Well, there’s the matter of my time… I’m supposed to truthfully report my time en route to my employer, who then pays me straight time for it (I guess transporting myself to the location is a job requirement or duty) so either I find a way to justify going out of my way in such a manner or … well, lie which I’m not particularly good at.
It’s not impossible to do this - one of my fellow employees convinced the employer to pay for his and his vehicle’s ferry crossing from Muskegon to Milwaukee which wasn’t at all cheap, as an example of “non traditional highway” transport.
Understood but if a highway is a known quagmire of traffic jams then the road less traveled becomes the faster route. Ever since I started riding a motorcycle I’ve found all kinds of back roads that are well paved and little traveled. And there’s no law that says you have to be truthful about your time. If you truly hate traffic then calculate the normal time en-route and turn that in.
I think if you look at where the two cities are on a map, the problem will become clear. It’s pretty much one continuous urban area. The alternative to congested highways are congested surface streets. To get to the sorts of rural secondary routes you’re imagining, she’d have to go really far west and still have to fight city traffic getting to and from them.
It really is one of the worst car trips I could imagine. At least outside of California.
You said in your OP that you’d already driven up once, so explaining how the tolls work didn’t seem necessary. Plus, there are signs as you approach the toll directing cash payment to the right and signs after telling you what to do if you missed the toll. Not rocket surgery.
I only drive to Chicago a couple times a year but I have an I-Pass, so you can count me as an infrequent tollway driver. The savings and convenience make it worth it to me. You also mentioned that you’ll be opening a store in Milwaukee. To me, an additional two+ round trips would make it worth it, not factoring in your whiny essay of mostly irrelevant complaints.
Yeah - “stay right pay toll in one mile” only works in light traffic. In more typical bumper-to-bumper traffic not so much. Also, as I pointed out, the stretch I drove was a MINIMUM of FOUR LANES WIDE, and in some places 8 (maybe more - I didn’t feel a need to count each and every one while avoiding homicidal maniacs).
For an example of an actual part of the roadway I traveled, here is one 5 lanes wide. Note, too, the contradiction between “go to Milwaukee” and “stay right to pay cash toll” implied by this sign. For someone unfamiliar with the roadway this poses a conundrum. Also, WTF are you supposed to do if you want to exit there and don’t have an I-Pass? Yes, yes, NOW I know you pay it on line but if you didn’t know that ahead of time, and you’re in heavy traffic, and you want to exit there… not user-friendly.
For more Chicago-area roadway fun, here’s the notorious “sphagetti junction”. Go ahead, count the lanes involved. Even without tollbooths involved that’s not a lot of fun.
So I don’t know where, exactly, your two-lane examples came from, but that’s not the part of the tollway I was driving. I don’t doubt those examples are part of the tollway, but the mere fact it’s called The Tri-State Tollway should lead you to the conclusion it’s a pretty extensive network of roads and some, yes, are normal two-land highways with sane traffic. I just didn’t happen to be driving in that part of it.
You might acknowledge that I suggested an alternative specifically to bypass Chicago as you asked, except maybe for a time factor – I dunno, I didn’t actually map it and compare mileage.
Actually, I did - about 100 additional miles door to door, at least four hours drive time. No tolls. I didn’t want to comment until I had checked it out.
Since my drive twice exceeded 4 hours anyway the alternative is starting to look more and more attractive. I will certainly consider it if I have to return to the area.
Oh, wanted to address this one, too - yes, parking is free at the East Chicago South Shore lot although I’m not sure I’d want to leave my car there for a week… but my spouse will drop me off there, he has in the past.
You can get off the South Shore at either Jackson Park or Millenium Park, either one will do. On a nice day I find the walk to Union Station pleasant, but there are buses that connect the two. Or, yes, the El but I’ve found the bus lines to be a bit more direct. Or you could take a taxi, a tad more expensive but the service is more door-to-door and more convenient if you’re carrying more than one piece of luggage. I’ve done that routine many times, I’ve been riding Amtrak to various cities for nearly three decades now.
But yeah, then you’d need a rental car in Milwaukee. Haven’t done that, but I suppose I could figure it out if I had to do so - then the question becomes whether or not my employer would reimburse me for it.
Damn, Brian. You’ve got bigger balls than I do. I learned my lesson innocuously enough earlier this year in the Gardening Thread (all rights reserved, but not to me).
Nah, it works in all sorts of traffic. Hence my saying that you might get snagged once if you don’t know what you’re doing. After that, if you’re zipping around obliviously in the left lanes a mile from the toll and can’t get over, that’s your own fault.
I don’t know what random shots of the tollway system are supposed to prove. There’s no tolls as the circle interchange nor at the portion of the Kennedy you show. It’s not as though the tolls sneak up on you; there’s signs warning about them miles in advance.
Have you ever driven that road? Sure, you’ll learn after a missed toll or two that sometimes a mile isn’t enough time/room to get all the way over in time, but that’s after you make the mistake a few times. Which is my point. This is not a user-friendly road. If you have never driven it, or drive it only once a decade or two, you may not know that.
The other examples given were two lane portions of the tollway with little traffic. THE POINT is that I was not driving in those locations, I was driving in other locations under much different conditions. My examples were not “random locations”, the ones I showed near O’Hare are the actual locations I drove. The others are to demonstrate the complexity and unusual traffic density of Chicago highways. Are you really having that much trouble understanding the difference between light traffic on two lanes and heavy traffic on 4 to 8 lanes?
Yes. There isn’t a major road anywhere in the metro area I haven’t driven on. It’s not that hard.
