South Suburban Airport Push Is on Again
The state-owned site of the proposed third Chicago airdrome in Peotone, Illinois
Highways, railroads, and other infrastructure often dictate where and how urban and suburban development occurs. Countless Chicago city neighborhoods and suburban downtowns were built around rails lines, followed by waves of development designed effectually cars and highways. Today, both continue to shape regional growth.
Still, not all proposed infrastructure comes to pass. Some proposals are deemed not to be in the community'south best interest. Others are, but are batty past politics, ecology hazards, or mismanaged finances, and are eventually forgotten to history.
The impacts they would've had–marshlands turned thriving suburbs, quiet towns turned traffic bonanzas–will never fully be known. Permit's take a look at iii of the virtually impactful (good or bad) projects of the past 50 years that never saw the low-cal of day in the Chicago suburbs.
Illinois Route 53 extension
The long-proposed extension of IL 53 (and an improved east-west IL 120), deep into northern Lake Canton
A hotly contested northern extension of expressway IL 53 from Palatine to Grayslake finally got the ax in July subsequently decades of debate.
Proponents argued it would ease congestion and shorten commutes from the deep northern suburbs, while opponents pointed to major environmental concerns and an increased traffic brunt.
Unrealized impacts: The deep northern suburbs are far more congenital out now than when this extension first hitting the drawing board decades ago. Still, extending 53 easily could have pushed the new construction of many more suburban subdivisions, and accompanying congestion, into Lake County.
Metra STAR Line
Metra'south proposed STAR Line, connecting O'Hare with northwest suburbs, and then a run all the way downwards to Joliet
The obvious drawback to Metra's "hub-and-spoke" rail network is attempting to get anywhere non downtown, such as between suburbs, without having to come all the mode downtown to switch trains. The belatedly 20th century saw tremendous employment growth in the suburbs, and the Metra network we know was poorly-equipped to serve information technology.
The STAR Line, Metra's first circumferential line, would've helped. It was to use the I-90 state highway median and an existing rail corridor between O'Hare, Hoffman Estates, and Joliet, feeding existing Metra lines and linking countless suburbs to other suburbs.
Announced in 2003 and scheduled to be running by 2013, it was later cancelled every bit the cash-strapped agency struggled to make it through the recession.
Unrealized impacts: Post-recession, population growth in DuPage and Kane counties, through which STAR primarily would have run through, has become relatively stagnant. An investment such as STAR could have continued the previous growth. STAR'south road follows a scattering of the few remaining undeveloped tracts of land in the western suburbs. Mayhap this could have resulted in suburban transit-oriented evolution –but, for the first time, with the suburban employee in mind.
South Suburban Airport
A site map of the proposed Peotone airport
A tertiary Chicago aerodrome in Peotone, IL airport was beginning considered in the tardily 1960s, and has resurfaced regularly in the years since. The country has purchased much of the country that would exist used, but otherwise has not made much progress.
While information technology may seem an unlikely scenario given the investments beingness fabricated into O'Hare (namely an upcoming $8.5 billion "global final") and Midway, this proposal has been back in the news this year with a new angle: cargo. The deep s suburbs have seen explosive growth in warehousing, logistics, and eastward-commerce fulfillment centers, which could lend a Peotone airport pregnant air cargo traffic.
Unrealized impacts: Peotone is firmly beyond the reaches of the south suburbs. That might not take been the instance if information technology had been given a significant magnet for jobs and residents decades ago, which is what this drome could accept represented. O'Hare and Midway may feel like unshakeable beasts, but it's easy to forget that as recently as the tardily 70s, Midway barely had whatever commercial air service. Peotone, with expressway and planned express rail access to the city, could take dramatically shifted the southward suburban landscape.
Source: https://therealdeal.com/chicago/3-transformative-chicagoland-infrastructure-projects-that-never-came-to-be/
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