No Favors, Please

With its 14 lanes the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago rivals the very worst highways in America, as does its north-side extension the Kennedy Expressway. If you want to drive any distance north or south in Chicago — say, to an airport — odds are you'll be on one of those two roads. Along with most commuters, at all hours. It's possible, indeed, for all 14 lanes to be jammed to a standstill; not so uncommon for them all to be at a crawl. In the almost twenty years since I lived there things could only have gotten worse. Why, then, would any sane Chicagoan wish for the Olympics? Additional construction and congestion would blow the city apart at the seams. It would become absolutely impossible to travel around except on the trains, and passengers would be packed like sardines. Such misery, just to benefit a few building contractors? And yet a majority of Chicagoans seem to favor the city's Olympic bid. Be careful what you wish for...