Fixing Chicago's Traffic Gridlock: Reason's Adrian Moore and Sam Staley

Earlier this year, Reason Foundation's Adrian Moore and Sam Staley released a full length-study, Reducing Traffic Congestion and Increasing Mobility in Chicago as part of The Galvin Mobility Project. The study outlined a market-based plan to improve Chicago's traffic woes. Through a combination of user fees, innovative financing, and state-of-the-art electronic tolling, the pair found Chicagoans could greatly reduce the hours they currently spend in traffic without raising taxes.

Moore and Staley presented their finding during a July 19, 2012 forum at The Union League Club of Chicago.

30 minutes. Edited by Joshua Swain.

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• Category

  News & Politics

[nanochase]

Couldn't you just end zoning laws which artificially restrict where you can have businesses and offices. So the metropolitan area would expand into nearby residential neighborhoods significantly increasing their property value. Freedom not taxtion solves our problems again.

[igottogether]

this is relevant to my interests

[siweltnek]

These speakers take too long to get to their destinations. :)

[Tony Bruce]

Impressive group of apparatchiks,opps planners, uh bureaucrats, I mean "experts" Hers a crazy idea...

Get government out of the terrible mess they've made of roadways. Sell all public roads to private companies who would have to compete for your business by providing quality, safe, fast, non-congested roadways. The companies that deliver the goods will do well, the others - not so much. Of course all these guys would be out of work, no plan is perfect.

How's that as a "Transportation Model"?

[5tevef]

Anyone decent probably already has.

[5tevef]

But zoning is how the govt controls property rights. Building costs didn't start climbing until zoning occurred. There are benefits to zoning as industrial businesses usually drop housing prices when they move into the neighborhood. I totally agree with you but it can't happen without forcing out the govt ideas of control.

[HorseWaterDrink]

why anyone lives in Illinois. I would be running the hell out of of there

[thopkins22]

Zoning isn't the most egregious example of bad government...certainly.

There are awesome neighborhoods burgeoning all over the city as people move back in from the suburbs...people who could not have afforded the established neighborhoods in the city.

My girlfriend lives in a neighborhood that is growing at a furious pace, a block away is a metal fabricator, and in the other direction you'll find a bread factory.

Eventually the property value will send them out of the neighborhood.

[savageecho]

"Freedom isn't perfect, but preferable to the alt." Zoning laws aren't perfect either but in some cases they do protect property rights and values. I'm not for strict, black and white laws in many cases but it is just as much of a mistake to think that all zoning laws are bad as it is to say no zoning laws are a good thing.

[thopkins22]

I live six blocks away. It will increase traffic, of that there is no doubt. There isn't really widespread anger regarding the project...it's really just a civic club which happens to have enough money to make a stink.

If they really want to stop it, they should create a 501c3 so that people can get the tax deductions, and then purchase the property to give to the city as a park. They've already spent enough money to do this.

Freedom isn't perfect, but preferable to the alt.

[savageecho]

I wonder if the people surrounding the future Ashby High Rise area feel like you do. Or if you would feel the same if you lived there. Its funny how all the "let the market decide" people and never the ones impacted negatively.