In a little while, if the village board and the OPEDC have their way, thousands of cars and trucks will be searching for a new commuter route through south Oak Park. The village board, the OPEDC, and an unnamed developer want to trim down Madison Street from four lanes to two lanes and erect a shopping center in the middle of the road near Euclid. They are calling this the Madison Street Road Diet.
Unfortunately, this is not a road diet. It is co-opting an interesting idea and hijacking the hard work of scores of Oak Parkers.
The purpose of the Madison project is to revive a moribund business district. For years Madison has had a hard time attracting upscale merchants who would contribute to Oak Park’s neighborhoods and coffers. In recent years the new businesses opening have been a dollar store, fast food restaurants and beauty shops.
The problems with Madison, according to the public stance of the OPEDC and the current board, are unsafe traffic conditions and no sense of community. But the real problem with Madison and merchants, as any savvy retailer can tell you, isn’t the amount of traffic but the demographics of the traffic — the buying power of the drivers and passengers in those cars and trucks.
In a 2012 village board meeting, a representative of KLOA, a traffic engineering firm that conducted traffic studies on Madison, said 30 percent of the traffic is commuter traffic, traffic that would otherwise be taking the Eisenhower if it could. He went on to say, “We hope some of that traffic will find alternate routes.”
What is now being proposed is a re-routing of that commuter traffic, much of which originates in the West Side of Chicago, Forest Park, Maywood, Elmwood Park and points west, to residential neighborhoods. In other words the board intends to cripple a well-functioning arterial road and permanently displace traffic into family neighborhoods to increase the prospects of future businesses.
Years of planning and thought went into the diet: Traffic studies were done, designs were drawn up, input was had from local businesses and residents. A weighing of pros and cons was conducted. However, someone forgot to plug the displaced traffic into the equation. A lot of well-meaning people sat on the various commissions and boards that helped shape the project. I don’t for a minute believe they would have agreed to the plan if they knew it would result in diminished quality of life for the thousands of residents who will have to deal with the overflow traffic.
This is a bad idea.
Michael O’Malley is a resident of Oak Park.