Methods for Dealing with
the Stress Urban Expansion is Placing on Metropolitan Transportation Systems
James Karagiannes
Introduction
Urban sprawl has become one of the main problems facing transportation networks in urban areas around the United States today. In a quest to find more open areas and more private surroundings people have been fleeing major cities in favor of the surrounding suburban communities. Eventually these communities became as bad as the city and people began to spread out to even greater distances from the center of the cities. Many urban areas have seen their sizes double over the past decade without comparable growths in population. This rapid expansion has led to a critical shortage in infrastructure. In many communities water, sewage, and other basic city services are stretched beyond their capabilities. The worst of these problems though is the transportation network. This is an infrastructure that transcends local political control. It is run at a variety of levels from local through state agencies. Because of this complexity, transportation systems have had a more difficult time in keeping pace with the urban expansion as opposed to other forms of infrastructure. While this problem can be seen in many urban areas around the country, perhaps the best region to examine this phenomenon is the Chicago Metropolitan area. This region is made up of Chicago and it's six collar counties.
The rapid expansion of the Chicagoland area began in the early eighties during the economic boom. What made Chicago unique from other major metropolitan areas is that as the national economy has vacillated over the past 20 years, the local economy has continued to grow and therefore the problem in the Chicagoland area has become one of the worst in the nation, and therefore makes it a better laboratory for this type of study. Figure 1 shows the configuration of the six county metropolitan area. This is also known as Northeastern Illinois.
In addition to the usual government agencies that help to regulate the infrastructure in this region, the sate also created the Northern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC). NIPC was created in 1957 and consists of appointees from all levels of government in the state. Their charge is to help in the planning and development of the metropolitan area. Their decisions though are only advisory and any compliance with measures they suggest is strictly up to the local authorities. Many of the statistics that have been compiled on this matter have been done through NIPC. The other organization in the area which have done extensive research on transportation topics for this region is the Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS). Together both these organizations have collected extensive data on the transportation network in the region and have summarized them for use in evaluating the needs of the system.
Population Distribution
The first area to examine is the population of the metropolitan region. The interest here is in how large it is, how it is distributed and how these two factors have changed over the years. In 1950 the population for the Northern Illinois area was estimated at 5,177,868. By 1970 the population had reached 6,978,947. At this point the population curve began to level off and by 1990 the population was 7,261,176. In the first 20 years the region experienced a 35% increase in population. Over the next 20 years the population only
Figure 1 (Map of Northeastern Illinois)
increased by a little more than 4%. The most current data from the 2000 census shows a population of 7,944,329, an increase of about 9.5%, still well behind the pace of the initial growth spurt from 1950 - 1970. With these figures one would assume that there should not be a worsening problem. If one looks at the individual counties instead, a much different picture of the situation is displayed. In Chicago, where more than 40% of the population for the region is located, there was a 17% decline in population over the past 20 years while the Suburbs showed a growth of 24%. A closer examination reveals that even among suburbs there was a substantial shift in population. Between 1980 and 1990 of the 262 suburbs around Chicago 94 of them gained in population while 168 of them lost people. Most of these decreases occurred in suburbs within an inner ring around the city. Most of the gains occurred in the suburbs occupying the outermost ring around the city. If one looks at figure 2 below we see that theses population trends have continued from 1990 ñ 1999. This seem information can be seen in the graph displayed in figure 3. If one looks at the amount of land occupied by people in the area we see that amount of land occupied by housing has increased by 46%.
