"Building 53 will cause more congestion."
"It will only fill up with traffic."
These are among the most common spurious arguments against any roadbuilding.
It's true that when the need for road construction has been neglected--or
blockaded--for decades (as it has been in Lake County!), the right
road in the right place (like the 53 extension) will be used by
a significant number of motorists.
So, the argument then goes, why bother?
Imagine a school district where families have been moving in in droves,
but no new schools have been built. The existing ones have become
hopelessly overcrowded. Someone proposes building an additional school. "Bad
idea," say the opponents. "It will only fill up with students."
So
when does it make sense to build a new school or road? Only
when nobody needs it or will use it? Of course not. If, however,
too little is done too late, a new facility may only partially alleviate
the problem. That may be a sound reason to do even more, but certainly
not to justify doing nothing.
"The
53 extension will cause 'urban sprawl'"
"It will encourage development."
If
you want a short answer to these contentions, consider this: people
choose to live where they do for a large variety of reasons, most
of which can be summed up as "quality of life": good schools,
safety, affordability, proximity to work, and, of course, good transportation.
Improve any of these in an area, and you'll increase the desire
of people to live there. So does it make sense to decrease the quality
of life to discourage people from living somewhere? And who has
the right to 'discourage' anyone from doing anything in a free society?
"Development," too,
is condemned by many, but to those needing an affordable place to
live, development is often a good thing. Developers tend to build
wherever people perceive the quality of life to be high relative
to the cost. We don't think it's a tragedy that for many people,
this means western Lake County. We want to make it an even greater
place to live! If development is to be limited, this should happen
through ordinances passed by local village boards, not by making
the infrastructure so poor that the area comes to be known as undesirable.
"Public
transportation is the solution to traffic problems"
Public
transportation means, primarily, trains and buses. They can only
convey people from specific point to specific point along the route.
They can only function effectively when two conditions are met:
There is a high density of people surrounding
a stop
These people have a limited number of destinations
These conditions are best met in urban areas:
everyone is familiar with Chicago's bus and el routes. Neither,
however, is met in the area to be served by Route 53. It would be
impossible to design bus or train routes to link the wide, low-density
areas of western Lake County in any reasonable manner. Public transportation,
the darling of 'urban planners,' doesn't work here. What does is
the favored means of transportation for nearly all the residents:
the automobile.
"Money
would be better spent fixing the roads we have"
Existing
roads in need of repair, obviously, should be repaired. Extending
53 is a separate issue. Part of the reason why some existing roads
are crumbling is overuse--overuse that can be alleviated by building
much-needed additional transportation infrastructure like 53.
"The
extension is bad for the environment"
No
road can be as environmentally friendly as untouched land. If this
were the only consideration, we'd have no roads at all. A more sensible
approach is to compare the costs to the benefits. The environmental
cost of building a road in an already well-populated area is minimal,
while the benefit of providing sorely needed transporation infrastructure
is huge. Besides, there will also be a significant offseting environmental
gain: the literally thousands of tons of exhaust produced by vehicles
caught in ever-increasing traffic jams will be significantly reduced
by moving them through the area more quickly.
