A Brief History of Chicago Regional Land Use and Transportation Policy Choices                January 19, 2026

 – Are we on the right path forward?

 

Synopsis

 

Historical policy choices of accommodating market-driven autocentric land use and transportation have led to considerable losses in net welfare or overall well-being in the Chicago region that continue today. The failures are exemplified by decades of transferring the built environment from Chicago city to suburbia, overinvestment in roadway infrastructure, underperforming public transportation, excessive inner city crime, stress to household budgets, and unnecessary government debt. There are several ways the State of Illinois could alleviate these problems. They consist of regional land use decision authority, robust/transparent social benefit-cost analysis, incentives directing population and employment to Chicago city, and downsizing inner urban expressways and arterials. The dilemma is exemplified currently by the proposed move of the Chicago Bears to Arlington Heights which, if encouraged by the State, would continue the trend of suboptimal development. 

 

Details

 

For decades, the Chicago metropolitan area and Chicago city, in concert with the State of Illinois, created various plans for the regional surface transportation sector to address problems of travel costs, safety, congestion, emissions, noise, equity, and climate change among others. Proposed and/or implemented solutions included better transit-supportive land uses, electric vehicle transitioning, travel demand management, and expansion/preservation of expressways and arterials. Success has been limited by policy choices over the last Century that, in hindsight, have led to concerning land use and transportation strategies in more recent years.

 

A 1939 Comprehensive Superhighway Plan for the City of Chicago documents $400 million ($9.3 billion 2020 $) in city street improvements over the previous 25 years resulting in “intolerable congestion” while “widened surface streets showed the worst accident records.” The plan called for a grade-separated expressway network due to projected area revitalization, travel time savings, and reductions in accidents while portending that “traffic congestion will be eliminated throughout the entire urban area.” Also from the plan:  “It is recognized that the building of these new facilities will induce additional travel.”

 

During the 1950’s, after the city (and regional) superhighway plan implementation began, the State of Illinois created the Northeastern Illinois Regional Planning Commission (NIPC) and the Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS). The purpose was to facilitate coordinated growth and development of the region with focus on land use and transportation, respectively. A NIPC and CATS joint effort was the 1968 comprehensive plan, which was the result of purported regional consensus on the preferred form of regional land uses. This “finger plan” focused on development along rail lines with connecting bus networks, to maximize infrastructure efficiencies and protect the environment while minimizing transport costs and auto dependency. Similar policies were in subsequent NIPC plans. However, implementation did not occur as they were not binding and did not in any way usurp local land use control. Thus, a de facto choice was the “trends alternative” with each local authority planning according to their own desires and implementing auto-oriented land uses with less than optimal consideration given to regional impacts.

 

Results of these collective decisions has been a reduction in Chicago city population and developed land of about 25% since 1950, and a 140% increase in the urbanized area to accommodate a 40% population rise since 1960. The ratio of Chicago city/six-county northeast Illinois and Lake County, Indiana (seven-county region) population and employment both dropped from about two-thirds in 1950 to one-third today. The proportion of manufacturing jobs in Chicago city dropped from about 75% in 1958 to 17% today; an example of the perpetual jobs-housing imbalance. Since construction of the region’s expressway system, traffic congestion has consistently ranked near the top internationally.

 

Chicago seven-county regional per capita vehicle miles traveled has more than tripled since 1960 and average household expenditures dedicated to transportation have more than doubled since 1935. CTA linked trips were about 1 billion in 1948 (or 1.15 billion unlinked assuming 15% including transfers). CTA unlinked trips were about 456 million in 2019 and 309 million in 2024, a 73% drop. According to Census journey to work data, the percentage of workers in the seven-county region using public transportation dropped from 32% in 1960 to 13% in 2019 and 10% in 2024. Continuation of Chicago regional land use trends from 2020-2060 would urbanize about another 50% in land to accommodate a population increase of 25%, mostly in suburban and exurban areas. The literature is rife with evidence further explaining the costs of these policy choices and what can be done to alleviate them.

