The Opportunities
With total connectivity built into its hub airport, Chicago will anchor itself as the center of North American commerce for generations to come. No other metropolitan area on the continent will be so easy to reach–or so easy to get around.
1) The Chicago Department of Aviation should publicly identify the location of a multi-modal center in its plans and protect the needed land and facilities.
2) DuPage County should include a multi-modal center in the transportation plan.
3) The Illinois Legislature should identify a single agency responsible for coordinating transportation facilities near O'Hare airport.
Here’s what total connectivity at O’Hare will mean for Chicagoans, suburbanites and visitors:
No more tedious drives or cramped feeder flights to reach O’Hare from Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana or Downstate Illinois. Fast, frequent, comfortable, all-weather passenger trains will take travelers directly into the airline terminal.
More wide-body long-distance flights to more places — 40 per cent of O’Hare’s flights are feeder trips made by small aircraft serving destinations only 200-300 miles away. Trains can replace many of these feeder flights, opening up precious landing slots, ramp space and departure gates to high-productivity planes that make efficient use of airport resources.
Fast and convenient connections from O’Hare to the suburbs — A multi-modal Terminal 7 served by Metra trains will give travelers quick access to key suburban destinations without the need to fight congested expressways.
Suburb-to-suburb commuting — With Metra trains and Pace buses converging at Terminal 7, north, west and south suburbanites will enjoy convenient transit access to the other suburbs. Car-free suburb-to-suburb travel will at last become a reality.
Stronger real-estate development — Hotels, office complexes, shopping malls, distribution centers and restaurants thrive on mobility. A multi-modal transit complex at O’Hare’s new Terminal 7 will ignite more growth than airplanes alone.
Less traffic congestion — O’Hare International Airport is the second largest trip generator in the Midwest, outpaced only by downtown Chicago. Expressway and Tollway backups around O’Hare are legendary and they’ll only get worse unless more of O’Hare’s users leave their cars at home.
Stronger tax base — Using transit to open up the west side of O’Hare to development means cities and counties can use improved property-tax revenues from growing businesses to take tax pressure off of homeowners. And when more people travel to the airport by train, huge tracts of land devoted to parking lots can be converted to tax-paying commercial development.
 Trains, buses and planes will be seamlessly linked at the proposed Gary/Chicago International Airport intermodal terminal. The City of Chicago should design a similar facility at O’Hare. (Image courtesy of Gary/Chicago International airport and Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates Inc.) |