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Permalink Reply by Chitown_Mike on August 3, 2014 at 2:19pm

I live on the NW side of Chicago and commute to the NW burbs (Morton Grove).  Driving and riding are about the same mileage wise (4.25 miles).  I ride some of my route on Milwaukee and either (depending on which bike I ride) will take Milwaukee or use the North Branch trail as a cut through.

Drive time in light traffic 18-20 minutes, 15 if VERY light.  Normal traffic - 20-25 minutes.

Winter time without snow 20-25, winter with any sort of snow, 30-45 minutes.

Coming home was always double that.

 

Riding - 15 minutes total time (including stopping at lights) if I am going for a time trail record (I like to push myself in the morning).  18 minutes just about any other day.  Coming home the time had no change at all.

So glad that one car decided to give up the ghost a couple of months back, winter might take a little longer but I'd rather come home faster than deal with the crazies in traffic any more.

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Permalink Reply by Simon Phearson on August 3, 2014 at 3:12pm

This resonates with my experience, as well. Basically the only way I can drive faster to work than I can bike is if I leave before 6:30 or so in the morning. After that, I'm hitting traffic on the LSD and multiple lights, which drags the average speed way down. (Whenever I'm driving, I wish I could tell the other LSD-ers that going 60+ mph isn't exactly helping, but oh well...)

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Quist on August 4, 2014 at 5:09am

I rode to my previous office a half dozen times last year. 21 miles each way, about 4 miles of it no bike lanes, minimal shoulder and occasionally hostile traffic. Typically 1:20 to 1:40 vs. :45 by car.
A coworker living near me rode it every day, and cautioned me when weighing the options to include the time I would spend changing, working out and showering in the company fitness center. It became pretty much break even.

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Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on August 4, 2014 at 5:28am

Timely conversation with this Trib article by Jon Hilkevitch about the difficulty getting to the burbs employment hubs without a car.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-transit-deserts-me...

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Permalink Reply by Gecko on August 4, 2014 at 6:02am

text for those of us who don't have Trib accounts:

'Transit deserts' don't serve workers, study says

1 in 10 Cook County residents live in 'transit deserts,' say groups pushing for new transit options.

Transit desert remedies: Connect Blue and Brown lines, link up the airports, extend the L into many suburbs.

About 1 out of every 10 people in Cook County, roughly 438,500 residents, live in "transit deserts'' that are cut off from fast, frequent train and bus service, according to a new analysis that for the first time identifies dozens of Chicago-area mass transit dead zones and maps them in relation to major job clusters.

The study, conducted by the Chicago-based urban research group the Center for Neighborhood Technology using census and other data, found that four of the Chicago region's five big employment areas are in suburbs that are not well-connected to high-quality transit, making them difficult to reach without a vehicle. Those four job centers make up the northwest corridor past O'Hare International Airport, Lombard, Naperville and Oak Brook.

As a result, many low-income individuals are spending hundreds of dollars each month on car ownership in order to travel to entry-level jobs, the study's authors said.

While commuters heading downtown, especially those who live near CTA or Metra rail lines, still are relatively well off using public transit, in spite of delays sparked by frequent train breakdowns and track slow zones, widening service gaps have emerged on the fringes of the bustling corridors to the Loop, concluded the study, which was obtained by the Tribune before its public release this week http://transitfuture.org/2014/07/10/transitdeserts/

The study, key findings of which are disputed by the CTA, defined a transit desert as an area that has a high demand for transit but that is more than a half-mile from a rail stop, or at least one quarter of a mile from some form of express bus service or at least a bus route that offers service every 15 minutes or less. The study also points out areas that fall short of its transit-desert definition but are still critically underserved.

"We claim that we have a world-class transit system, but do we really? We really don't when you look at our hub-and-spoke system and all of the gaps that are between the spokes,'' said Jacky Grimshaw, a transportation expert who is vice president for policy at the Center for Neighborhood Technology. Grimshaw is also a member of the CTA board.

She said many people who rely on transit are spending excessive amounts of time getting to low-paying jobs. Only about one-fourth of all the jobs in the six-county area are accessible by transit trips that take less than 1-1/2 hours each way, the study found.

Roughly 90 minutes each way is how long it takes Erin McMillan to get to work each day — and longer if service is slow, he said. McMillan rides a bus to a train to another train and finally to another bus on his daily commute from Hyde Park to Little Village, where he works as a youth counselor at SGA Youth & Family Services.

McMillan, 32, said the techniques he teaches his clients to cope with stress and control anger are also useful to him as he navigates on foot and on the CTA No. 55 Garfield bus to the Green Line, which he boards at Garfield and rides downtown and transfers to the Pink Line, exiting at Pulaski, where he waits for the No. 53 Pulaski bus to take him near his office.

The daily commute to his old job took even more time, he said, adding that more express bus routes are needed.

"It gets really annoying waiting for up to 30 or 40 minutes and then three of the same buses come along at the same time," McMillan said.

The transit-deserts study coincides with efforts by officials at the Center for Neighborhood Technology and elsewhere to invest more than $20 billion over the long term on more than 15 major projects to expand CTA rail lines and introduce faster bus service across the CTA service area, which covers Chicago and almost 40 suburbs.

Advocates in that campaign, called Transit Future, acknowledged that $20 billion is a lot of money. They pointed out, however, that in 2008 Los Angeles residents approved a referendum proposal to increase the sales tax by one-half penny to raise $40 billion for new transit lines.

The new reality is that local governments need to generate more money to leverage a static or shrinking amount of available federal funding, said Ron Burke, executive director of the Active Transportation Alliance, an automobile-alternative advocacy group that is promoting Transit Future.

