Traffic on Sheridan Road is Already a Nightmare—Where's the Traffic Study?—Ray Wohl

Chicago Tribune Letter To The Editor:

I have lived in Edgewater for nearly 30 years. I chose this neighborhood because it is a diverse, vibrant community where families, seniors, and long-time residents live side by side along Sheridan Road. It is also already one of Chicago's most-densely developed communities which can be a blessing and a curse. Now, the Fern Hill company, a still unproven developer, is proposing to replace a one-story house, a two-story synagogue, and an empty lot at Sheridan Road and Thorndale Avenue with a 600-unit apartment complex. Development itself is not the issue. The issue is whether our infrastructure can safely support it.

Sheridan Road from the end of DuSable Lake Shore Drive to Devon Avenue is already overwhelmed with approximately 100,000 cars, buses and delivery vans each day. Traffic is usually a nightmare, and gridlock prevails for many hours well beyond the usual rush hours. This means thousands of idling vehicles on Sheridan interminably belching significant air pollution into the neighborhood. The Sheridan corridor is home to roughly 10,000 residents including many nursing home residents, seniors, and families with young children. Adding potentially hundreds of additional vehicles, along with rideshare traffic, 24-hour deliveries, private garbage collection and emergency vehicles, will only further aggravate the current gridlock and seriously compromise public safety.

And yet, our local alderwoman and the City bureaucracy have still not undertaken a comprehensive traffic study to investigate addressing these environmental impacts. Why is a project of this scale being rushed through the approval process before these mandated studies have taken place? Edgewater Beach is among the most densely developed residential communities along the Great Lakes, yet Sheridan Road remains under-engineered for the demands already placed upon it. 

Our community came together 20 years ago to put in place zoning that capped new development to five-to-six-story buildings. There was a very good reason for that, yet we still have had a number of developments get constructed since then within those guidelines. Before approving any massive up-zoning, Chicago owes Edgewater a transparent, independent assessment of what this development will mean for our streets, residents and emergency services. That's why we protest.

—Raymond Wohl