Your Dec. 28 editorial on the bad and worsening traffic congestion in the Chicago area (“Gridlock today? Wait ’til tomorrow”) was right on the money.
An example of how right you are can be found in the recent renovation of the Kennedy Expressway: Only a very few weeks after it was fully reopened to traffic, it was as crowded as it had been during the construction. And today it has become one long rush hour–unless a truck has an accident, in which case “rush” is definitely the wrong word. What we are seeing here is the principal enunciated in the movie “Field of Dreams”: If you build it, they will come.
The limiting factor is the supply of roads, streets, highways and places to put them, not the supply of cars. The auto, oil and road-construction industries are doing all they can to keep the supply of cars increasing. Each time we address congestion problems by building more and better highways, more vehicles will come until lack of facilities once again imposes a limit. The only result will be more congested lanes, more congested highways, more congested on and off ramps, more congested streets and roads in city and suburbs.
And where will all those cars park? The parkway in front of our homes? Maybe we should cut down street trees and have pedestrian sidewalks on only one side of the street. Municipalities could exercise the right of eminent domain to take over our front lawns to widen streets.
The right answer is to emphasize top-notch public transportation to reduce incentive to commute by private automobile. Chicago-area public transportation is among the best in the country, but it’s still terrible. It can be very difficult, time-consuming, sometimes dangerous and often impossible to travel between most points in Chicago and its suburbs. And service cutbacks aggravate the problems: How can one take public transportation to an afternoon or evening affair if there is no night-owl service for the return trip? Build a good public transportation system, and they will come to that.
Obviously, the auto industry, oil companies, tollroad authorities and road-construction companies will fight this idea. Back in the ’50s and ’60s, auto and oil companies bought up streetcar lines and dismantled them because they understood that good public transportation was costing them potential sales; there is no reason to believe that their attitude is any different now. But responsible, forward-thinking people, as exemplified by the Tribune’s editorial, might prevail this time.
