This is the most densely populated area of Chicago, and the four zip codes with the highest transit ridership in the city. Over 70,000 people board buses on an average weekday in the Clark Street corridor—that’s more than on the average elevated train line.
Car commuters are a minority here, and almost all who drive to work are headed for the suburbs or for the Loop via Lake Shore Drive. Clark is too narrow to be a good commuting route for most drivers—it was designed for streetcars and pedestrians, and has become choked with through traffic. There’s too much congestion and not enough parking for Clark Street to be an attractive place to shop by car, so local business depends almost entirely on foot traffic.
Half of the buses in the corridor run down Clark Street itself, crawling through heavy rush-hour traffic at little more than walking pace. The other half avoid that traffic by running along the outside of the neighborhood near the lakefront. There’s less congestion there, but no businesses, so commuters forego the convenience of shopping on the way home and local business loses the benefit of all that foot traffic.
It’s a tough compromise. It would be better for commuters and for local business owners if all the buses went down Clark, through the heart of the neighborhood business district, but there’s just too much car traffic for that.
It seems to me we have four choices.
First, we could do nothing: stick with the bus system we have. As the city grows, increasing congestion will force more drivers onto buses, but those buses will be stuck in traffic too, running slower and slower every year. Our inefficient transit system and worsening traffic congestion are already costing us $7.3 billion annually in wasted time, and have become a powerful barrier to economic growth.
Second, we could make it easier to drive through the neighborhood by removing the bike lanes, parking, and trees and narrowing the sidewalks. We could add another lane to Lake Shore Drive going each direction. That would bring a lot more cars into downtown, and we’d have to figure out what to do with them (maybe build some high-rise parking structures with automated car elevators?). And expanding LSD would be really, really expensive: about $100 million per mile. Unfortunately, adding more capacity to urban highways just encourages more people to drive, so the additional capacity fills up quickly until congestion was as bad as before.
Third, we could build a new heavy-rail elevated train line along the periphery of the neighborhood or a subway beneath Clark Street. Unlike the road infrastructure, the train service would become more frequent and cheaper per trip as more people used it, which would encourage economic growth while alleviating congestion. But at $300 million per mile, elevated trains and subways have become so expensive that almost no one’s building them anymore.
Fourth, and finally, we could consolidate transit service from the periphery to Clark Street, bringing commuters through the heart of the neighborhood business district where they can combine commuting and shopping. We could move car traffic from Clark out to the periphery, where there’s less congestion. That would allow transit to move freely in a dedicated lane rather than being stuck in traffic, which would make the commute much faster and attract many to take transit instead of driving. That would essentially make Clark Street a bus rapid transit (BRT) route.
But we already have over 70,000 daily bus boardings—even if faster service and convenient shopping didn’t attract any new riders, which they surely would. With that kind of transit ridership (more than most elevated train lines), it would be cheaper to invest in upgrading to light rail—a modern electric streetcar running in a dedicated lane down Clark Street. At $30 million per mile, it’s a big investment, but a lot less than building more roads and only about 10% of the cost of an elevated train or subway. And because each driver of the long, articulated modern streetcar can transport two or three times as many passengers as on a bus (288 instead of 84 or 125), and since the drivers account for 75% of the operating cost of a transit system, streetcars would be much cheaper to operate than buses, saving taxpayers money in the long run. The fact that they don’t pollute, are safer to be around because they move predictably on rails, and increase property values (buses don’t) are all added bonuses. In Portland, the new streetcar has sparked enough development along the line to quickly pay for itself in additional tax revenue.
My choice would be to consolidate those buses and upgrade them to a modern electric streetcar line that transforms Clark Street into a world-class environment for commuting and shopping.
Unfortunately there are several problems with this plan.
ReplyDelete1. Clark is already well covered in this area, excepting from around Fullerton to Armitage, making 30 million a mile a hefty price for double coverage on almost the whole route. Much of the rest of the city needs a project like this more, if the city had the money at all, and this project would negatively impact the financial sustainability of the only existing fiscally responsible CTA line, the Red line.
2. The successful projects like this in Europe have properties that Clark does not. First, there are substitute routes for the traffic, whereas Clark has no parallel streets for this. Second, the density there is more consistent along the street than along Clark. Third, the area you're suggesting be ped and streetcar only is HUGE compared to these others. If you're searching for comparables, Chicago's own failed experiments with this fit more closely. See S State and 63rd/Halsted.