The examples I posted were to show that there are, in fact, signs saying exactly where the cash tolls will be located, as you complained that no such signs existed. They were not intended to be traffic reports. The tolls are clearly marked and if you can’t follow clearly marked signs then I agree that you have no business being on the toll roads. In any event, I don’t think the problem here is “trolls” not letting you careen across five lanes of traffic because you just realized that maybe the far left lane wasn’t the place to be.
“Actual locations” that don’t have tolls. Who cares how easy it is to change lanes on the circle interchange to pay a toll or if there’s reversible lanes if there is no toll anywhere near there? As I said, there’s signs warning you miles off that a toll will be ahead. If you can’t get over with that sort of notice, I don’t know what to tell you.
No, I specified it would be useful to have such signs AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TOLLWAY, where you enter it, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with said tollway. But hey, if you want to argue…
I guess you totally missed the several times where I pointed out that I did, indeed, deal with the requirements and managed to pay my tolls while en route. Are you always such a selective reader?
Where did I claim to “careen” across all lanes of traffic? Foolish, inexperienced me - I thought remaining in the second-to-right lane would be fine, avoiding and allowing more space for those getting on and off the tollway. Silly me, trying to be polite!
If you’re not familiar with the road those “toll in 1 mile” signs come up quick. At 70 mph - a common speed even if not the posted speed - you have less than a minute to get your butt over to the proper lane and pay your toll. This does, of course, account for the elaborate weaving and dancing at each and every toll booth that I observed.
It’s not user-friendly and not even particularly safe. Why are all those I-Pass users loitering in the far-right lane anyway?
Gosh, you are really focused on that.
That wasn’t to demonstrate tolls, that was to show that the road was, indeed, wider than two lanes, the signage is complex and to the uninitiated possibly misleading if you’re having to read it in glimpses while dealing with traffic and unfamiliar routes.
Someone who has never experienced a road of that complexity will certainly care. That’s one of my points - this is NOT normal driving!. YOU might feel it is normal if you do it every day but to the vast majority of the rest of the country (if not the planet) this isn’t normal roads or traffic. Is it really that incomprehensible to you?
No, the signs are not “miles ahead”. They are typically 3/4 to 1 mile ahead. As I have noted, that’s damn little time to get into the correct lane.
Maybe you’ve driven it so much you no longer realize how baffling and confusing this can appear to someone who is unfamiliar with that sort of urban driving. There is nothing to tell someone entering the tollway that it’s a good idea to stay right the entire time if you’re paying cash. There is nothing telling you that each and every toll booth is on the right (although you start to figure that out pretty quickly). And that’s leaving aside the rude jackholes driving on the road who seem to think cutting off semi-trailer trucks at 85 mph is somehow an acceptable driving tactic.
The exact same signage is on the wider tollways. You undoubtedly drove under this sign on the Tri-State. There’s often signs (either static or the light-up boards) saying that the next toll is in X miles or X many minutes.
Right. The issue isn’t that the roads are signed poorly or there’s too many lanes or everyone on the road is mean and won’t let you merge, it’s that you don’t know how to drive on the expressways. It just ain’t that hard. That said, if it’s that hard for you, you should stay off the expressways. But literally millions of other people manage to do it. Just own it instead of blaming signs and “trolls” and conspiracy theories about the Tollway Commission trying to punish you.
Yes. And at normal highway speeds you’d have at best a minute, often less, to lane shift in that one mile. Fine if the traffic is as pictured but it wasn’t. It was packed.
Bullshit. The problem is that it’s a really crowded, big, complicated road. It may be easy for YOU because you do it frequently but I’m not talking about YOU, I’m talking about someone unfamiliar with the roadway or that sort of roadway. It is in no way typical of most highways, or even most tollways I’ve drive.
I may not drive them frequently, but over the past three decades I have driven not only the Tri-State tollway in Illinois but the ones in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. with rare exception they’re pretty normal two-lane highways. THAT’s normal. The Tri-state is not. Hell, even most of the Illinois tollway system isn’t as bad as the I-294 stretch.
In other words - only allow the natives on it, ban the tourists, the transients, just screw those people, how dare they use our roads. Is that what you’re saying? God forbid you do anything to make the road more user-friendly.
Gosh, again you selectively read for what you want to hear. As I said in my post I could and did handle it. Did I die in a fiery wreck? No. Get pulled over for violating some traffic law? No. Hell, I even took a second trip on the mofo.
But just because I can “handle it” doesn’t mean I have to like it or can’t point out its flaws or suggest ways to make it more accommodating to travelers. Seriously, you act like it’s a game of points or something and I’m trying to take away your trophy or something.
Driving the Tollway sucks. It’s an awful drive, at times downright hazardous (and it’s a testament to something - possibly the driving skills of the insane - that there aren’t even more accidents on it than there already are). It’s not like engineers haven’t spent billions over the past decades trying to improve it and make it safer. Sure, you can get used to it - you can get used to loud noises by going deaf, too - but that doesn’t really make it better.
If it’s “packed” then you’re not moving at “normal highway speeds”. You’re crawling. Packed traffic doesn’t move at 70+ mph. Either you’re moving so slowly that you have ten minutes to get over or you’re moving swiftly because traffic is light so lane changing is pretty trivial. While it would be awesome for traffic flow if the road could run at heavy capacity with everyone going at 65mph, that doesn’t actually happen in the real world.
That said, it really does sound as though you should just stay off the expressways if they cause you that much stress. No, this doesn’t apply to every tourist or transient – 99.9% of them can handle it just fine and noodle out themselves where the toll booths will be.