 

For example, a recent study in the Journal of the American Planning Association found that the nation’s major urban arterials and expressways are overbuilt. The authors estimated net benefits of about $28 billion per year from a 10% reduction in urban roadway capacities due to the higher benefits of more productive land uses. One of the authors, in the recent book publication, Overbuilt, estimates that new urban highway capacity equates to social costs exceeding social benefits by at least a factor of four.

 

In a published 2021 retrospective analysis of the Chicago city expressway system, I compared the welfare gains against a hypothetical alternative excluding construction. The modeled scenario included optimal travel pricing to account for the social costs (negative externalities) of personal vehicle travel (e.g., accidents, congestion, pollution, health, etc.) and implementation of regional land use policies similar to the NIPC “finger plan.” The alternative would have provided net benefit gains by a factor of three over the chosen scenario and economic welfare/efficiency gains of up to $3 billion (2020 $) annually for 50 years from 1947-1996. Travel time savings and accident reductions from the expressway system were not worth the costs. A far greater number of crashes and vehicle costs could have been avoided by reducing the need to travel by 20% and realizing the efficiencies of public transportation. The findings are conservative as they did not take into account the costs of Chicago city violent crime which tracked upward with city and regional dedensification and rising personal vehicle usage consistent with the literature.

 

Recent research at the University of California Institute of Transportation Studies demonstrated that road capacity is the primary determinant of personal vehicular travel volume. Further, any drivers opting to use transit lines paralleling urban expressways or replicating their routes   induces new drivers and does not relieve congestion or collective travel costs. The region now plans to:  rebuild DuSable Lake Shore Drive ($3.5 billion); Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) and CTA Blue Line Forest Park Branch ($6.4+ billion combined); expand the Red Line ($5.75 billion)[1]; facilitate construction of a new Bears Stadium and mixed use development in Arlington Heights; and rehabilitate/expand other Chicago city limited access highways.

 

These plans replicate and exacerbate historical welfare or economic efficiency losses, particularly in Chicago city, due to excessive transportation infrastructure/personal vehicle travel and questionable land use decisions. To address this problem, the State of Illinois may want to establish regional land use authority and require robust and transparent project social benefit-cost analyses (SBCA) accounting for all negative externalities. This is as opposed to cost-effectiveness and economic impact analyses which focus on enumerating benefits without determining net welfare gains or losses. Implementation could be further ensured via government incentives to direct development inward, including road mileage fees in lieu of or in concert with conventional gas taxes offset by reductions in other taxes.

 

What does this mean for the aforementioned pending projects under such policies considering the regions excessive roadway capacity/travel and underused public transportation? Conduct SBCA’s and it may be very likely that the optimal choices are:  remove I-290 in Chicago city, convert the Blue Line Forest Park Branch to a subway, backfill the trench and reestablish the street grid; convert DuSable Lake Shore Drive to exclusive gold standard bus rapid transit (BRT); cancel the Red Line Extension and enhance existing parallel service.

 

As for the new Bears stadium, consensus from the array of literature on new sports facilities is that they transfer economic activity from old to new locations without substantive/net benefits. The Bears July 2025 Economic & Fiscal Impact Report outlines economic benefits to the wider region and Chicago city mainly due to events captured from other regions. However, it is a case in point that the region is on the cusp of once again not selecting the optimal solution. The reason being that the opportunity costs or tradeoffs of not choosing a site in Chicago city are much greater. Such forgone net benefits are from the general efficiencies and attractiveness traditional cities provide by bringing population, employment, and amenities together. Further, a Chicago city setting would revitalize vacant land and multiple transit lines, lower jobs-housing imbalances, retain the viability of existing businesses, and reduce inner city crime.

 

[1] The original Red Line from downtown to 95th Street inefficiently duplicated the Green Line South Side Elevated to 63rd Street. Similarly, the Red Line Extension would parallel two nearby transit rail lines.