"Up to this point, I think transit leaders in the Chicago area have come up short in effectively funding and maintaining the transit system. We are overdue for a revamp,'' Burke said. "Our vision here is to raise enough local money so we can match federal grant money."

Transit Future's array of proposals include some that are new and other previously considered by transit agencies. They include a bus that would connect Midway Airport and O'Hare and a Brown Line extension that would link up with the Blue Line heading toward O'Hare.

Cook County, which the groups behind the study say should lead the charge in expanding Chicago-area service, welcomes the conversation about improving mass transit, County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said Friday.

But Preckwinkle said "it is premature to commit to any specific revenue source in support of these improvements.'' The county's long-range transportation plan, which is being developed with a focus on transportation's role in spurring economic growth, will "tackle some of these same issues,'' she said.

The transit-deserts study found service lacking in areas with high rates of poverty on the south and southwest edges of Cook County, as well as in sections of some middle-income and affluent suburbs north and northwest of Chicago.

Community leaders on Chicago's Far South Side have for decades advocated on behalf of a roughly 5-1/2-mile extension of the Dan Ryan branch of the CTA Red Line to bring rapid transit to the city's southern border. Yet Roseland, West Pullman and other predominantly African-American neighborhoods through which the extension would run represent only a sliver of the locations on the study's transit-desert map.

Poor or uneven access to good transit also affects, for example, areas of Blue Island, Harvey, Chicago Heights and Oak Lawn and pockets northwest of downtown Chicago, near Armitage Avenue, the study said.

By the standard of inadequately connected areas qualifying as transit deserts, the study identified large portions of Berkeley and La Grange in western Cook County; portions of Lincolnwood, Skokie and Niles in the north suburbs; and areas of Des Plaines, Hanover Park, Mount Prospect, Arlington Heights and Palatine in the northwest suburbs as transit deserts because of pockets where it is difficult to access frequent Metra and CTA train service and CTA and Pace bus service, despite rich transit offerings elsewhere in the general area.

Jeanne Rattenbury said she has always commuted to work by taking public transit or riding a bicycle. But the resident of Chicago's Ukrainian Village gave up on using transit about a week after her employer consolidated its corporate offices last year. Her daily commute on the CTA and Pace to Park Ridge, which she spent reading and walking, was replaced by a more than 20-mile drive to a part of Downers Grove that is near I-88 and Highland Parkway, more than 2 miles from Metra's Burlington Northern Santa Fe line.

"There are few Metra express trains serving reverse-commuters, and it's too hard to get to and from the Metra station in Downers Grove using Pace,'' said Rattenbury, 53, who works for a health care company. "Some of the buses do a detour; some don't."

She said she would be willing to trade her 50- to- 60-minute drive for the hour-and-a-half it took her to get to work in DuPage County on transit in the mornings, "because it included walking time and reading time.'' But she doesn't always work 9-to-5, and the transit schedule home offers no flexibility. If she misses a bus or a train, it's at least an hourlong wait for the next one, she said.

"My office is in the desert,'' she said. "An extension of the Blue Line to Oak Brook or farther out would be wonderful. I have gone my entire life without owning a car — until now.''

The transit-deserts study follows up on a report issued this year by the Northeastern Illinois Transit Task Force that concluded the Chicago area's mass transit agencies are doing a poor job of serving the commuting needs of the region.

CTA officials, who reviewed the new study, said that more than 96 percent of the city of Chicago is not in what the study defined as a transit desert. In addition, the service levels that the study outlined to avoid the classification of a transit desert are "standards that any transit agency in the U.S. would be unable to meet'' on a 24-hour, systemwide basis, CTA spokesman Brian Steele said.

Officials said that if more funding were made available, the CTA would provide more service immediately to fill gaps.

CTA spokeswoman Tammy Chase said, "We agree with the study that you need to have a robust variety of transportation for the region, and also that additional funding is needed.''

A key assertion of the study was that transit deserts have created a de facto roadblock that keeps many job-seekers away from or unattractive to prospective employers.

The disconnect between certain populations and reliable, nearby transit service didn't happen overnight, the study noted. It has been a steady shift prompted by the movement of many jobs away from the central business district, in tandem with poorly coordinated land-use decisions that have caused waves of migration to the suburbs. Currently, more than 161,000 Cook County households are in transit deserts, the study said.

"I haven't owned a car for more than a year, and let me tell you it's frustrating relying on the Pace buses to look for work,'' said Mike Numerowski, who to facilitate being closer to a previous job moved from the transit-abundant Jefferson Park area of Chicago to an apartment on a stretch of River Road near Irving Park Road in Schiller Park surrounded by forest preserves. "The buses are on time, but too often they don't go where I need to go and I wouldn't feel safe walking through the woods at night or in the winter.''

Numerowski, 52, a former screener with the Transportation Security Administration at O'Hare Airport, is receiving help finding a job from career advisers at Business and Career Services Inc. in Arlington Heights.

He said he has had numerous job interviews to work as a security guard. He said the interviews all started out well, including one recently at a company in an area of Des Plaines that is on the study's transit-desert map, until the prospective boss found out that Numerowski doesn't have a car.

"He said I couldn't get close enough by transit,'' Numerowski said.

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Permalink Reply by Chitown_Mike on August 4, 2014 at 8:20am

As a result, many low-income individuals are spending hundreds of dollars each month on car ownership in order to travel to entry-level jobs, the study's authors said.

I have a specialized job where I do tech support and sales and my wife and I don't have enough "free" money to properly own and maintain 2 cars which is why I cyclommute now.  Sheesh, I couldn't imagine try to do it on entry pay....cars are super expensive and more so in Chicago.

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