… And How to Make Chicago Even Better
Yes, the city is great—but it has problems too. Good thing it’s bursting with innovative people who have lots of ideas about how to fix them. Here are six. PLUS: Share your views on these ideas—or propose your own—in the comments below
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Interviews by Marcia Froelke Coburn, David Lepeska, Graham Meyer, and Karen Springen
BIG IDEA 1: Implement creative solutions to Chicago’s traffic headaches.
FOR THE 99 PERCENT: Revamp Lake Shore Drive.
THE RATIONALE: Adding lanes for bus rapid transit, electric vehicles, and bicycles would significantly reduce congestion—and carbon emissions.
THE PROPONENT: Randy Neufeld, director of the SRAM Cycling Fund, a cycling advocacy foundation set up by the Chicago-based bike part manufacturer SRAM, and a board member of the Active Transportation Alliance
HE SAYS: “Forget billion-dollar megaprojects such as monorails. We don’t need to build an expensive new system to unclog the Drive and give everyone a guaranteed quick ride up and down the lakefront.
“Instead the city could create two specialized lanes at minimal cost. One should be for a bus rapid transit system, which is essentially a train system without rails. Rapid transit buses—already operating in places like Bogotá, Colombia—move rapidly. They don’t bog down in traffic like express buses do. And riders pay at stations instead of as they board, which is more efficient. The bus lane would be closest to the median strip. Then there would be a lane for bikes and for light electric vehicles, such as electric assist cargo bikes and solar-charged scooters. Two traditional car lanes would be on the right, where drivers could use the off ramps easily.
“Just imagine: Chicago could be the first city in the world with an express lane—on our signature road!—dedicated to emerging green urban mobility. There are big economic benefits to a Lake Shore Drive that attracts tourists, that serves residents who choose not to drive, and that is 100 percent reliable, regardless of events and weather. And all this could be done within five years.”
FOR THE 1 PERCENT: Bring back helicopter service.
THE RATIONALE: The best way to beat traffic is to fly over it.
THE PROPONENT: Joseph Schwieterman, professor of public service at DePaul University and author of Beyond Burnham: An Illustrated History of Planning for the Chicago Region
HE SAYS: “New York City has an active downtown heliport, but Chicago hasn’t had one since Meigs Field was shuttered in 2003. From 1956 through the mid-1970s, a company called Chicago Helicopter Airways offered frequent flights from Meigs Field to O’Hare (initially just $5 each way) and to Midway. Choppers also once linked Winnetka and Gary, Indiana, to the airports. Service was suspended because of a spike in fuel prices, a recession, and concerns about safety.
“But helicopters today are quieter and safer; the soon-to-be-available Bell/Agusta AW609, a fast-flying tiltrotor using military technology, will be able to fly longer distances too. So let’s put landing pads at the end of Navy Pier, at McCormick Place, at the Illinois Medical District, and near the Museum Campus’s Northerly Island (once the site of Meigs Field). Then anyone willing to pay $100 to $125 each way (less if traveling with three or more other passengers) could bypass the congestion.”
RELATED: Best of Chicago 2012 »
This article appears in the August 2012 issue of Chicago magazine.
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Are you kidding me? Why don't we just stick our head in the sand? How about a new sewage system?? I smell raw sewage downtown, in Andersonville, and all over the place. Wow. You want helicopter service? Why - to get away from the sewage??
How about clean the lake?? Let me see.... we close beaches due to "bacteria” . . . in other words, POOP! Really, you think number two (no pun intended) is diagnose depression with a blood test should be ranked higher than eliminate the poop from lake Michigan? Maybe if we lived in a clean environment fewer people would be depressed!
Oh, and now because our government has proven themselves such good business people, let's have them run a bank? What planet are you on?? How about you first list how many departments or branches of Chicago's government are making money or breaking even? I think we have sold all division that even stood a chance at profitability. Do you really want these unions in banks?
Then we get to your #3 -- cut time in schools…wow. That’s what we need. I am a professor at one of the larger, private universities and I am telling you our elementary and high schools need to raise the bar. Why am I correcting “their” vs. “there” or “its” vs. “it’s”. Obviously we need more, not fewer hours of schooling. You start an hour later, they get to bed an hour later. I live on a block where the children (under the age of 12) are up, on the street, until after midnight! The start time of school is NOT the problem.