3. Due to Clark's diagonal path, the businesses along it will need product shipments to be delivered on the road itself.
4. The most succinct example of the difference between where this has worked in Europe and the Clark Rd location is the buildings on the E side of the block just N of Fullerton. There is a stretch of buildings that have undergone a facadectomy which turned them in to a long, two story parking garage. The density Chicago had on parts of Milwaukee, for example, or all throughout Bronzeville and Grand Boulevard, has been largely eradicated.
5. The greatest argument against this is that as bad as the return on investment is, being that it's measured in speculations of supposed developmental benefit, there are far more effective means of using policy to greatly improve transportation throughout Chicago. If that is the main goal here, there are better ways.
All that's required is the repeal of a previous law lobbied for by the street companies around a hundred years ago -- the ban on share taxis. Details to follow below.
Thanks for your input, Cody.
Delete1. The Clark Street streetcar is planned for an area not well served by the Red Line--the area where there are over 70,000 daily boardings onto buses stuck in traffic because it's too far to walk to the Red Line. It replaces buses, not trains. It's not meant to compete with the train, but with the driving and parking. As the only realistic way to get a significant number of drivers to take transit, it will bring the Red Line more riders.
2. First, there are in fact substitute routes for the Clark Street traffic on the grid. But the strategy is not to push drivers onto other streets, but rather to pull them from other streets onto the streetcar. We're trying to increase the number of people living and working downtown without increasing congestion, and we can only do that by transitioning to a more efficient transportation infrastructure than one in which everyone drives--starting with the most densely populated and heavily congested streets. Second, modern streetcars in Europe run along lines that vary wildly in density, connecting satellite communities through open countryside, through the near suburbs, and down the main shopping streets of the central business district. Third, we're not suggesting that Clark Street be entirely pedestrian only along its entire length. As long as it's great for pedestrians in the shopping blocks where it matters most and discourages through traffic generally on the street, the exact configuration can and should vary--from one area to the next, and from one decade to the next as the city evolves.
3. Deliveries will of course be allowed. Also local access. And emergency vehicles, which will now be able to move through the neighborhood safely and quickly even at rush hour.
4. Not following you on this one. Say more.
5. We don't know the ROI for Clark Street yet, but there are certainly other streets in Chicago where there's more underdeveloped land but still a lot of potential ridership. Remember, the benefits to the city's taxpayers go beyond increased tax revenue from new development. They include lower operating costs than the buses we now have, more tax revenue from people shopping locally instead of driving to suburban malls, and the ability to grow the economy without taxing and spending more and more on the most expensive and inefficient transportation option on the menu--more cars and roads.
There is a very effective transportation policy option involving zero public expenditure and offering enormously improved transportation effectiveness throughout Chicago -- end the ban on share taxis, originally lobbied for by the streetcar companies in the years before 1920 when they started to become popular and threatened to hurt the streetcars' bottom line.
ReplyDeleteShare taxis are the primary transportation solution throughout much of the world, and are incredibly well suited to Chicago's particular needs, especially the need to effectively and flexibly serve truly vast areas of thinned out poor populations on much of the city's South and West sides. There is no way that any amount of street car investment could cover these areas as well as private share taxi operators seeking the most passengers possible.
The city could even trade the right to operate on a profitable route, such as the Clark route you speak of, in exchange for the requirement to serve less profitable routes, such as Marquette Rd on the Southside. To maximize public benefit from this policy the licensing fees should be minimum, enough to cover installing a GPS device on all licensed share taxis so that these agreements can be enforced.
In order to see this solution's effectiveness, simply visit any number of cities around the world.
Share taxis offer the public the ability to discontinue the most empty CTA bus service AFTER it is being effectively served by entrepreneurs from those very communities. The reason -- share taxis allow flexible entrepreneurs to use smaller vehicles which come more often to more precisely match traffic patterns all over the city. Like breaking an image in to more pixels to more precisely match the real thing. And they can responsively and iteratively shift to match changing transportation and population patterns as time goes on.
I think that skeptical analysis will reveal that there is no more obvious solution for such a large problem, which would benefit the public so indiscriminately, that remains unimplemented. Most solutions have many costs and benefits and reside within a gray area. This one offers the rare unequivocal home run.
It doesn't even break any policy precedent that should scare people -- the precedent is, well, taxis, and the fact that share taxis operate all over the world, in some US cities, and even previously in Chicago.