While CTA buses bunching up bumper-to-bumper in heavy traffic are among the top complaints about public transportation, a big piece of Chicago’s proposed solution — bus-only lanes — faces a challenging test-drive.
The key to success starts by abandoning the preoccupation with how many vehicles can be crammed onto major roads and downtown streets each day, according to transportation experts. It’s simply a battle that cannot be won.
Instead shift the focus to transporting more people safely, reliably and comfortably on mass transit.
Yet homegrown skeptics have had a field day denouncing as unworkable the recently announced plan for the CTA bus-only lanes during rush hours to fight gridlock on key arterial streets leading into downtown.
The federal government is awarding more than $153 million to Chicago and the CTA to test bus lanes and a congestion-pricing strategy.
The latter element involves increasing downtown parking meter rates during peak periods, charging loading-zone fees for trucks making on-street deliveries, leasing the management of city parking meters to a private company and raising the city tax that drivers pay at parking garages and surface lots downtown.
CTA bus-only lanes will be built on two North Side streets and two South Side streets for routes serving downtown under the ambitious plan to test the bus version of rapid transit in Chicago.
The strategy centers on slashing travel times by 50 percent and luring drivers out of their cars.
The bus lanes will be built on 79th Street from State Street to Ashland Avenue; on Chicago Avenue from California Avenue to Fairbanks Court; on Halsted Street from Lake Street to North Avenue; and on Jeffery Boulevard from 87th to 67th Streets.
But experts say not to forget other traffic headaches, perennial problems including poorly timed traffic signals, inefficient left- and- right-turn movements and conditions that create conflict between vehicles and pedestrians.
