When he visits a restaurant and the food is cold and the waitress surly, Ron Laggos still pays the bill and leaves a tip.
That`s because, Laggos insists, ”I am not a complainer.”
But when it comes to road repair projects, don`t get him going.
He`s steamed. He`s exasperated. He`s had it up to here.
Sick of running into one traffic jam after another on one barricaded thoroughfare after another, Laggos wonders whether public officials and the multiplicity of agencies involved in road repairs make any effort to coordinate with one another.
Laggos is a salesman, and he spends more time on the road than most, but the questions he raises are muttered every summer by legions of angry drivers. If one major highway is torn up, they wonder, why do other routes that seem to be logical alternates go under the jackhammer at the same time?
If the Kennedy Expressway is being rebuilt, why has there been work on Clybourn and Elston Avenues?
Or in Laggos` case, if the Tri-State Tollway is a nightmare, why has there been simultaneous work on other north-south routes such as Roberts Road, La Grange Road and 88th Avenue? Why, he asks, have motorists also run into lane closures on Illinois Highway 83 and Illinois Highway 53?
Business trips between his southwest suburban home and northwest suburban Wheeling that normally took 50 minutes grew this summer to 75 to 90 minutes, ballooning on particularly wretched nights to two hours.
”Like a lot of other people, I get frustrated,” Laggos said. ”I see the construction, and I wonder how much forethought went into it.”
The answer is that there`s usually discussion-and even some coordination- between county, municipal, state and tollway officials.
But there`s no guarantee that one suburb or agency knows about every project that another has in the works. And there`s no public official or agency that can order one project postponed to avoid conflicts with another.
Critics point to this year`s work on two major north-south routes, the Kennedy Expressway and the Tri-State Tollway, as simultaneous construction jobs that don`t make sense.
In the case of the Kennedy and Tri-State jobs, officials insist they considered the impact of doing both at the same time, concluding that the highways serve mostly different groups of motorists.
A study by the Chicago Area Transportation Study estimated that vehicle hours of travel for drivers on the Tri-State and Kennedy combined would be only slightly higher (a total of about 104 million hours compared with about 102 million) over a six-year period under a scenario in which the projects go forward together as compared with one in which they are staggered.
And to have delayed the Kennedy until after the Tri-State project was completed would have been about $20 million a year more expensive because of construction-cost inflation, said Kirk Brown, Illinois transportation secretary.
IDOT representatives met with tollway officials ”dozens of times,” he said. ”We did nothing by accident.”
But coordination of the hundreds of smaller road projects done annually in the six-county Chicago area is more problematic.
Efforts to minimize motorist disruption are purely voluntary, and officials are not required by law to so much as post lists of their planned repairs for the benefit of neighboring jurisdictions.
Foolproof coordination is impossible in any case, given the number of projects that must be crammed into limited construction seasons, the long lead time that goes into engineering and planning of each, and the vagaries of project funding, officials say.
”The metropolitan area is too large to even begin to micromanage all those projects,” said Melissa Bolz of the Du Page Mayors and Mangers Conference.
Even so, Ron Laggos and the throngs of motorists who share his frustration believe there has to be a better way.
Maybe it`s time to create a construction ”czar,” one public official with the power to order certain projects delayed when they conflict with others.
And once this protector of the beleaguered motorist relieves the dueling- project headache, maybe he could turn his attention to ridding the highway system of unnecessary lane closures and getting repair jobs completed as quickly and efficiently as possible. But that`s another story.
Getting Around the northwest suburbs
Hoffman Estates traffic woes may be eased soon. IDOT has set Aug. 31 as target date to complete the reconstruction of Higgins Road from Beverly Road to Illinois Highway 59. The project has closed lanes on Higgins.
Pace has published a new map of its 29 routes in the northwest suburbs. The 1992 Northwest Suburban System Map covers an area extending from Buffalo Grove on the north to Elk Grove Village on the south and from Park Ridge on the east to Schaumburg on the west.
To get a map, call Pace`s Passenger Services Office at 708-364-7223 ext. 500.
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Got a commuting question? See a problem on the area`s roads, trains or buses? Getting Around will address topics of general interest. Write to Getting Around, c/o Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.
