Chicago Metropolis Plan

Ready to Rumble? Urban Planning Growing More Complex, Serious

by Craig Barner

Chicago Metropolis 2020 is an urban plan that makes about 225 recommendations for the region, including transportation.

Key proposals include taxing motor vehicles to fund transit, constructing a half-dozen “super” intermodal centers linked by dedicated freightways for the transfer and movement of cargo in what is the nation’s rail capital and building a third airport to reduce pressure on the two existing fields.

“The intent was to make sure the leadership of Chicago was organized and to make this city great,” says Jim LaBelle, vice president of Chicago Metropolis 2020, a private, nonprofit made up of leaders in business, politics and other areas.

Complex Planning Issues

For instance, a $25 billion capital bill is languishing in the Illinois General Assembly as legislators feud over the details. The Canadian National Railway is making a $300 million bid to buy the 198-mi-long Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway arcing through the area’s outer-ring suburbs—a move that would reduce congestion in Chicago and its inner-ring suburbs but increase in those towns where the line lays.

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And, the city is a finalist for the 2016 Summer Olympics, an event that clout-heavy Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has committed to. (With qualifications Chicago Metropolis 2020 supports each of these, LaBelle says.)

“All you have to do is look at the saga of the O’Hare [International Airport] expansion to see how difficult it is for a region to act at the regional level,” says Michael Sullivan, principal and director of commercial architecture of Chicago-based OWP&P and member of the advisory board of Roosevelt University’s School of Real Estate.

Legal challenges to the $15 billion expansion have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court (the court denied a petition against the expansion in May to leave a previous appellate decision standing), and legal maneuvering continues to dog it more than three years after construction started.

Started 12 Years Ago

The Metropolis project was started in 1996 by the Commercial Club of Chicago, a 500-member organization of leaders in business, education and other activities, to take a look at the issues confronting the region, Labelle says. The 140-year-old Commercial Club has a history in urban planning: It sponsored Daniel Burnham’s “Plan of Chicago,” the first urban-planning document in American history, in 1909.

For the existing plan, a two-year effort involving 200 members was launched to look at regional issues, such as the spatial mismatch between housing and jobs, affordable housing and sprawl. In 1999, the report, “Chicago Metropolis 2020: Preparing Metropolitan Chicago for the 21st Century,” was released and published by the University of Chicago Press as a 192-page book.

Several follow-up reports came out subsequently, including “The Metropolis Plan: Choices for the Chicago Region” and “The Metropolis Freight Plan: Delivering the Goods.”

What has emerged is a picture of a region facing relatively serious problems.

The population in the Chicago region is expected to grow between 1.6 and 2 million people by 2030, about 800,000 jobs are projected to be added and a million cars could be added to the roads.

Certain trends give reason for concern, according to the plan.

For instance, the number of vehicle miles traveled in the Chicago region increased by 40% between 1985 and 1995 but the number of lane miles increased by only 5%. The region has the second largest number of workers (10.7%) nationwide who endure average commutes of at least 60 minutes each way. (The national average for regions with populations greater than 1 million people is 7.5%.)

And, the area is the nation’s second-most-serious nonattainment region for the number of days each year failing to attain National Ambient Air Quality standards for ozone.

“In general I would say sprawl and regional transportation are two sides of the same coin,” adds OWP&P’s Sullivan.

Planning is further hobbled because Chicago has more than 1,200 units of local government, resulting in a unit of government for every 6,000 people—five times the ratio in Los Angeles and seven times that in New York.

If these trends continue unabated, the organization projects the following to occur by 2030:

• The time spent in cars will climb from 56 minutes a day per person to 70 minutes a day.
• The share of trips made on public transit will fall from 6% to 5%.
• Nearly 500 sq mi of open land will be plowed under for new development.
  “There are certain results we want,” LaBelle says. “What are the elements of coordination we need so we have a region that works?”

Example: Moving People

The Chicago Metropolis 2020 plan is so comprehensive that it cannot be quickly summarized.

But the problem of funding to connect where people live and their transportation options and a planning outlook provide the example of some of its recommendations.

The region has the bones of a good transit (Chicago Transit Authority bus and train, the Metra train and the suburban Pace systems) and road system, but funding to maintain and improve the investment is a constant challenge.

Revenue to fund capital maintenance and new projects for both roads and transit—about $2 billion annually in current dollars—is inadequate to sustain and improve the regional transportation system, LaBelle says. An additional $2 billion annually, also in current dollars, must be raised from taxes and fees assessed against motor vehicles for a total of about $4 billion annually—about 50% higher, LaBelle adds.

There other funding shortfalls. For example, Illinois has not changed its gas tax (19 cents a gallon) since 1990, and vehicle miles since then have increased. And, funding from the federal transportation bill is already exhausted.

As a result of these problems, the plan calls for the key element of taxing motor vehicles to subsidize transit.

The idea might be a hard sell, says Bill Grams, executive director of the Itasca-based Illinois Road and Transportation Builders Association. “That historically has been difficult for the industry at any level to accept,” he says.

In addition to funding, Chicago Metropolis 2020 focused on transit-oriented development as a key part of the solution to the mismatch between where people live and jobs.

TOD would include building a third of new housing—rather than the existing 20% average—within a half-mile of one of the 380 rail stations in the region. Also according to the plan: Investment should be made in “regional cities”—places like Elgin, Joliet and Schaumburg, in addition to Chicago itself—and transit modernization. Communities should become more walkable, and the use of expressways for long trips and arterial streets for short trips should be reinforced.

Other things that the Chicago Metropolis 2020 advocates include using a 13-mi right-of-way on the Northwest Tollway to extend the CTA’s Blue Line to Elk Grove, Schaumburg, Rolling Meadows and beyond; developing a rectangle of dedicated bus lanes and busways in the Loop; and building more park-n-ride parking lots and garages.

Some Successes

The Chicago Metropolis 2020 plan has had some successes.

For instance, it helped pave the way for the $6.3 Illinois FIRST capital program for which funds have been expended. The organization backed the 2005 merger of the Chicago Area Transportation Study and the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission so that transportation and land-use could be better coordinated.

And, it helped draft legislation passed by the General Assembly in January that provided operating funding—but not capital funding—for the Regional Transportation Authority, the oversight agency for CTA, Metra and Pace.

It is continuing to push specific proposals that are influencing discussion, such as variable pricing for transit.

“It doesn’t make sense to ride the bus a mile downtown and pay the same as I would to take the Blue Line [elevated train] from downtown to O’Hare,” LaBelle says. “You didn’t hear anything about that before we advanced it.”

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