Figure 2 (Northern Illinois
Planning Commission)
Figure 3 (Metropolitan Planning Organization)
Figure 4 (Transportation Facts
Volume 10, Number 3 June, 1993)
There is another way these figures can be analyzed. Rather than looking at total population, the employment of the region can be used. The advantage here is that when looking at population one runs into the problem of number of members per household, and how each of those members contributes to the transportation problem. Obviously a three year old child has little impact on the transportation system. With employment there is a definite impact from each employee on the system, since each employee must travel to work. Total employment in the area has increased by 21% from 1970 to 1990. One may ask how the employment can increase by such a large factor over population. This is due to a variety of factors. One reason is the average age of the residents is increasing, therefore there are more people in the labor force. An other reason is that there is a significant number of people taking jobs in the area from outside the area, like Northwest Indiana and Southeast Wisconsin. In fact it is predicted that by the year 2020 over 7.5% of all jobs will be held by non residents. The current rate is only 2.5%. As with the population there is also a trend of decline in the city and increase in the suburbs. The city showed a 21% decline in employment while the suburbs shoed an 80% increase. As with population while there was a 21% increase in jobs, there was a corresponding 74% increase in land occupied by businesses. Figure 4 shows how the distribution of work trips is currently set up for the area. In this diagram Grundy, Kendall, Kenosha County in Wisconsin, Lake County in Indiana, and Porter County in Indiana are considered outside the area. The Figure 5 depicts how these distributions have changed percentage wise over the past 20 years.
Figure 5 (Transportation Facts
Volume 10, Number 3 June, 1993)
Modal Split
Clearly the number of people living in the area are spreading out over a larger and larger area. This requires longer trips to work and more trips to different locations. The question now becomes how do people make their commutes. Between 1980 and 1990 there has been a 27% increase in the number of people who drive alone in their commutes as opposed to a 21% decrease in the number of people that carpool. Public transportation has seen an overall decrease of 10% in ridership over this same period. Finally all other forms of transportation have seen a combined drop of 14%. It is worthy to note that in this category taxicabs are included and they saw a 48% increase. Most of the loss was seen in walking which lost 21% of its share of commuters. All this clearly points to the fact that due to the sprawl in the area it is more difficult for people to make use of public transportation and car-pooling and they have been forced to become single commuters. This conclusion can be made since the decreases are for the most part real. In other words its not like the total number of commuters has increased and therefore the percentages of people using these modes has decreased, but there has been an actual shift of these commuters from forms of mass transit to solo riders in automobiles.
Figure 6 shows the percentage increase in private passenger vehicle work trips for each of the counties. Note that the outer most counties show the greatest increase. This is due in part to the lack of available public transportation.
Figure 6 (Transportation Facts Volume 10, Number 6 October, 1993)
In its reports in the sixties and seventies NIPC urged that any expansion into the outlying areas should be done along existing public transportation routes and land for new routes should be reserved so that new infrastructure could be put into place to handle the new loads of commuters that would be generated by the expansion. These warning went totally unheeded and the results have now become apparent. The region not only ignored the expansion of public transportation facilities, but it allowed the current ones to decay to a point that they can longer even be effective to the communities they serve further driving more commuters to use their own automobiles.
These trends can also be seen in the increase in vehicle registrations in the Northern Illinois region versus the state as a whole. For the years 1980 to 1990 there was on increase in the region of 26% as opposed to a state wide increase of 21%. In fact half of the state wide increase could be attributed to the increase of the Northern Illinois region. The city versus suburb trend is also evident in this data. Almost all suburban areas saw an increase of at least 35% except for suburban Cook which only saw a 23% increase. The city on the other hand only saw a 10% increase. Cook county as a whole only saw a 17% increase. This supports the fact that there was a definite flight from the city and its surrounding suburbs to the collar county regions. This also shows that due to a lack of available public transportation people were forced to obtain vehicles as the only viable mode of transportation.
All this has lead to a gridlock situation in the road system for Northern Illinois. There is no longer a one way commute in the morning and the evening. Ed McDermit of the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) pointed out the fact that in the early eighties the Chicgoland area had two distinct rush hours. One in the morning into the city, and one in the afternoon out of the city. In the present situation the ìRush Hourî lasts two to three hours and it is in both directions in the morning and in the evening. Compounding this problem is that fact that any bad weather or accidents could create traffic congestion that will last uninterrupted throughout the entire day. Interstate bypass routes like 294 that were designed originally to take traffic around the city have now become major commuter routes and have been widened to accommodate the increased traffic flow. These problems have only been complicated by the fact that there is an increased commuter flow from areas outside the region such as Wisconsin and Indiana.
