Chicago Lawmakers Want Even More...

[daleduke17]

http://www.sj-r.com/news/x342402401/...pent-downstate

First off, District 1 IDOT is: Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, Will.

Six counties out of 102 get 45% of the road funds, or about 7.5% to each county. The other 96 counties get .57% each.

While, yes, Chicago has 3/4 of the population of Illinois (~8 Millon of 12 Million), more roads are downstate. I believe there should be equal distribution, but, that will not happen. I guarantee you, if this were to pass, Quinn would NOT get elected to a full term in 2010, or, it would take all six counties in District 1 to vote for him.

What Chicagoland doesn't think about, is that except for two interstates (90 and 94) you HAVE to go on roads they want to pull funding from. No way around that. Rail? They only want to do high speed from St. Louis to Chicago (and maybe to Milwaukee). So, that route gets all of the attention. Illini/Saluki and Sandburg/Zephyr get neglected as well. Where do the Chicago kids go to school via train? Macomb, Carbondale, Urbana and Charleston (compared to Normal on the Lincoln Service Line).

So, even though those six counties have more population, but less roads, should they get more money than the other counties in the state? I think not.

[Boozy]

So, even though those six counties have more population, but less roads, should they get more money than the other counties in the state? I think not.

High-volume roads do need to be repaired and replaced at a higher frequency than low-volume roads. But there's no way of knowing exactly how much money Chicago needs compared to the rest of the state. The article doesn't provide any information on this at all; it's just a bunch of quotes from politicians with axes tro grind.

I don't understand why Illinois doesn't have a state-wide transportation department that gets 100% of the money and then divvies it up according to need. That would solve much of the problem right there.

I did get a kick out of this line from the article:

Risinger also points to the state’s mass transit fund, of which about 90 percent goes to the Chicago area.

Well, duh. Chicago has almost 3 million people. The next largest city is Aurora at less than 200,000. That's one-sixteenth the size. This is mass transit. They call it that for a reason.

[daleduke17]

Actually, there is the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). The main argument is that out of all of the districts, one single district gets almost half of the money while the rest of the state gets the other half. The one single district wants more of the pie.

The part that irritates me, and it is an over-arching thing: you never hear of Wisconsin bitching about Milwaukee, Indiana about Indianapolis, or Colorado about Denver like you do Illinois about Chicago.