The idea of the fly-over was to funnel some traffic onto a runway to 28th and allow Lake St. to have the shoppers. It was also supposed to pull a lot of truck traffic off 31st St. that had no business being there.
Until we get some kind of razzmatazz at Lake and Chicago it's going to be tough to make this particular area a destination. What we have now is a specialty area whose customers will come so long as they cohere as a subset and our problems are held enough at bay so as not to freak them out.
I know for darn sure that horsing around with who hired who and where their allegiances can be assumed to lie is a colossal waste of time. And mean too.
Thanks for supplying the date, John, I'm not very good with remembering dates.
WizardMarks, Central
John Rocker wrote:
As one of the consultants to the Lake Street Partners in 1996, I agree
with Wizard that direct access to Lake Street from 35W has the potential
to help revitalization by improving accessibility and creating more
drive-by traffic for businesses. However, the devil is in the details.
The proposed fly-over would redirect a lot of those potential customers
and residents away from Lake Street and -- depending on the ultimate
design and number of new lanes on Lake -- the sense of place at 4th (and
at Nicollet) could easily be diminished rather than enhanced.
Another consultant to Lake Street Partners was Walter Kulash, a traffic
engineer who "has specialized in the rapidly emerging field of livable
traffic design. This view of traffic engineering recognizes that the
narrow traffic planning goals of the past few decades -- moving the most
traffic at the greatest possible speed -- are giving way to a far more
inclusive view. In the new view of traffic engineering, traffic
performance is balanced against other desired qualities of the street,
such as its value as an 'address', its retail friendliness, and its role
as a premiere public space of the community."
So, what are the chances of re-engineering this project to eliminate the
fly-over, maintain a more livable scale, and still provide access to
Lake?
John Rocker
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