![]() Downstream, this means more traffic and frustration for drivers.Īccording to Sriraj, the current school of thought around asset management (road work), which developed over the last twenty years or so, boils down to proactive maintenance so roads are kept in a good functional state. Roadwork has increased dramatically across the last few years, leading to delays, congestion, and reduced lanes on heavily trafficked roads. There is some truth to that uniquely Chicago observation because it points to something very real: roads are constantly being worked on. Lately that has felt more like gallows humor than slapstick. There’s a running joke among Chicagoans that there are really just two seasons here: winter, and construction. That has long since been overshot.” “There's no remedy anywhere in sight” “When these assets were built, they were built with a very specific target traffic in mind. “The demand has increased and has been increasing and will continue to increase exponentially,” Sriraj said. Given Chicago’s position as a multimodal freight hub, including 10 interstate highways in the metro area alone, truck traffic here can have an outsized impact on larger patterns. Truck traffic was very, very minimal, and now it is growing every year and showing an upward trend for the foreseeable future,” Siraj said.Ībout one in every seven vehicles on the road in Chicago is a truck, according to CMAP, and unsurprisingly, the bottlenecks they create are on the same highways commuters use every day. Sriraj, director of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Urban Transportation Center. “What was totally unseen was the amount of freight traffic and freight as a mode of transportation,” said Dr. Not all traffic is created equal, though. Thursdays were the worst days to drive, taking on average almost half an hour (27 minutes) to go just six miles, and over two hours for 30 mile commutes. TomTom attributes 82 hours and 394 hours, respectively, to congestion. For longer commutes - 30 miles or so, which encompasses commutes from the city to the suburbs - that amount of time ballooned to 846 hours sitting in traffic. ![]() Even for short commutes of six miles, Chicagoans spent 176 hours driving per year. ![]() Chicago’s traffic increased in 2022, the most recent complete data set available. Although data for 2023 isn’t available yet, a policy expert from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency on Planning (CMAP) was quoted in May observing that traffic this year is already higher than pre-pandemic levels.Ī report compiled by GPS company TomTom paints a similar picture. Official data published by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) reports that the annual vehicle miles traveled in Cook County in 2022 was 30.5 billion, up from 29.6 billion in 2021 and 27 billion in 2020, mirroring the ebbs and flows of the pandemic recovery. Demand - how many people want to use the same road at the same time - can fluctuate wildly.ĭemand for Chicago’s roads is extremely high. But in this case the supply is mostly fixed because roads are built with a set number of lanes. Like a business, highways and roads respond to the law of supply and demand. Why has traffic become so bad? And what can city leaders do to address it? How bad is it, really? Even for a population used to sitting in traffic jams these new issues are pushing commuters to their breaking points. Chicago’s traffic has always been notoriously bad but recent road work and shifting traffic patterns have exacerbated the issues. Trips to or from the suburbs regularly take 90 minutes or more, and moving anywhere within the city is equally as trying. If it ends in y, the odds are that traffic will be horrendous. Estimated reading time: 10 minutes (2031 words)
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