Tag Archives: Chicago area

Who has returned to the Chicago highways after COVID-19 is a little different

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As traffic returns to pre-pandemic levels across the United States, data from Chicago suggests the composition of vehicles has changed a bit:

Photo by W W on Pexels.com

Travel times have already returned mostly to normal on Chicago’s expressways, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. On the Eisenhower, it’s taking drivers an average of 40 minutes to get from Wolf Road to the Jane Byrne Interchange during morning rush hour, compared with 32 minutes in June 2019. Drivers taking the Kennedy from downtown to O’Hare International Airport in the afternoon spent about an hour on the road in both June 2019 and 2021.

Who’s on the road might be changing, though. Truck traffic is up, and more people are working remotely. Among those heading out, more people who were taking public transit before the pandemic seem to be driving, IDOT spokesman Guy Tridgell said.

On one hand, more people are working from home. On the other hand, another long-term change might be that those who used to take mass transit regularly will not go back to that for a long time or ever. What will it take for mass transit ridership to come back to pre-COVID-19 levels? When will people feel comfortable again on trains, buses, and subways? Multiple cities are trying to address this but, as I argued last week, mass transit is already is less preferable for many commuters even before COVID.

Imagine a post-COVID-19 traffic nightmare: trucks all over the place delivering goods as the economy continues to rebound. More cars on the roads because of fears about mass transit. People who were home for months and/or were used to less congestion on the road now stuck in worse traffic. Are there any good short and long-term solutions to addressing this while the mass transit efforts also continue?

Starchitect Jahn’s buildings in the Chicago suburbs

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World famous architect Helmut Jahn died over the weekend. He built iconic buildings in major global cities and several notable buildings in the western suburbs of Chicago.

A native of Germany, Jahn won international recognition and awards for projects around the globe, including United Airlines Terminal 1 at O’Hare International Airport, the former Citigroup Center (the main entrance to the Richard B. Ogilvie Transportation Center) in Chicago, and the Sony Center in Berlin.

Besides MetroWest in Naperville, his suburban work includes the Oakbrook Terrace Tower in Oakbrook Terrace.

Here are images of the two buildings referenced:

Left: Oakbrook Terrace Tower viewed from Illinois Route 83. Right: MetroWest viewed from Interstate 88. Both images from Google Street View.

Both buildings are interesting structures to see in their suburban settings. They would not be out of place in a major city. They are full of steel and glass. They have sharp angles. They can be seen from a distance and are of a height beyond most suburban buildings.

But, they also stick out. They are right next to major highways. They are not surrounded by other tall buildings; the size of the Oakbrook Terrace Tower is particularly notable. Instead, they are surrounded by parking lots and smaller suburban office parks. They are in the suburbs but they are not of the suburbs; few residents would want these structures anywhere near their single-family homes.

In other words, a starchitect can build in the suburbs. In many parts of the United States, they are growing and a majority of Americans live in suburban settings. Interesting buildings help add to the status of certain suburbs as job centers. Yet, the interesting buildings by a famous architect can only go so far in sprawling settings: they do not really fit in even as they provide something different to view at 70 miles per hour.

Mapping vehicle emissions in the Chicago metropolitan region

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The New York Times maps and discusses vehicle emissions across American metropolitan areas:

ChicagoVehicleEmissionsMap

Even as the United States has reduced carbon dioxide emissions from its electric grid, largely by switching from coal power to less-polluting natural gas, emissions from transportation have remained stubbornly high.

The bulk of those emissions, nearly 60 percent, come from the country’s 250 million passenger cars, S.U.V.s and pickup trucks, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Freight trucks contribute an additional 23 percent…

Suburban driving, including commuting, has been a major contributor to the expanding carbon footprint of urban areas, Dr. Gately said.

But, he added, “Even in the densest cities, the vast majority of trips still happen in a motor vehicle.” These trips include work commutes, school drop-offs and millions of other daily errands as well as freight deliveries and other business traffic, each of which contribute to planetary warming.

