You`ve recently reported on several proposals that have been made to reduce traffic congestion in the Chicago area, particularly in Du Page County,. Unfortunately, many of these proposals focused on ideas such as mass transit, ride-sharing, and asking companies to stagger their working hours, while ignoring the only realistic solution, which is to build more and better highways.
Mass transit would not be practical in the suburbs unless there was a bus stop on every intersection that was serviced every ten minutes. That`s why 99 in 100 people in the suburbs drive their cars to be sure of getting where they want to go when they want to get there. Nor will the overwhelming majority of people use ridesharing. Companies are also not going to impede their operations by staggering the working hours of their employees.
The only real solution is to expand the capacity of the highways. All the expressways in the Chicago area should be expanded to between four and six lanes in each direction, new freeways should be built to serve the growth areas, and the surface streets should be widened as needed to accommodate traffic. Anyone who doubts that this can be done, or that its benefit would justify the cost, should visit Atlanta, which has tremendously improved its traffic flow despite a 50 percent growth in its metropolitan population during the last 15 years.
