Sorry to continue the non-O'hare tangent...

I reverse commute daily on the UP-W. My workplace is 2 miles from the Metra station, so I have a dedicated car which I park at the Metra lot and drive the 4 miles every day. Its a bit wasteful, I know, but walking, biking, and Pace are not options unfortunately. In an ideal world there would be a distributor bus route, but frankly, there isn't enough demand for one and probably never will be given land-use patterns.

The Wadsworth line extension on the MD-N would be a big help for northbound reverse commuters. Abbott Labs, Baxter, Cardinal Health, Uline, Fujisawa and many more small-mid companies are in office parks along the line. Also the line goes right near Keylime Cove, Great America, Gurnee Mills and the yet to be developed Fountain Square (former Lakehurst mall site). Additionally it runs close to the Temple Lippizan Farm, site of the 2016 Equestrian events.

You know I've thought about this over and over again and I don't think more lanes on the Edens is necessary at all. The reason it is stop and go is because it gets backed up, many times ALL the way to Lake Cook, because of the Edens/Kennedy merge when the express lanes are configured for outbound. Traffic just piles and piles itself up because at the merge everything is moving at 0-5 mph. I've seen situations where it was red on gcmtravel.com, like literally two hours from Lake Cook to the Loop, and IDOT reconfigured the express lanes to inbound against prior bad judgment, and the entire Edens starting flowing again and was yellow to green a half hour later. This actually happened this past Memorial Day weekend on Saturday afternoon.

That seems to be the way things are trending. Any idea who is asleep at the wheel on Friday afternoons when it is 25 minutes from downtown to O'Hare but 80+ minutes inbound from O'Hare to downtown? I have seen more Fridays than not where outbound at 5PM is all green, smooth flowing all the way from downtown to O'Hare, people left early for work on Friday afternoons, no congestion to speak of, yadda yadda yadda, yet **in**bound from O'Hare to downtown is all red (and this includes the Edens too obviously because of the merge) and can easily exceed an hour and half because of all the reverse commuters PLUS all of the people coming into the city on Friday nights from the suburbs or out of town. Every Friday afternoon I check gcmtravel.com and just have to come to the conclusion that the people that run the express lanes must already be home because they certainly aren't paying attention. And think how many people this "error" affects every week.

From personal experience, I've noticed that both directions of the Kennedy tend to function best when the express lanes are inbound. When they're outbound, both directions are a clusterf*ck due to merging at the junction.

From Willow to Skokie is only about half a mile. Traffic pours onto the inbound Edens from office parks at Lake-Cook, the Tri-State spur, Dundee, and Willow. Traffic really can back up from Willow to the spur ramp. The first exit anyone really gets off at is Skokie. The geometry of the Willow ramp system is terrible too. If you make the loop ramps turn into auxiliary lanes for the short distance to Skokie, I think you'd eliminate some point congestion and increase safety to boot.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,7060836.story

Ads fuel fight over cemetery blocking O'Hare expansion
Notices of Chicago plan to relocate graves draw fire from opponents

By Ted Gregory | Tribune reporter
July 5, 2009

Newspaper and radio ads about the $15 billion O'Hare International Airport expansion have drawn the ire of supporters of a 160-year-old Bensenville cemetery in the path of a planned runway.

The ads, which ran in the Chicago Tribune and Daily Herald and on WGN and WBBM-AM radio, notified relatives of people buried in St. Johannes Cemetery that Chicago "has commenced legal proceedings to acquire the cemetery" and move the graves to other cemeteries. The notice also encourages relatives to call the O'Hare Modernization Program's cemetery administrator "to learn more about the relocation process.".

"You may have an opportunity to participate," the ad states. Chicago "will be responsible for paying all necessary and reasonable costs associated with the relocation of the graves."

The problem, St. Johannes preservationists contend, is that a court fight over the cemetery relocation is ongoing. They also note that the ads fail to notify people that they can challenge the planned cemetery move. That failure is a violation of a court order outlining the public notice, said Joe Karaganis, an attorney representing St. John's United Church of Christ, the church that owns the cemetery.


"The city does not own the cemetery," Karaganis said.

City Aviation Department spokeswoman Eve Rodriguez said the ads, which ran in May and June, were part of an agreement signed by the Federal Aviation Administration, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the Illinois State Historic Preservation Agency.

