A chance to start talking transportation
The most important thing about a recent report from a key regional planning agency is not its proposed solutions for transportation problems in the Chicago area. It's the chance to start talking seriously about the proposals.
Most of the most prominent ideas put forth by Metropolitan 2020, a business-supported planning group, have been around for years. Unfortunately, they gain traction in the public mindset only when a crisis looms - and even then, there can be complications. Crisis, to be sure, would be Illinois' middle name right now if it could have one, but the state is faced with so many imminent disasters - the budget, pensions and corruption, just for starters - that ideas Metropolitan 2020 suggests, timely though they may be, are in danger of getting lost in the din.
Which is not to say that they all should be adopted. James LaBelle, the agency's vice president, stressed to Daily Herald reporter Marni Pyke for a story this week that we need to look for solutions outside our comfort zone, and that is surely true. It doesn't make every uncomfortable idea a solid one, but it does challenge lawmakers, industry and various transportation special interests to engage in a discussion that may refine rough outlines into viable solutions. And, in the process, they may find incremental gains can come more quickly than they expect.
The notion of isolating and promoting congestion pricing on toll roads, for example, seems like one that, while not uncomplicated, could build fairly quickly from the models of other states into an effective piece of our own highway system.
Similarly, building improvements into the region's freight rail system seems to be a discussion that is long overdue. As the CN purchase of the EJ&E rail lines proved, proposed solutions can be controversial, but they can and must be addressed.
Certain other ideas may take even longer to decide. It is far from clear, for example, that it would be better to transfer control of local roadways from local townships, isolated and fraught with political insiderism as they may be, to even fatter, more opaque county government bureaucracies - especially in a vast, machine-dominated political culture like Cook's, for example.
Nor could we remotely foresee a doubling of the state's 19-cent gas tax in the near future, while Illinois families continue to struggle through the ravages of prolonged economic hardship.
But that's all the more reason such ideas need to be discussed now. Some of them may be adaptable fairly soon. Some may take many years still to be fashioned into something workable or be transformed into something entirely unforeseeable today. But it's important that Metropolitan 2020 has advanced the discussions. Now, let's see who will move them out of the realm of theory and into a practical shape the region desperately needs.