The transportation change we seek around the Obama Presidential Center

At last May's unveiling of preliminary designs for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, Barack Obama voiced support for boldly reconfiguring the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed green space to make it more people friendly. The proposal calls for converting most of Cornell Drive, a road through the park that ballooned to six lanes during the urban renewal era, to parkland between 59th and 67th Streets to connect the presidential center site to the rest of the lagoon-filled natural area. A section of Marquette Road would also be removed to unify the two halves of Jackson Park Golf Course.

Some community leaders argued that the road closures would create carmageddon for south-side commuters. But Obama noted that the plans call for building a sledding hill next to Cornell, plus plenty of new open space. He added that it's important not to get so "fixated on traffic that we lose sight of what's possible."

However, when the city of Chicago presented transportation plans for the center in August, the proposal was still fairly traffic obsessed, with relatively little attention paid to improving transit, walking, and bike access to the area as a strategy to reduce driving.

To handle expected rush hour overflow traffic from the Cornell closure (Marquette isn't a major commute route), the proposal calls for widening other nearby roads. Specifically, the city's plan calls for adding a new southbound lane to the five-lane segment of Lake Shore Drive between 57th and Hayes Drive, the southern border of the presidential center site. Parking would be stripped from Hayes to expand it from two travel lanes to four. And parkland would be gobbled up to add two lanes to Stony Island between 59th and Hayes and one lane to Stony from 63rd to 67th.

Read more: https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/obama-presidential-center-transportation-street-widening/Content?oid=40065132