Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Mayor Emanuel Looking for Ideas to Improve Access to Museum Campus

Underpass to Museum Campus (via Chicago Sun-times)
There continues to be a lot of debate on whether or not the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art should be just south of Soldier Field.  Regardless, Mayor Emanuel is apparently now looking for ideas on how to make the museum campus more accessible (via Chicago Sun-Times):
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has asked policy experts and lakefront stakeholders to propose “transportation enhancements” to ease a museum campus bottleneck that will get worse with construction of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. 
The site selection committee that chose to give movie-mogul George Lucas 17 acres of free lakefront land between Soldier Field and McCormick Place East has already laid out the enticing possibilities. 
They include:
◆ Extending bus rapid transit to the museum campus.
◆ Creating a “dedicated trolley service” to and from the Loop and West Loop commuter rail stations.
◆ Adding bike paths.
◆ Upgrading 31st Street.
◆ Offering water access via Burnham Harbor.
◆ Upgrading the 18th Street entrance and exits to McCormick Place and the museum campus, as well as the Roosevelt Road interchange. 
__Further Down in Article__ 
Now, Emanuel’s chief operating officer Joe Deal and Metropolitan Planning Council President Mary Sue Barrett will co-chair a task force to consider those options and more over the next 90 days.

This is bound to be a controversial item for residents in the Sloop.  Some people in the neighborhood like that it's hard to access parts of the Sloop.  Others hate that the city's "grid" is pretty chopped up in certain areas (see dearborn park 1 and 2 as well areas east of Michigan south of Roosevelt.

What do you think?  Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

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