Land Management
The massive expansion of the region and its dedication to single occupancy automobiles has led to the current problems of congestion that the area is facing. If these are the causes of the congestion, in order to solve the problem the root causes to these problems must in turn be addressed. The first of these root causes appears to be land management. This has been a concept that has been addressed over the years but little attention has been paid to the warnings that different organizations like CATS, NIPC, and IDOT have given to the local municipalities of the region.
For decades now these organizations have tried to encourage communities to work together to plan the locations of housing developments, large corporate operations, and shopping districts. They have attempted to encourage them to expand along existing rail lines so that people could effectively use the rails for transportation from one community to another and busing could be used to make the final connections. They were also urged to allow for the expansion for transportation systems by allotting land tracts which could be used for the construction of new major arterials and new rail lines. Current IDOT estimations are that nearly 25% of the land in a suburb needs to be dedicated to transportation facilities if congestion is to be avoided. One of the strongest recommendations has been that affordable housing need to be located in close proximity to places of employment and shopping districts so that trip lengths can be shortened and alternative modes of transportation can become more feasible.
All of these recommendations seem to make sense. The question now becomes why was none of this advice used. Why have communities chosen not to listen. The answer lies in politics and a self serving behavior which is currently encouraged under the present political and economic climate. At present Illinois is a home rule state. This means that communities are basically free to do what they want despite the wishes of higher government agencies. While home rule can always be legislated over by the state, the legislature has always been reluctant to take these liberties away from the local communities. This has lead to a lack of accountability on the part of local governments. They make plans for their municipality with no regard for adjacent municipalities.
This disregard for the greater common good is generated by a profit motive. Each municipality tries to generate the largest and most lucrative tax bases possible. This results in competitive bidding for industrial parks, housing developments, and shopping strips. These complexes are built not where people need them but where the best deal can be made. This often results in the generation of numerous unneeded trips, as well as the overall lengthening of those trips. This is compounded by the fact that few municipal planners are able to conceive of the transportation network they need to support their community much less how to integrate it into the rest of the adjoining communities. The result is shear chaos. The region ends up with a piecemeal transportation network that ends up serving the needs of no one. Instead people end up being frustrated with congestion and then decide if they move farther out their problem will be solved. This ends up only propagating the problem rather than solving it because there is always an other community that is willing to take these people in to expand their own tax base.
While this profit motive brings short term gains it generally ends up leaving long term losses. As most of these communities reach their limit of congestion their tax base will erode as people leave the community and they will be left with an infrastructure system that has no one to use it. The infrastructure will eventually decay and this will result in further flight. Eventually a kind of ghost town is left behind. This is personified most vividly by the city. The one place that is designed to support millions has less than half its capacity used. This has resulted in a decline in services, and has spiraled into a continued decline in residents. The worst part about the current expansion now is that communities no longer even attempt to keep up with infrastructure. They simply let there municipalities become over run. Mark Thomas of NIPC says that only through land management can the congestion problems of Northern Illinois be solved. Expansion needs to be controlled in such a way that communities can benefit from it not pay a price for it.
Capital Investment
An other problem that ties in with land management is capital investment. While developments and industrial parks are built at an amazing rate, few if any of these organizations contribute to the pot for enhancing the current transportation network as well as other forms of infrastructure. Under 1993 estimates, in 1987 dollars, in order to maintain the current transportation network to support present traffic conditions approximately $20.5 billion dollars will be needed. Current estimates for available government funding from all levels is placed at $19.2 billion. There is a shortfall of $1.3 billion dollars. The question is who should pick up this tab? It is clear if private industry is benefiting from all this expansion they should pay the bill. This is unfortunately not the case.
To make matters worse developers pay little attention to the practicality of developments they are constructing. They are only concerned with appearance and cost, not with practicality and overall efficiency. This often results in developments that do not have adequate access to local arterials and consequently many arterials suffer from an excess of traffic trying to access both residential and industrial developments. They also make it almost impossible for public busing systems to have adequate access to the developments. Again this only forces people into their cars. Developments, both industrial and residential, need to share in the indirect costs they generate by building the development. They need to be made aware of the traffic conditions they are generating and they have to take responsibility for their actions.
