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Popular Mechanics unveiled its 10 pieces if "US infrastructure we must fix now," and Chicago is home to two of them--and we're the only city to appear twice on the list! Go us! Apparently, both the Circle Interchange (#1) and O'Hare (#10) are clusterfucks on a national scale.
On the circle interchange (which is where 90/94 and 290 meet):
Photo by Michael DaKidd
One parkway and three expressways meet here, and close to 300,000 vehicles a day are forced to reduce speed while navigating a network of tightly curved ramps. The result: an estimated 25 million hours in delays per year. A $975 million expansion project might relieve traffic on one of the expressways, but no plans have been announced to address the congested interchange itself.
And on O'Hare:
It had the country's worst record of on-time departures in the first half of 2007 (fewer than 65 percent), according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. And Chicago's O'Hare International Airport is also among the worst in terms of near-misses on the runway–the airport saw 68 runway incursions between 2001 and 2006, with three close calls in March 2006.
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To quote George Carlin:
"Those aren't near-misses - those are near-hits!"
file under: "doy."
I thought we were fixing both
@celery -- ROFLMFAO! Good one.
Isn't the city spending billions to fix O'Hare?
But Bensenville is trying to stop it!
That's exactly right, Scooter, the City and the State are full-speed-ahead, trying to fix O'Hare's problems, but Bensenville and Elk Grove Village have wasted millions of the City's dollars tying the whole thing up in litigation. It's ridiculous. Bensenville should be ashamed of itself. Here's a bit of advise: don't move next to the airport if you don't like the airport.
Then on the other side of the coin, a town like Rosemont has used its proximity to the airport for its great benefit, and has made millions for itself through its convention centers, the former Rosemont Horizon, etc. Good for Rosemont. Wouldn't you rather be a town that makes lemonade out of lemons, than one like Bensenville which just whines and complains and wastes millions of dollars and years of time litigating? Bleh.
Well, O'Hare isn't exactly bulldozing over homes in Rosemont.
Elk Grove wouldn't lose homes. Some of the industrial park would be affected, so EG is worried about a loss of tax revenue. Maybe they shouldn't have erected a solid bronze life sized statue of an Elk. I swear, Elk Grove's mayor, Craig Johnson, is even crazier than Blago when you get down to it. He just has less of a venue to shine.
What about the CTA? How could they have missed that one? Ten years of negligent mismanagement, plenty of accidents, huge risks for more, and a black hole of financial need with no hope in sight. Go Chicago!