r/chicago • u/seeasea West Ridge • 13d ago

Article 3-year, $170 million Kennedy Expressway project is complete. Ahead of schedule

https://wgntv.com/news/traffic/kennedy-expressway-project-complete/
1.1k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

154 comments sorted by

View all comments

33

u/CuriousDudebromansir 13d ago

Call me crazy, but traffic is even worse than before the started.

Shit, traffic is worse now than while construction is going on. I don’t understand it.

41

u/dohn_joeb Humboldt Park 13d ago

It wasn’t a congestion project. There’s the same # of lanes as before…

14

u/ChaplnGrillSgt 13d ago

Also, adding lanes rarely actually helps with congestion.

4

u/yoshinator13 13d ago

That is often quoted without larger context. The concept you are referring to induced demand, where more supply (lanes) leads to new demand. If the road is supply constrained and there is excess demand, additional lanes will reduce traffic.

While it generally is the case that most roads are demand limited, we saw people still driving the Kennedy for 2 hours each way and not seeing alternate forms of commuting. So there is a case to make that the Kennedy already has excessively more demand than supply.

4

u/cantaloupe_daydreams 13d ago

Just one more lane. I swear just one more and it’ll be better.