[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

If you broaden this to not only include maintenance but also roadway design and traffic management, I personally think the City of Chicago ranks horribly on all three aspects.

A few examples:

The new Jane Byrne will be better than the old, but not significantly.
290 has this weird stretch of left exits that hampers traffic flow on the freeway because of weaving.
90/94 does NOT maximize the footprint of the ROW. With a few key property acquisitions, you could double the express lanes making them permanently both directions.
The horrible practice of having four way stop intersections on major roads which in any other city would be signalized and set ina timed traffic light pattern.
The only scattershot use rather than universal of signalized Left turns at intersections between major roads.
The horrible practice of having near-universal street parking on MAJOR roads when these could otherwise be lanes to move traffic. Most houses have garages on alleys, they can use them. Their visitors can park on side streets.
The awful maintenance of the pavement. There are techniques for paving that last in this weather and they don’t have the funds to even maintain what’s there, let alone rebuild.
The fact that roadway markings are altogether missing on many major arterials is sad.
A coherent street parking permit system. A better idea? Get rid of permitting altogether, if drives up residential costs and decreases the activity of nearby business relative to what they’d be getting if those spaces were being filled by patrons from elsewhere. If there are so many people that it requires managing the parking, a better strategy is to increase public transit so that they don’t NEED to park to live (it is transit heavy, but there are still expansions that should be happening). Public residential garages are also a concept that I find interesting to help with this.

Yeah, I think the topic about how a towns roads are layed out etc. is way more interesting than a discussion about a towns potholes or whatever.