Bears would create traffic nightmare at Arlington

We lived across the street from Arlington Park Race Track for over 10 years, and we could walk to the races. After we moved to Naperville and visited the track, it was fairly easy to get in except for Million Day.

The capacity of the park is 35,000, but it rarely, if ever, reached that size. A new Bears stadium would likely seat twice that or more.

Sunday will be a huge traffic problem with three to four times more cars than the busiest Arlington Park racing day, what with fans driving from the Western, Northern, Southern suburbs plus any Northwest Indiana and Southern Wisconsin traffic. Chicagoland traffic is built to funnel cars into and out of Chicago like spokes of a wheel. It's not built to converge on a point in the Northwest suburbs. Routh 53 will need to widened along with its exit ramps to handle more traffic.

Today, fans can take public transportation (trains, buses) to Chicago and Soldier Field because Chicago was geared for just that - moving large numbers of commuters into the city and back again.

Arlington Park is serviced by a single train line (Harvard to Union Station). How are people going to take the train if they are not close to that particular train line? Take one train into Chicago and another to Arlington? Park downtown and take the train out? That's expensive and bothersome. Getting to Arlington Park could be akin to getting to Wrigley Field, except with twice as many people or more.

Let's not even talk about Monday night football or Thursday night football, because you'd have the regular Sunday fans battling the rush-hour traffic. I can't think of a worse scenario.

Dave Volkman

Naperville