The United States has organized much of its society around driving. Plus, many Americans like driving or the benefits they believe driving offers. It will be hard to enact quick large-scale changes to this though smaller efforts (such as fleets of electric vehicles or denser suburban areas) could add up to change over time.

The data from the Chicago area is interesting. Like most metro areas, the emissions are centered on major highways with some of the areas with most emissions being the Kennedy Expressway, the Dan Ryan Expressway, I-88 at I-294, and I-88 at I-355 (these are likely areas with high levels of congestion and gridlock). From the maps, it is hard to know how much of the emissions come from freight trucks but I would imagine the proportion could be high in the Chicago area given its central location, highways, and intermodal facilities. Chicago ranks 5th in total emissions – behind New York, Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston – and the per-person emissions ranks on the low end of metropolitan areas. Although the region is the third largest metropolitan region in the United States, it does have more mass transit than a number of other regions.

Suburbs do not want to sully their character by allowing marijuana sales

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Selling marijuana may soon be legal in Illinois but this does not mean suburbs necessarily want to be places where this happens:

Naperville, Lake Barrington and Bloomingdale plan to officially ban sales, Libertyville leans toward the same and the mayor of Batavia said he will issue a veto if necessary.

Des Plaines officials have expressed concerns and are doing more research before deciding, which also will happen in Lincolnshire and Bartlett.

To date, only South Elgin and Elburn said they are OK with allowing one marijuana retail store…

Municipalities can choose to not allow marijuana stores within their boundaries, or can enact “reasonable” zoning ordinances and regulate how many and where they are located. That can include minimum distances from “sensitive” locations such as colleges and universities, the law states.

Imagine a suburban landscape starting in January where marijuana is primarily sold in communities that are not as wealthy and/or white. Does this lessen their reputation and bolster the status of communities that do not allow sales?

It will be interesting to see if the communities that are now saying no continue to hold out against marijuana retailers in order to preserve a particular character. The carrot being offered is extra sales tax revenue that municipalities can collect. A wealthier suburb might see adjacent communities benefiting from extra funds and decide they want a cut of it. Or, perhaps they do not see that other suburbs are viewed negatively because they allow marijuana sales so they decide to jump in.

An incomplete way to frame it: Lake County loses jobs and HQs to Chicago

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The shift of headquarters and jobs from Lake County to downtown Chicago leaves a number of suburban buildings vacant:

The far north suburban county is bracing for the loss of about 2,700 office jobs by early next year, from prominent companies Walgreens Boots Alliance, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. and Mondelez International…

History indicates corporate campuses in Deerfield and nearby suburbs — and the homes and businesses those high-paying office jobs support — can weather the storm. But the challenge has only intensified as more companies move jobs to downtown Chicago, in pursuit of younger workers who want to live in the city…

McDonald’s, Kraft Heinz, Motorola Mobility, Hillshire Brands, Gogo, Wilson Sporting Goods, Motorola Solutions and Beam Suntory are examples of companies that have moved their headquarters downtown in the past few years. Others, such as Walgreens, have established large offices in the city while retaining suburban headquarters…

A 2013 report outlining the county’s economic development strategy said losing any of the larger employers in the biopharma industry — such as Takeda — would be “devastating” to the county.

Such moves have real consequences for suburban areas. Filling and/or reviving large office parks and suburban campuses can be difficult. The loss of jobs and tax revenue can hurt.

At the same time, a story like this can reinforce notions that when Lake County loses jobs to the city of Chicago, this is a bad outcome. When the suburbs lose jobs to the big city or vice versa, someone is winning and someone is losing. Not necessarily: the region is still benefiting as the cities and suburbs depend on each other. From the perspective of the whole region, there is good news here:

-The fact that these companies want to stay in the Chicago region, whether in the suburbs or downtown, hints at the economic vitality and amenities of the whole area. With the bad news of Illinois’ financial issues, big companies are not leaving the state en masse.