"This is just work we wanted to do in order to compile the list of relatives," Rodriguez said. "We understand that this is a very sensitive matter and are committed to treating the next of kin, church officials and anyone that may be affected with the utmost respect every step of the way."

tgregory@tribune.com

Cemeteries have been relocated for centuries. It's definitely an issue of the public good triumphing over the rights of private citizens. Hell, in New Orleans, they moved one of the city's LARGEST cemeteries to build, not something vitally important like a highway or airport, but the Superdome. This is probably an abuse of eminent domain, and some argue that the interred people have gotten their revenge via several grisly deaths inside the stadium. However, this seems like a perfectly valid use of takings power.

In fact, one might argue that a relocation would be an improvement. St. Johannes is surrounded by runways, retention ponds, and possibly the biggest noise generator in Chicagoland. Hardly a restful spot or a fitting memorial. A relocation would enable the graves to be moved to a quieter and more respectful site.

The ad that Chicago is running is meant to inform people of the planned relocation, relatives of the deceased who may not know about the issue. Doubtless, one of the plaintiffs' main arguments in court is that the city has not informed the relatives of all those buried in St. Johannes. By running these ads, the city is trying to be responsible and notify everybody who needs to know. The public nature of the ads is a little tasteless, but I can't think of a better way to contact a bunch of people whose names are not known.

Ya, I fail to see how a few thousand local dead peoples graves should prevent an airport expansion that would be a greater good to millions of people worldwide that pass through Ohare every year.

It's a simple philosophical question what helps the greater good. I guess I'm just to logical. It's almost selfish to die and expect your grave to remain there for future generations as a possible burden.

^ Plus, those cemeteries have graves that are extremely old (by Chicago standards anyway) - nobody living today has ever met any of the people buried there.

It'd be one thing if parents or grandparents were buried there, but you can't argue that there is major emotional distress from having great-great-(..)-grandparents' graves relocated, when you never had an experience of meeting, speaking with, seeing, getting letters from, etc. those people.

With regards to Gary-Chicago airport... I wonder how much longer Daley is going to keep up with the arangement to fund that airfield. Originally he wanted to make the Gary field more viable to headoff the construction of Peotone SSA. But unfortunately the SSA seems to have legs, so why should Daley keep sending millions of OHare landing fees over to Indiana?

^ I think that's a good point, considering the fact that Gary continues to struggle with getting any regular passenger service

I haven't seen any "legs" on Peotone lately, sure there's more money, but in terms of actual work, has there been something new?

^ They are earmarked to receive $100 million for land aquisition from the State alone. That is golden legs. You wont see construction for 15-20 years.

Could be longer than that. As it is now, the preservation of land is wise for very long range planning, but we're nowhere even remotely close to the air travel industry demanding a third Chicago airport, let alone one 40 miles south of downtown. I just have a bad feeling this could end up as Chicago's Mid-America (or one of the underutilized newly built Korean airports), where politicians divorced from economic reality waste lots of money as an answer to a question no one asked.

^Well, I wouldn't say no one asked the question. There is a lot of support for Peotone from the inner ring south suburbs who believe it will stimulate the local economy that has been more or less stagnate since the 1970s. As such, politicians like Jessie Jackson Jr have become big proponets of it. Of course it is really a empty hope, as Peotone is just too far away, and is surrounded by too much cheap land that would immediately fall to new greenfield development filling in around the new airport. And of course, IDOT and Will County would now be responsible for upgrading all of the farm roads. The sooner this half baked idea dies the better. I know Peotone may have some merit as a cargo airfield, as Will and Southern Cook County is really now becoming the main intermodal center for the region, but for passenger service this airport is a boondoggle.

Here is an article published in the Southtown Star;
Could 3rd airport make way for a new Windy City?

July 13, 2009
By Guy Tridgell

The quest to build an airport out of farmland near Peotone has been an endless source of hot air.

Could the winds of change be blowing?

An idea to scrap the airport altogether and turn the proposed airfield into a wind farm, generating electricity to power a decent chunk of the Chicago area, is gaining momentum.

It's somewhat of a crazy concept for now, but local residents and airport opponents are starting to court companies that specialize in developing wind farms to see if there is any interest.

http://www.southtownstar.com/news/tridgell/1662931,071309tridgell.article

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I love that idea, keep the land agricultural but get a more productive use out of it. The land is already sited very close to transmission lines feeding from the nuclear stations down in Braidwood, Dresden and LaSalle County. Additionally, the close proximity to the rest of the developed region means less power would be lost because of the shorter distance of transmission.