If we do not see ourselves for what we are, we will NEVER correct what is wrong. Matter of fact, from an individual whose family has been in this country since the late 1600’s, if your list is what people think is important, then we deserve to be in the shape we are in! This article is a self-inflated bunch or garbage! We better get the basics right before we build a helicopter pad!
REALLY?? Does anyone read and think?
How about the following:
1. Correct the sewage system.
2. Clean the lake.
3. Get rid of computers and calculators in elementary and high schools and teach our children to think! They seem to believe that computers and calculators make THEM smart! Don’t even get me started on their poor vocabulary. (I am a business professor, NOT an English teacher!)
4. Provide for the homeless, poor, working poor, and elderly.
5. UPDATE the CTA -- a great idea - fix the tracks so concrete does not fall on people when they walk under the overpasses. Clean the busses and trains. Fire the people that do not work! Hire people who want to work.
Provide a safe way for cyclists to bike to work. The lakefront is good, but it is still quite dangerous to get to the lake. Study the west coast -- they designate streets for bicycle commuters.
6. Stop allowing blocks to have 'block parties". Isn't that why we have parks? Let's see, the minority on the street want a party, so they inconvenience everyone for their party! Go to a PARK!
7. Fix roads and bridges. It is sad when every overpass on LSD is crumbling.
8. Promote eliminating fossil fuel. Build some windmills, electric filling stations, and make it worthwhile for people to install solar energy!
9. Provide more features in the parks. How about more water fountains designed to wash your feet after being on the beach? Workout stations? BENCHES throughout the city for people to rest!
10. Garbage cans in ALL neighborhoods – not just shopping areas. How about a rule: one city garbage can every three blocks. Write it in the contract with the garbage collectors!!
Your list is so elitist. Do you realize that the very next article covers crime in Chicago and, to quote your article, ". . .crime rates have not fallen in Chicago as dramatically as elsewhere. The city (sic) was named the murder capital of America in 1998, 2001, and 2003" We must be close this year too! Please think before your publish your work! Making Chicago safe was not even on your list!
I very much like the idea of a Lake Shore Drive bike and bus lane. Bikes and bike riders are getting significantly faster, to fast for the recreational path on the lake. Road bikes and some recumbents are benefitting from advances in technology. We need a high speed express lane for bikes.
Chris Stodder
Rapid Transit Cycleshop
Keep the reversibles on the Kennedy Expressway open inbound all the time. Wouldn't it make more sense to make it easier for people to come to the city than to leave it? The antiquated system of changing it four times a day comes from the 60's and things change. It was designed for times when there was a rush hour, now it seems like constant traffic. Too many times I hear of people that won't drive into Chicago from the burbs because of traffic unpredictability.
Thanks for picking the idea of a public bank for Illinois as one of the ideas to make Chicago even better. If you would like to be part of the organizing team, please email me at tom@civiclab.us and sign up for email newsletter at http://www.illinoispublicbanking.org. If North Dakota can do it, why can't we? Let's make our money work FOR us.
I got better idea: all freeways should have 2nd level. For example
90/94 already got express line, that should be expended to 3 lines each way. 2nd flow should be dedicated for fast cars. I think everyone will be agree to pay for fast ride.
Re: starting high school later in the day.
Of course this makes sense. Of course you know why it doesn't happen: high school sports.
To cram in enough time for sports to play, schools have to start the class day that much earlier. While I belive in a healthy lifestyle and some aspects of the value of sports, this is another example of how our educational priorities are mixed up.
Traffic lights, and even stop signs, need to be computerized in accord with traffic volume and flow. How often have you waited at a red light when there was zero traffic flow on the green light? It's not necessary. Even stop signs can be electronically changed to GO signs. Da Mayor wants this to be a technologically advanced city - smoothing traffic flow with sensored traffic signals is the way to go. Perhaps those red light cameras could double as trafic flow sensors so that when there is no school in session, or the shopping mall stores are closed, the computerized traffic lights are smart enough to change to green when there is no pedestrian or no vehicle traffic coming from those areas. this could also be connected to approaching emergency vehicles so that they always have the green light, no matter what. This is technology at work for the people. We will never be a techno-city unless and untill this happens. It would be practical evidence of advanced tech savvy.
Chicagoans will absolutely not accept continued push for privatizing schools. Why is it that the men who continue to try to shame Chicago's neighborhoods, neighborhood children, and neighborhood schools never walk around the city, send their kids to elitist private schools, and haven't spent more than an hour in a classroom since their own high school days. Shame.