-Other parts of the article hint that while the vacancy rate for office space is high in Lake County, there is still some business demand for these headquarters and campuses. Some locations might require more work to find a sizable replacement but they are not necessarily sitting empty for years.

-This presents opportunities – perhaps unwanted – for suburban municipalities to rethink suburban office parks and campuses. Rather than waiting for the big company to use the whole property, these could be future mixed-use sites featuring office, retail, recreational, and residential space. Rather than rely on single employers, suburbs could work to tie these campuses into the larger fabric of their community.

This could become a bigger problem if suburban properties stay vacant for a long time but these changes seem fairly normal for now: businesses move locations within a region to chase what they think are attractive options for workers (particularly young ones) and their bottom line. Perhaps more importantly, the suburb versus city battle over prestigious headquarters does not need to sour relations or perceptions. The region as a whole can continue to thrive even if there are changes to address within the metropolitan area.

The Chicago area’s net migration is not bad but it can’t attract new residents

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The newest Census data suggests both Chicago and the Chicago region are losing residents. But, it may be less about people moving away and more about an inability to attract new residents:

ChicagoAreaPopulationChange2019

Some experts note the metro region also isn’t attracting enough newcomers to make up for people who move away. Immigration from other countries also has long helped stem population loss, but in recent years this influx has been less robust, according to census estimates. Meanwhile, birthrates are slowing statewide, which means there are fewer new residents to make up for other losses…

“We don’t have a particularly high rate of just out-migration, but very few people come here relative to our population, compared to the rest of the country,” said Daniel Kay Hertz, research director at the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability.

Using numbers from the 2015 American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. census, his agency found that Illinois ranked in the middle of the pack nationally on the rate of people leaving the state, but was third from the bottom on the rate of people coming in…

“The narratives around the state matter and can shape people’s decisions,” Hertz said. “And the ones in Illinois are really, really, really negative in ways that I think overstate some of the issues relative to other places.”

Any major metropolitan area is going to have some people moving out as they get new job opportunities, see greener pastures elsewhere, move for family reasons, and so on. The goal then is to also attract new residents even as some are moving out. Population increases come from new residents plus more births than deaths.

This one expert cited above hints at an interesting conundrum for any city or region beset with population loss or narratives of decline: how do you reverse the trend once it starts picking up steam? As noted, the narratives both within and outside the Chicago region and Illinois are not good: pension debts, inequality, corruption, social issues that have lasted decades, higher taxes, a lack of innovation, not a business-friendly climate, harsh winters, important but bottlenecked infrastructure. If Chicago was the exemplar American city at the turn of the twentieth century, that is no longer the case. Other cities are on the rise, particularly in the Sunbelt stretching from Washington D.C. (with the expansion of and attention paid to the federal government, perhaps now truly the second most important American city) to Houston (whose population keeps growing and may soon surpass Chicago).

It is hard to know exactly how much the larger narrative pushes people to avoid the Chicago area in favor of other places. At the same time, status matters. People and businesses want to go to places that are on the way up, that are gaining people, that have an energy moving toward the future. Chicago and its region still have a lot to offer. For example, millennials still like portions of Chicago for their thriving cultural scenes plus relatively cheap housing compared to other major cities. Perhaps Chicago’s long-term fate is to roughly stay the same at the center of the Midwest region, a significant portion of the country that may also be losing population and status.

Chicago area voter turnout around 13-15%

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The Daily Herald describes the low turnout in municipal elections in the Chicago area a week ago.

Only 13 percent of the suburb’s registered voters cast ballots in Tuesday’s election, the lowest rate for any election since at least 2006…

With hundreds of races in each county, some drew more voters than others. The Hinsdale High School District 86 tax hike question in DuPage County brought more than 40 percent of the district’s voters to the ballot box, with the looming threat of massive extracurricular cuts if the request didn’t pass. It did.

But scores of other races had less than 5 percent turnout, according to vote totals available on some election websites, mainly because they weren’t contested…

The growth in actual voters is little comfort to political scientists, local politicians and suburban election officials, who worry low voter turnout shows a dangerous level of apathy by the electorate.