Has anyone heard about a thing called a potental HSR express train into downtown via Midway or even thought about the idea?

Forty miles is nothing.

Chicago’s real third airport is Mitchell in Milwaukee which even farther from the population center of Chicagoland and it is used quite a bit by us fibs.

Why not have a southern option? Think Big, long term. I would take even a mid america airport in a decade. Do you really think that the region will stop growing south and turning and mixing farmland and insignifiant local wind power as an answer to the future.

That part of Illinois should never be a center of wind power within this state. There are better locations and even better US states if long effective low resistance high power lines can be developed as the Obama administration is trying to achieve.

The oval from the Texas pan handle to the Dakotas hold the most potential of wind power if the lines can transfer their wind power to the major metro areas of the US.

Even T. Bone Pickens has given up on wind....


The idea reeks of urbanism Nimbyism against [development] aka sprawl in the greater region to prevent serives for the people down there for their benifit of them.

What is that called?

NEIMDNBY IITAAFM

Not even in my distant Neighbors back yard if it takes anything away from me.

No. Absolutely not. The Southland is undesirable because Chicago needs places for poor people to live. It sounds terribly crass, but every single city in the world has good suburbs and bad suburbs. Places like Harvey and South Holland are the way they are because of market forces that push wealth and poverty to opposite ends of the core. Trying to bring businesses and economic activity to the south suburbs is more likely to push poor residents out than to better them economically. Since there are few places for them to go, they'll just stay put as new places develop in the cornfields to house the new middle-class workers.

Building an airport down that way doesn't make any sense from an economic perspective, either, because the people who are mostly likely to AFFORD air travel live in the city or in the north/northwest/western suburbs, for whom this airport would be much less convenient than O'Hare or Midway.

The city of Gary has a national image problem that is probably the main reason for the airport's failure. Both Illinois and Indiana need to invest in upgrading this airport to modern standards that will entice more than just fly-by-night airlines like Hooters Air and SkyValue. :lmao:

- A name change is probably the best thing for it, and the creation of new services for it, such as express trains, with a similar "hip" branding. Is it too much of a stretch to rename it for Obama? Gary is a poor urban center not far from the South Side. Houston had no problem naming its new airport after Bush, soon after he took office.

-Relocate the terminal to the south side of the airport, so it can have direct highway and rail access. The current setup is intimidating for many Chicagoans and Hoosiers alike, for whom the industrial wasteland of lakefront Gary is a place to be avoided at all costs.

-Obviously, expand the runway to accommodate properly-sized jets.

Midway has severe capacity constraints, so it won't be expanding any time soon. However, it is readily accessible from the south suburbs via the Stevenson, one of the least-congested highways in Chicagoland.

It will be difficult, but I think Chicago needs to become more strategic with how it plans its gate assignments. Flights out of O'Hare, Midway, and Gary need to be tailored to the demographic for whom those airports are most convenient. If, for example, the black community on the South Side tends to make trips to Atlanta, then both Midway and Gary should offer flights to those places, rather than O'Hare.

Say what?

Why not just let the market sort that out rather than make gate assignments yet another political plaything?

You bet its got some legs on it. I am working on a contract for sale right now for a large parcel in the area to the IDOT explicitly contingent on the funding of the Peotone SSA. Also, $100 million is probably all they need to aquire the land, Appraisials are putting the price of land in the area at $11k-13k per acre. The land we are working on is supposed to be going for around that price. Also, rumor has it that Dennis Hassert bought a bunch of land in the area because he knew it was going to happen and is now planning on reaping the benefits. Sounds immoral, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.

I guess I was stretching a bit with the Stevenson, but come on - at peak periods, it is not bad compared to the Kennedy, Eisenhower, or Dan Ryan. Obviously, it is much more heavily-used than the new segment of 355 or the Elgin-O'Hare stub, but for a radial freeway...

I've never been caught in traffic on the Stevenson during off-peak periods, if you don't count construction and accident-related jams.

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Government regulation of gate assignments (or something similar) would be aimed at distributing flights for the greatest efficiency. If done properly, it could foster competition, since airlines like American and United at O'Hare, and Southwest at Midway, have repeatedly exhibited anti-competitive behavior in blocking the entry of smaller airlines. Relegating the small airlines to places like Milwaukee and Gary is a surefire way for those airlines to fail.