proposed changing the streets around Wrigley Field to help defend it from terrorist attacks. Instead we should be looking at ways to protect the area from an excess of car traffic.

In its proposed budget for 2015, the Chicago Transit Authority didn't take much of a leap of faith when forecasting continued growth in the record crowds boarding its trains. However, CTA also optimistically forecasts that a multi-year slide in bus ridership, which accounts for 57.6 percent of the system's total ridership, will end -- and that instead bus ridership will "stabilize" with a 0.4 percent rebound.

Last night, the Chicago Transit Authority explained at a packed open house that it simply cannot run any more Red Line trains through the Clark Junction, the busy crossing one block north of the Belmont station where the Brown Line splits from the Red and Purple Lines. To untangle the crossing, CTA has proposed a flyover that would send northbound Brown Line trains over, instead of in the way of, up to three Red and Purple Line trains that pass every 3-7 minutes during rush hour. CTA spokesperson Catherine Hosinski said that previous news reports, focusing on today's average 84-second delay, miss the point: The project is about improving reliability today, and increasing Red Line service in the future.

The Chicago Plan Commission yesterday unanimously voted to approve McCaffery Interests' plan to build two 19-story apartment towers in Lincoln Park on the site of the former Children's Memorial Hospital.

Crews will be demolishing a viaduct over Western Avenue this weekend as part of Bloomingdale Trail construction, necessitating the closure of Western and diverting automobile traffic and CTA buses to Damen and California, each a half mile away. People walking or biking will be rerouted to the underpasses a block away on either side.

When I attended the ribbon cutting for the reconfiguration of Fullerton Avenue at Lake Shore Drive last December, there was a lot of talk from city officials about how the rehab would improve safety for pedestrians and bicyclists. In reality this redesign, planned before forward-thinking Chicago Department of Transportation chief Gabe Klein took office, seems to have been done mostly for the convenience of drivers, at the expense of pedestrians and cyclists. Ironically, the new configuration seems to be delaying motorized traffic on the drive, but it's not just car commuters paying the price: the CTA’s vital express buses are also getting bogged down in congestion.