Chicago roads may undergo bumpy transition to bus-only lanes

John Hilkevich writes:
"It amounts to a declaration of war on automobiles, the critics say. They imply it's some sort of conspiracy to make today's very bad traffic even worse, so the only option for motorists would be to flee to public transportation or drive to work at 3 a.m. in their pajamas."
Implied or not, at least someone has gotten it: that is the point! The traffic is bad because there are too many motorists, not because there are too many buses. Get it?

I like the idea of improved commuting by clearing the way for mass transit. I am unclear on how this limited initiative would help though, because the proposed lines don't seem to get people to the necessary connections. What's the thinking behind making Halsted and California express? Both of these routes would terminate in areas that aren't especially helpful to commuters. It seems like there will just be large groups of people getting off the express buses and clogging other connections that do not run express. Wouldn't it make more sense to terminate in the loop, or to use a street that cuts through more intersections, like Milwaukee, or Clybourn? Am I missing something here?

One real cause of Loop gridlock that no one seems to be addressing is buses running yellow lights and blocking the intersection. This prevents vehicular traffic from obeying "their" green light, obviously, but also endangers pedestrians who then have to weave between cars who follow the bus's lead in blocking the way.

Does the CTA endorse this practice, or simply fail to instruct their drivers in basic rules of the road?

Restricting buses to one lane and one lane only would certainly help, but if they are above the law and continue to block traffic unneccessarily, how is this plan going to do any good? The plan also allegedly says that bus drivers would be given control of the traffic lights, much in the same way emergency vehicles can, but that would be ripe for abuse. Can you imagine having to wait the equivalent of several current light changes to cross the street because a series of bus drivers don't want to have to stop at a red light? and the cross traffic gridlock that would ensue?

And yes, while cabs and personal vehicles are guilty of blocking cross traffic by disobeying lights too, it is almost always a bus that instigates the blockage.

We already have crowding on busses and trains that needs to be controlled and bus and train bunching. First try to actually get busses and trains to run on time using the GPS and then see what can be doen to make things better such as bus only lanes.

The worst change lately at the CTA seems to be the complete lack on accountability on the times trains and busses are actually at a given stop or location. I went to look up a train schedule this past weekend on the CTA website and in the past it always posted the EXACT times trains were scheduled to leave the Howard station. They have now modified it to every 4 to 7 minutes, every 7 to 10 minutes... but apparently the schedule I took which was posted as every 7 to 10 was modified by CTA to be every 20 minutes, since that is how long I sat on a train waiting for it to pull out of the station.

When I lived in Minneapolis, you could count on their transit system as much as you could count on an atomic clock. They would sit at a stop if they were ahead and wait and if they were late, the driver would apologize to every single person getting on board. A little courtesy like that made you feel better riding.(The apology would be if they were even one minute late). I am a big fan of Ron Huberman and expected him to actually improve the system. He is visible and rides it, but the improvements seem to not be happening.

Bus drivers already have complete immunity from traffic laws. What more do they want? What good is a bus lane when buses just drive across 2 or 3 lanes at once?

Canoe wrote:

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Jake writes from Boston which has such a fine traffic management record.
One loud and clear message is that suburbanites should just forget the loop and spend their money in the suburbs.
Why give Daley and Stroger a dime more to waste?

Who said anything about giving the money to Daley and Stroger? Stroger has nothing to do with it, thank goodness, and as for Daley, the state already handles transit funding -- if things go wrong, maybe they can deal with it altogether. Of course that would take either a functioning Republican Party in Springfield or a Democratic Party that doesn't do Blago's bidding. So get out there and organize, whichever you prefer.

Andy wrote:

I like the idea of improved commuting by clearing the way for mass transit. I am unclear on how this limited initiative would help though, because the proposed lines don't seem to get people to the necessary connections. What's the thinking behind making Halsted and California express? Both of these routes would terminate in areas that aren't especially helpful to commuters. It seems like there will just be large groups of people getting off the express buses and clogging other connections that do not run express. Wouldn't it make more sense to terminate in the loop, or to use a street that cuts through more intersections, like Milwaukee, or Clybourn? Am I missing something here?

First off, this is only the initial phase of a plan that should eventually include 100 miles of bus-only lanes, which will be a wonderful network that finally makes Chicago buses an attractive option.

As for the first routes, at least three of the four make a lot of sense for commuting. The Jeffrey route will enter LSD at 67th and run express to the Loop. The 79th St route (which had the highest weekday ridership of any bus line last year) would carry people to the Red Line. The Chicago route will take people from Ukrainian Village and East Village to jobs in River North.

