Guest Essay: Redefining “Redefine the Drive”

Few parts of the Chicago cityscape are as beloved — or as stress inducing — as DuSable Lake Shore Drive. DSLD, also known as “The Drive,” runs for almost 16 miles of the city’s lakefront, stretching from West Hollywood Road to the South Side’s 67th Street With its views, history and traffic connections, The Drive is an important and iconic part of life in Chicago.

It’s also in dire need of change.

One of DuSable Lake Shore Drive’s most notable features is the free-for-all attitude of its drivers, marked by rampant speeding and almost endless traffic congestion. While it certainly provides a quick way for cars to get downtown — if there’s no traffic — the current state of DSLD is a safety nightmare marked by lane closures, accidents, potholes and constant road work, sometimes stretching on for months.

The web of government authorities that control DSLD decision-making and upkeep do their best at keeping traffic flowing on the lakefront, but it’s hard to argue the road’s current layout is meeting its goals of keeping the city connected — especially in light of growing traffic congestion and a decade-long trend of increasing traffic deaths.

Local government hasn’t been blind to these problems. For the last decade both the Chicago and Illinois Departments of Transportation — CDOT and IDOT — have been working together with the Chicago Transit Agency and Chicago Park District to design a major overhaul of DSLD’s busiest stretch, the northside route between Navy Pier and Hollywood Avenue, in a project dubbed “Redefine the Drive.”

The Redefine the Drive Study promotes itself as a rare opportunity to enhance the Lake Shore Drive experience and “meet travel demands of all users in the corridor,” according to IDOT. It not only intends to reorganize traffic flow, but to also reduce pollution and reinforce the city’s climate resilience.

Another goal of Redefine the Drive is to make changes to The Drive’s stretch through the Loop, smoothing out the sharp curves along Oak Street Beach and improving lakefront access for pedestrians. Plans include the buildout of more than 80 acres of new beach and parkland by pushing out the shoreline, creating new land out of the shallow water between the North Jetty and Navy Pier.

After a decade of planning meetings and public input, the Redefine the Drive commission released its slate of proposals and renderings in early August, selecting a plan known as “The Essential” out of the five design finalists. 

While all of the designs improve public transit access along the North Side stretch, “The Essential” is by far the most scaled back, only really adding transit priority at junctions and requiring some bus-only ramps. 

Thanks to the changes around The Loop and Oak Street Beach, the proposed “Essential” plan would still dramatically improve DSLD’s current situation and the city’s connection to the lakefront. But when compared to the alternatives, it would do very little to truly alleviate traffic or boost public transit — the root causes of the road’s current issues.

Now, at a point where substantial change is needed, “The Essential” leaves DuSable Lake Shore Drive essentially the same.

Almost as soon as the announced plan was made public Aug. 8, the Redefine the Drive commission came under fire from Chicagoans and elected officials for the lack of major changes brought by the proposal. From City Hall to public comment periods, Chicagoans of all stripes have voiced strong opposition to the new plan, which has none of the transit upgrades of the other proposed options, which include features like new light rail links and separate bus lanes for quicker rapid transit.

The primary issue identified, in almost every case, isn’t the construction or the cost, but the lack of a new approach from the city’s transportation authorities and their insistence on maintaining car-focused tunnel vision for what is arguably the city’s most important road.

Cars remain a crucial mode of transportation in Chicago, with almost 160,000 vehicles using North DuSable Lake Shore Drive each day, but the city’s current focus all but ignores the 70,000 bus rides as well as the 31,000 bikers and pedestrians that also use The Drive.

Critics of the plan point towards the vast potential of benefits of a DuSable Lake Shore Drive with space for everyone – cars, park goers and public transportation – that far outnumber the slight gains of the current plan.

State Representative Kam Buckner, who represents a large part of the proposed plan area, encouraged IDOT and CDOT to think about DLSD’s potential differently and adopt a plan highlighting “green urban mobility,” according to Newcity. 

Buckner isn’t alone. This spring, his General Assembly resolution instructing CDOT and IDOT to “transform Du Sable Lake Shore Drive” and “be creative and forward-thinking in their redesign” passed the Illinois House of Representatives unanimously, alongside an identical version in the State Senate.

Fourteen alderpeople from around the city have also come together to protest the decisions made by IDOT and CDOT, joining transit and disability advocacy groups in an open letter calling for the Redefine the Drive project to stop work, reassess and relaunch its plans with a focus on transporting people, not just vehicles.

Council members who signed the letter included those representing all five wards located inside the Redefine the Drive Study area – Timmy Knudsen (43rd), Bennett Lawson (44th), Angela Clay (46th), Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th) and Maria Hadden (49th). 

Manaa-Hoppenworth and Hadden represent the area of Loyola’s Lakeshore Campus, one of the regions of the city that would be most impacted by major changes to DuSable Lakeshore Drive.

DuSable Lakeshore Drive still plays a key role in Chicago life, and, if used correctly, can connect far more than just North Hollywood Avenue. and 67th Street. If we’re to truly redefine The Drive, Chicago needs to look forward by returning to its roots, heeding the call of the city’s residents and elected officials to turn DSLD into a safe, green and transit-friendly parkway suited for the needs of the city’s present and future.

To quote the most influential text in Chicago urban planning, the 1909 Burnham Plan, “The Lake front by right belongs to the people.” Let’s build a lakeshore that looks like it.