Mark Rozdolsky’s comments in “Chicago’s transportation woes” (Voice of the people, Jan. 22), though well-intentioned, are wide of the mark.
– Airports: Lengthening the O’Hare runways and/or adding to them is not a Band-Aid approach, as he states, but absolutely essential if Chicago is to maintain its competitive edge in the global economy over the next 20 years. A strong case can be made for an additional close-in “destination” airport. Midway may soon reach its finite limit on capacity.
As for an additional hub airport, the idea is absolute folly. No region in the world has successfully pursued two of these (Kennedy/Newark is not an exception), and with the uncertainty inherent in the airline industry as a result of deregulation, consolidation and calls for re-regulation, who knows what the needs of that industry will be 10 years from now? As for the jobs that a major airport in Peotone would create (the reason for Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s support for that facility), better public transportation and more affordable housing linking jobs and residences are faster, cheaper and more community-building solutions.
– Expressways: More expressway lanes only bring more traffic congestion; curing bottlenecks is a different issue. A realistic, non-special-interest approach to highway construction is one of the two public policies that can do so something to ameliorate America’s overdependence on the beloved automobile. The only other relevant public policy involves the CTA/Metra.
– CTA/Metra: In addition to linking jobs and housing in the half-ring of inner and outer suburbs surrounding Chicago, improvement in inner-city transportation in Chicago is critical to its continued, robust economic health. The failure to build some form of the circulator joins the list of other tragic failures in Chicago’s history–the failure to build the cross-town expressway, the failure to hold a World’s Fair in 1993 and the construction of a new Comiskey Park.
Won’t someone or some agency help push for a light-rail system that would link McCormick Place and the Museum Campus with the old Post Office (which could house 5,000 parked cars from the suburbs), Union Station, Northwestern Station, North Michigan Avenue, Streeterville, Northwestern Hospital and Navy Pier? Such a transportation facility would probably serve more than 30 million people annually, and because existing railroad right-of-ways cover most of the route, it would be reasonably easy and relatively inexpensive to build.
