Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
Why is Lake St to be avoided like the plague? Similar volumes of traffic coexist with pedestrians at numerous Loop intersections.
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Lake Street is completely different from the other east-west river crossings. First, the Lake Street bridge is the only two-way street among them, which mucks up intersections more than one-way streets. For example, even though there are 2 travel lanes westbound, the sharp right from Wacker onto Lake inevitably results in longer vehicles, or sloppy sedan drivers, taking a wide turn that asphyxiates the remaining lane. In the case of all the other crossings, a wide turn will still allow for flow to continue in the other lanes.
Second, Lake is the northernmost crossing on the South Branch, and most traffic heading to the West Loop from the entire River North and North Michigan Ave areas, in an effort to avoid the Loop proper during rush hour, will aim generally for either Kinzie (which can only handle limited volumes) or Wacker-then-Lake to cross the river.
Third, ped traffic between the train stations and the Loop proper has a range of blocks, as it travels between east and west, over which to redistribute itself northwards or southwards towards Ogilvie or Union. Moreover, many workers walk routes that are almost perfectly east-west without needing to cross northwards or southwards, because Ogilvie and Union afford entrances along many of the Loop's east-west streets. In sharp contrast, 100% of pedestrian traffic from River Point / Wolf Point / Merch Mart must cross Lake Street to get to any commuter rail station. Plus, this ped situation laid right on top of the vehicle issues described above at Lake result in a clumsy situation.
Naturally, amazement from my personal experience at the Lake Street bridge chokepoint is exacerbated by Wacker construction, so that will lessen come the end of 2012. But with increased office populations there from 2013 and mid-decade, I feel a bit sorry (ultimately what I mean is it will diminish the appeal for more companies to locate there) for the workers who'll be crossing 2 bridges and also dealing with chaotic traffic in horrible weather, not to mention people in taxicabs etc. barely inching along through there. We'll see, but I think that spot will be the weak link and some way around it will probably be desired by the landlords and tenants in the area. (It would be interesting to see how much simply making Lake one-way would address this.)
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