While the article tries to bring out the positive news – there are more registered voters compared to the last set of municipal elections and some races had higher turnout races – it is hard to sugarcoat these figures. The Chicago suburb in which I live had low turnout for the first mayoral race in years. These local elections can have a significant impact as local leaders react to external pressures as well as have internal discussions. Not every local official makes significant changes and many local officials may run to make small improvements and preserve the nature of their community. At the same time, many communities have key moments in their past to which they could point to as sending the community down a different route and altering the community’s character.

Again, if Americans claim to like local government and local control in suburban settings, why do they not vote in larger numbers for the officials who will help guide their communities and local governments?

Determining the complicated boundaries of the Chicago suburbs

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Prompted by the discovery of Green Oaks, Illinois earlier this week, I went searching for a list of all of the Chicago suburbs. Instead, I found a discussion about where exactly the Chicago suburbs end. Here is an expert talking about this very issue in summer 2018:

The best definition of where the “suburbs” are, according to Ellis, is probably the boundaries of the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet Metropolitan Statistical Area…

But calling everything inside those boundaries “the suburbs” is probably too simple…

So, Ellis said, the suburbs end to the west at the Fox River, to the south along the Lincoln Highway, and stretch along the train lines as far south as Michigan City, IN and as far north as Kenosha, WI.

The second map probably also conforms to cultural understandings in the region about what is really a suburb. There are places that could be within the far-flung orbit of Chicago but do not think of themselves or are not regarded by others as true suburbs.

This is an issue for many metropolitan regions, particular due to two changes:

1. Suburban areas keep developing further from the central city.

2. More people commute suburb to suburb rather than into the central city on a regular basis.

With more housing available further from the city as well as the presence of jobs in far-flung job centers, more residents can be part of a metropolitan region even if they rarely make a trip into the big city or do direct business with the big city.

Still discovering the existence of some Chicago area suburbs

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I recently ran across a news story about a Chicago suburb I did not recognize. Where is Green Oaks, Illinois? Here is the front page of the community’s website:

GreenOaksWebsite

The Census characteristics of the community suggest it is small (roughly 3,600 residents), white (over 85%), wealthy (median household income just over $160,000), and educated (over 63% with a bachelor’s degree or higher).

Given the population of the Chicago region (over 9 million residents) plus Illinois’ penchant for local governments and taxing bodies, perhaps this is not surprising. It is easy to miss a community of less than 4,000 people with a community name that comes out of the mad lib list of Chicago suburb names (Oak, Forest, Park, Green, Hills, cardinal directions, etc.).

At the same time, as someone who studies the Chicago suburbs, not even being aware of this community is a point to file away…

OECD report blasts Chicago area transit

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A new report from the OECD suggests transit in the Chicago region could improve a lot:

“The current state of transit ridership in Chicago is relatively depressing,” concludes the report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based research agency whose backers include the world’s richest nations, among them the U.S.

The report found a lack of coordination among the four transit agencies and their four separate boards as well as insufficient accountability. Those issues intensify the economic impact of congestion on Chicago, estimated at over $6 billion in 2011 by the Texas Transportation Institute, the report said.

Although the new study largely echoes previous critiques of the area’s transit system and contains no startling findings, it offers a view of Chicago from a global perspective. And in doing so, the report gives an unflattering assessment of a transportation network that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other leaders have aspired to be world-class…

One of the findings bolsters a recommendation made this year by the Northeastern Illinois Public Transit Task Force: that a single superagency should replace the RTA and oversee the CTA, Metra and Pace.

Could a report from a reputable international organization finally spur organizations and governments in the Chicago area into action? I’m skeptical. I would guess a lot of actors would frown on the idea of a overarching superagency that could override their particular concerns. Imagine Chicago neighborhoods and far-flung suburbs with competing interests both being dissatisfied with the decisions made by a board of bureaucrats.

At the same time, not pushing reforms means the Chicago could be leaving a lot of money and time on the table.