Solutions
There are a variety of solutions which can be employed at different levels in order to fix the problem in both the short and long term. A simple long term solution can not be the only one looked at here because the situation has reached a critical point where gridlock has taken over. The region can not wait for a long term solution to take effect. By the same token the long term solution will be needed if the economic viability of the region is to remain good. Stop gap measures alone have the current solution and we can see that the results have been poor. With a two pronged approach the problem can be solved in a way that will accommodate all involved.
In both cases the only way that either set of solutions can succeed is if there is a central planning body which has some level of authority beyond a strictly advisory capacity. NIPC can be given this power or another body can be created if this is not favorable to the local communities. NIPC would be the logical preference though since the structure for the appointment of the board and the multilateral nature of an advisory board is already in place. In addition, it has already been in existence for almost forty years and its administration has been well established. It is critical that some governing board be established since only through such a board can local municipalities be controlled and made to cooperate with the goals of the region.
Short Term Solutions
Here is where both technology and maximization of efficiency can play a role to help serve the current demands on the transportation network. Companies at all levels should be encouraged to start car and van pools. They should provide incentives to their employees to participate in these programs. This would provide a very real reduction in the number of cars on the road without any great capital expenditures on the part of government agencies. Companies could also help to stager work hours so that commuters are not all using the network at the same time, and thereby spreading the load out over a greater time span. Again this is an approach that could be implemented immediately and would require no expenditure on the part of local governments.
Corporations and housing developments should also be responsible for contributing to the capital needed to expand the transportation network to accommodate any new sites which they choose to build on. This would include the money necessary for new signals, expansion of major arterials to accommodate the new traffic loads, and the purchasing of land and construction of new mass transit facilities. If a corporation wants to move its facilities or a developer wants to plow under farm land, then they need to be held responsible for the consequence of their actions. They should not be able to take their profits and run, while the community is left with a plethora of problems.
At the regional level the efficiency of the current network must be maximized. With respect to the regional network of roads IDOT should be given charge in monitoring the efficiency of all traffic systems. This would include a variety of systems. Probably the most important of these would be Traffic Signal systems. IDOT would be charged with making sure that all systems operated at their most efficient levels. In many areas, especially where large shopping districts exist near major arterials, there are strings of traffic signals. These signals are often poorly coordinated and result in major traffic delays during periods of congestion. Enhancing their coordination could ease traffic congestion considerably. Along the same lines IDOT could determine what configurations the street networks should take. In other words, where should one way streets be created, how should intersections be expanded to more efficiently accommodate the current traffic load, and where if possible should High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes be placed. They could also create favorable conditions for buses which would make them more attractive than automobiles.
In addition to these maximization responsibilities, IDOT would be responsible for coordinating all construction projects in the region. This would involve making sure their are a number of available alternatives to use during major projects, that not all projects are run in the same area at the same time, and that the projects are finished in a timely manor. They would determine the priority of all projects so that the projects that would have the most impact are completed first. IDOT would also be responsible for the approval and coordination of any new facilities. They would have to meet their standards. This would prevent municipalities from constructing ad hoc systems that did not adequately serve the transportation need they were generating.
Public transportation also needs a short term overhaul. Gas taxes need to be raised and the funds directly diverted to mass transit. This will help the system maintain its infrastructure so that it will become attractive to commuters again. At the same time it will help discourage motorists from driving. Some of the money could also be used to further lower fairs in an attempt to attract more riders. Local governments need to provide ore adequate parking and other access facilities to mass transit so that the population is not put off by a variety of inconveniences that are currently associated with mass transit. The state should also place a substantial tax on the purchase or automobiles and there should be a substantial increase in the yearly registration fee. This would reduce the number of vehicles purchased and consequently the number of vehicles on the road. It would also force people to become more responsible in their commuting. It would enhance ride sharing in the family if no where else. These funds could be diverted to mass transit capital projects so that rail line and other major expansions could be done.
Long Term Solutions
The long term solutions are just as important as the short term solutions because they will determine whether the region will be viable will into the twenty first century. The most important of these, and the one that will turn out to be all encompassing, is land management. Without land management the whole system will collapse under its own weight. In order to implement a viable land management scheme there will have to be many other reforms. Illinois will have to adopt some sort of a scheme like Oregon or Florida. These plans require that all land in all counties must be zoned, and the zoning must be state approved. This would eliminate the random changing of zoning and the ad-hoc placement of developments and industrial parks which only suit the needs of individual communities.