The Halsted route seems a lot less useful and I don't understand why Western wasn't chosen instead. Chicago desperately needs more north-south transit options west of the Red Line. What we really need is a subway under Western, but the first step toward that should have been bus-only lanes. Hopefully Western will be included in the next round.

fron Jon. In the 40's 50''s 60's etc, supervisors accounted for bus bunching by rerouting busses around traffic. They actually worked by getting some buses empty and running them, ten to twenty blocks non stop until they caught up and routes were adjusted. Today, the cash strapped CTA has bought supervisors computers to watch the bus bunching indoors while it continues to happen outdoors and they try to reinvent the wheel. Jon H. bring no history or insight with his dull articles. He must be paid by CTA to cheer on silly proposals. Npr any knowlegde from new successful transit systems elsewhere. Fire him and all most ineffectual CTA personal Get folks who are transporation experts and not political hacks.

I love this idea of bus rapid transit. I am concerned though that it will not be very successful as currently planned. John McCormick suggested that the BRT routes should be on "bus-Only streets"... essentially unused right of ways, and not take away from existing surface street capacity. I could see that working.

I also think that BRT could work here if you took the CENTER/LEFT lane for buses ONLY. Have passengers board from a median bus-stop, where doors would be on the "Driver's" side of the bus. Yes. That means the buses would have to be changed...

This could work on LSD and perhaps even Michigan avenue... Yes, you lose a center lane of traffic, but think how nice it would be to have the buses and cabs not competing for the same space in the right lane.

I am 100% in support of raising meter parking rates, and all parking rates/taxes everywhere throughout the city, especially if revenue goes fro transit. If you don't want to pay for parking, don't drive.

Jim wrote:

Parking metetes are already $0.25 for five minutes. How is that a "bargain"?
Also- I don't understand how it takes money to do this? Shouldn't the money from the government go to fixing roads?

Great. Another ignorant person tuning in from North Carolina to tell us he doesn't like the plan.

Jim, parking at 25 cents for 5 minutes is $4/hour, which is WELL below the market rate (at least $12 for the first hour). In other words, the city is subsidizing people who drive downtown and park on the streets. If you can't figure out how government providing parking for much less than the market rate is a bargain, then stay out of debates on transportation in Chicago.

ByronMoreno wrote:

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Something doesn't add up. If the lanes only run in one direction, where are the buses going to come from to feed the "express" direction? You are still constrained by the number of buses running on the opposite route.

True, but the opposite-return bus routes would be running counter to rush hour patterns and would not make stops when traveling the return trip. It would still take time to navigate the off-route traffic, but the overall time riders spend waiting for and riding the bus would be far reduced from current levels.

Also, these are just pilot routes. If the program is effective, the CTA would likely open bus-only lanes in both directions

What to mass transit planners, urban planners and Communist central planners have in common? They all KNOW they are smarter than the market (individuals making decisions in their best intrest). But in reality, the only thing they know is their ideology. If mass transit were such a red hot idea, why aren't companies beating down the doors of government to allow them to run mass transit systems? Mass transit only exists when individual transit if prohitited by cost, congestion or government.

rob wrote:

Brian,
The people who've written with IP addresses outside the city just happen to correspond to the people who know nothing about the city, so I think Wilson has a point. You've got the Schaumburg dude who says "buses are empty", the Carolina guy who thinks $4/hr. parking is expensive.

These guys know more than you give them credit. I am sick of seeing completely empty articulated mega busses polluting the city during non-peak hours. Also, parking meter rates are irrelevent because NOBODY drives downtown during the day expecting to actually find a metered spot avsilable.

Sounds like the old streetcar routes. Chicago, like many other cities, should not have let the oil companies contribute to the demise of the streetcar.

"Those perennial [traffic] problems include poorly timed traffic signals, inefficient left- and- right-turn movements and conditions that create conflict between vehicles and pedestrians."

I see traffic backed up all the time in Loop and Northside intersections all the time from drivers who REFUSE to use dedicated turn lanes and block traffic in through-lanes by doing their turns from those through-traffic lanes (e.g., southbound one-way S. Clark St. traffic turning left onto eastbound one-way W. Jackson Blvd., or almost any signalled northside two-lane two-way street turning right onto another street). That seems like an easy problem to solve, since those turns are moving violations--improper lane useage--by drivers who should be paying for their poor driving habits AND for the congestion (and air pollution) they contribute to. Give traffic aides back their police powers so they can write tickets for those violations, use the red-light ticket cams to do tickets for those violations, and have CPD do "traffic enforcement blitzes" to write scads of tickets for those sorts of violations--not only will these simple actions ease congestion and move traffic at busy intersections, it will bring in more money in fines, go after bad and unsafe driving habits that kill and hurt pedestrians and others, and maybe reduce tensions that lead to road rage.

