Support the Removal of Western Ave. Viaduct

by crandell | 08/07/2009

At a recent public meeting, the City presented a proposal to tear down the elevated-freeway-esque Western Ave. viaduct (CDOT website). The viaduct is nearing the end of its useful life (it's old and falling apart) and the City needs to decide what to do with it. The presentation posted on the CDOT website shows two options currently under consideration for the viaduct: replacing it with a new viaduct or with a normal at-grade city street that would be friendlier to pedestrians, bicyclists, and storefront businesses.

I was glad to read in a Chicago Tribune story that Ald. Schulter understands why the viaduct needs to go:

Schulter, who was born and raised in the neighborhood near the overpass, thinks the structure has diminished the quality of life in the neighborhood. "I'd like to see it come down. Western Avenue would be street-level again. We'd do some nice streetscaping. It would do a lot of good for area.

Removing the viaduct would indeed make the street more livable, helping to transition the area from a place where people just want to drive through as fast as possible into a place where people actually want to spend time. It would also be a very wise move financially for the city, since rebuilding the viaduct would cost much more than rebuilding it as a surface street and would also cost much more to maintain in the long-term.

You can tell CDOT what you think about the Western Viaduct replacement options by emailing cdotnews@cityofchicago.org.


Is it certain that this

Submitted by John (not verified) on Sat, 08/08/2009 - 19:50.

Is it certain that this would be better for bikes and pedestrians? It seems like they would have to cross a much wider Western Avenue than they do now with just the local traffic. There would be more traffic lanes and more conflicting traffic volume.

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John -- I do think the

Submitted by crandell on Sun, 08/09/2009 - 21:54.

John -- I do think the surface option would be better for bikes and pedestrians. The street does not have to be that wide -- and reducing the road capacity would encourage drivers to utilize other streets in our city street network. An over-sized street like this that segregates modes acts like a freeway, attracting and concentrating traffic on one street instead of distributing it through the network. I think if they rebuilt this as a reasonably smaller road (think Ashland), they'd find a lot of the traffic would disappear into alternative routes. It's similar to freeway-removal projects in other cities: http://www.cnu.org/highways

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Here's a report from Inside

Submitted by crandell on Sun, 08/09/2009 - 21:37.

Here's a report from Inside Newspaper.

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