Today’s Wall Street Journal includes an article addressing one of the side effects of a 2-year-long project to reconstruct the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago. Freeway capacity has reportedly been halved during construction, forcing folks to endure hellish traffic jams or adapt their commuting patterns.
This article (subscriber link) discusses some of the thoughts of those who have started taking the train to work:
Even though he lives just five blocks from an El stop, [one commuter] had been driving to work and paying $18 a day to park. Facing the prospect of daily gridlock, he ditched his car. He likes to sit in a single seat toward the back of his train car because “nobody sits on top of you.” One recent morning, two men walked past his seat peddling aromatic oils and candies. In a car, Mr. Pierson says, “you can roll the window up.”
Taking the train is “a nightmare,” says Mary Dennis, 49, a senior consultant with a mortgage bank in downtown Chicago. For about 20 years, she had been driving the 36 miles from her home in Schererville in northwest Indiana. The trip took about 45 minutes. But the Dan Ryan work stretched it to an hour, and gas prices kept climbing, so now she drives half an hour to Hammond, Ind., then rides a 40-minute South Shore train to a Chicago stop that’s a 20-minute walk from her office.
She says she feels cramped on the train and has to dodge drips from Chicago station ceilings when it rains. She’s not looking forward to Chicago’s blazing summer heat in stuffy cars or waiting on the open platforms during the city’s fierce winters. At first, she wore sneakers on the commute and switched to pumps at work. But now she wears black, thick-soled “old lady shoes.” She has also traded her heavy briefcase for a cloth bag because she no longer has a back seat for storage.[...]
Some South Shore regulars like Jack Sloan aren’t so happy about the influx. He says the new commuters seem glued to cellphones, yammering as loudly as they would in the privacy of their cars. He wishes someone would put up “wallpaper or something” to block cellular signals. “You don’t need to give your life story for everyone to hear,” he says.
Even though I’m one of the folks who advocate using transit when it’s an option…it’s also worth noting that mass transit doesn’t really mesh well with the lifestyles and preferences of some of the car-bound.