Figure 7 (CATS)
Figure 8 (CATS)
Figure 9 (CATS)
The property tax system must also be overhauled to promote better land management. One solution might be for adjacent communities to share property taxes. In this way much of the cut-throat competitive bidding would be eliminated, and new developments would go where they are needed not where they can get the best deal. This could be done in much the same way as professional sport franchises share gate revenues. It would help to prevent week communities from being plundered by the stronger ones. It would also help build a better infrastructure network between communities since all communities would be able to share in the revenues.
Building in developed neighborhoods must be encouraged over building on virgin land. This would help to make use of the current infrastructure that already exists rather than forcing the building of new systems. Individuals and businesses need to be encouraged to move back into the city and the inner suburbs. In this way the current mass transit and road network would operate more efficiently because that was how it was designed to transport people. By looking at maps of the current transportation facilities located in the region we see that it was designed to move people into and out of the city, not between adjacent outlying suburbs. Figures 7, 8, and 9 show the transportation networks for mass transit and the major expressways in the area respectively. These maps also show that in order to accommodate the building that has already taken place additional systems will have to be added to allow some transportation between outlying facilities. In this area Illinois has already started to take some action. The state is encouraging people to locate their residence near their place of employment through grants for down payments, closing costs, or other financial incentives.
The region may also have to implement high rate tolls at its borders on its major expressways, or Illinois will have to enter into revenue sharing plans with its adjacent states just the municipalities of the region would have to enter into these agreements with each other. Currently there is nothing to discourage people living in Wisconsin and Indiana from commuting to Illinois by automobile. They contribute to the pollution, congestion, and deterioration of the roads, while profiting from the employment opportunities shopping districts and the fact that they do not have to pay for the infrastructure they are using. They must be made to pay for the their use of the regionís transportation network. It is simply not fair for them to incur all the benefits and none of the expenses.
Conclusion
The region has entered a time of crisis. All the congestion and other infrastructure problems it is currently experiencing due to urban expansion has been under a condition where the population has not grown significantly in the past decade. The future will not be forgiving. The experts from all the agencies in the state agree that in the next decade the area will see a population boom by as much as 20%. If we can not manage the region now and we are approaching gridlock, what will the future hold for us in 20 years? The very economic viability of the region is at steak. If we fail to do anything now there may not be a tomorrow for us to make long term plans for.
While many of these solutions seem painful and they definitely take away much of the power of a community to regulate itself in terms of expansion, we must remember that the problem of urban expansion is a regional problem. It is not a problem that can be legislated away at a local level. It requires state participation and oversight. We have reached a point in time when the actions that individual communities take can effect surrounding communities and the region significantly. Because of this all encompassing effect all people should have a say in the organization of the region. The region can not afford to be held hostage by the special interests of a few municipalities. Land management and resource management through state agencies and regional boards is the only fair and practical way to deal with the current crisis.
Sources
CATS: Transportation Facts; Volume 10, Number 3 June 1993
CATS: Transportation Facts; Volume 10, Number 5 August 1993
CATS: Transportation Facts; Volume 10, Number 6 October 1993
CATS: Transportation Facts; Volume 10, Number 7 December 1993
CATS: Transportation Facts; Volume 11, Number 1 January 1994
NIPC: CATS & NIPC 2010 Transportation System Development Plan for Northeastern Illinois; October 1993
NIPC: NIPC Reports; March 23 1994
NIPC: Strategic Plan for Land Resource Management; June 18 1992
Henderson, Harold; ìCityscape: Who Planned This Mess?î, Reader, March 12 1993
The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Ed McDermit of the Illinois Department of Transportation, Mark Thomas of the Northern Illinois Planning Commission, and Ed Christopher of the Chicago Area Transportation Study.
Useful
Transportation Links
Northern Illinois Planning Commission
Chicago
Area Transportation Study
Federal Transportation Administration
Illinois Department of Transportation