Why not TRY it?

Mass Transit doesn't WORK here. It would work if you had large numbers of people concentrated in one area going all going to the same area, but that requires your infrastructure to be built around that idea. This area was built around the automobile. No amount of money is going to fix it. You can't un-build the suburban landscape that now stretches all the way to DeKalb, Hinkley, Plainfield, and beyond; all of it designed around individual transportation (the automobile)
Adding bus lanes may make someone feel good, but it's not going to accomplish a thing. Nobody pays attention to them now, adding more isn't going to help.

This is a great idea, take more cars off the road and make transit more efficient.

It will be interesting to see how this works. I think the routes chosen are great. Jeffrey and 79th lead to make lake shore express routes and the red line trips faster respectively. The Chicago one will improve east-west commutes to offices in the mag mile area. The only thing is the Halsted one should be a little longer to go south of the eisenhower. Other than that, it should be an interesting experiment, and I think the results will lead to more transit, and a better city for all.

dean, the police are out there dealing with 40 shooting in a weekend, violent crime, gangs, drugs, etc. Do you really think traffic violations matter? Stand outside union station some morning and watch how many cars pull up and park at the 124/125 bus stop, while the police drive right on by. They don't have the time, the money, or the personnel to deal with traffic. If they can't keep people from parking at a bus stop during rush hour, how are they going to keep cars out of the bus only lane?

bus only lanes wrote:

Mass Transit doesn't WORK here. It would work if you had large numbers of people concentrated in one area going all going to the same area, but that requires your infrastructure to be built around that idea. This area was built around the automobile. No amount of money is going to fix it. You can't un-build the suburban landscape that now stretches all the way to DeKalb, Hinkley, Plainfield, and beyond; all of it designed around individual transportation (the automobile)
Adding bus lanes may make someone feel good, but it's not going to accomplish a thing. Nobody pays attention to them now, adding more isn't going to help.

Seems to me public transit is working quite well in Chicago. About a quarter of the people working in the city take transit to their jobs, and that number is steadily increasing as the cost of driving is slowly starting to come into line with the social damage caused by driving. And that's happening even without new investments in transit infrastructure, which is falling apart thanks to the failure of the state legislature to pass a capital bill. Imagine how many people would take transit if we had the money to expand it - to implement the full 100 miles of bus lanes, to build the Mid-City Transitway El from O'Hare to Midway to 87th on the Red Line, to build the Circle Line and extend the Red, Orange, and Yellow Lines, to build a subway under Western.

Incidentally, the city of Chicago most certainly *was not* built around the automobile. The suburbs were, but they'll have no choice but to adapt to the low-carbon, scarce-oil future by pursuing transit-oriented development and using zoning to encourage high-density, mixed use building. The sooner we get started on expanding transit, the better off we'll be when we finally start paying for the true social costs of gas.

jake wrote:

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Seems to me public transit is working quite well in Chicago. About a quarter of the people working in the city take transit to their jobs, and that number is steadily increasing as the cost of driving is slowly starting to come into line with the social damage caused by driving. And that's happening even without new investments in transit infrastructure, which is falling apart thanks to the failure of the state legislature to pass a capital bill. Imagine how many people would take transit if we had the money to expand it - to implement the full 100 miles of bus lanes, to build the Mid-City Transitway El from O'Hare to Midway to 87th on the Red Line, to build the Circle Line and extend the Red, Orange, and Yellow Lines, to build a subway under Western.
Incidentally, the city of Chicago most certainly *was not* built around the automobile. The suburbs were, but they'll have no choice but to adapt to the low-carbon, scarce-oil future by pursuing transit-oriented development and using zoning to encourage high-density, mixed use building. The sooner we get started on expanding transit, the better off we'll be when we finally start paying for the true social costs of gas.

Jake, we've reached the limit of that the transit system will bear. The trains coming in are packed full. They can't add any more cars to the trains they are running. They can't add more trains because the rain infrastructure won't support them. There's no parking at the suburban train stations for any more people to be able to commute downtown even if there were more trains. And as I said before -- you can't "un-build". The suburban infrastructure is already in place. You can't just change it to something else. And I doubt the people living there would accept that change even if you could. If people wanted to live in the city they'd be there already. Turn the suburban landscpae to an urban landscape, and people will just move farther and farther out, just like they've been doing since the '60's. Conceptually, "high desnity mixed use development" is great for building a public transit system, but people don't want to live like that. The devlopment that now stretches all the way out to DeKalb proves that.