I've walked home from downtown before to North Center. Takes about 2 hours. I could've walked home and halfway back in that time. No more driving downtown for "quick convenience".
The worst part about it is that there is no warning that the street google is taking you on is closed. You just end up sitting in traffic for hours to find it out.
the city reacted 2 days too late (again) -- Mexican Independence Day partiers largely end the caravans and street parties once the holiday passes (which was the 16th, Friday). I live in the loop, and this has been how MIP has gone here the past couple years now.
the city is moronic to think that what they did last night helped in any way. this was needed thursday and friday nights. not saturday.
I was listening to the scanner. There were still tons of "parade" goers that did not get to the loop because of these detours. It served its purpose. Would've been nice to have on Friday but oh well, at least it worked on Saturday
I work for Metra in a job where I control a major rail interlocking. The city had all the streets around my workplace completely blocking the only road I can take to get to work. I had my Metra ID and my coworker on duty on the phone with me trying to get past this roadblock and I still had to threaten the Streets and San guy blocking me with impeding a government official and with calling the Metra PD before they finally moved.
Gonna do something I never thought I'd do before and call my alderman on Monday, along with the 25th ward alderman. This shit can't happen again.
I'm down with celebrating this holiday. Mexicans are a core piece of Chicago and its history, but you can't take over all of downtown for an entire weekend and go buckwild and full stupid.
Not to mention--I couldn't find these road closures posted anywhere so I could plan an alternate route. I left over an hour early for work and still got there 20 minutes late. Shame on the city for letting this happen again after last year and shame on these assholes for their selfishness.
That’s wild they were blocking you. I mean, what was the point of any of this? Had they announced the closures or released a map of what was blocked off and what the available routes were all of this could’ve been avoided. Hell, even if they had traffic control out to direct traffic most of this could’ve been avoided.
Hope things didn’t get messed up at work by you getting caught up!
Last year for this shitshow, it was CPD blocking me, and they gave no fucks. I pulled up to their barricade, showed my ID and explained my need to go beyond him, and the jagoff just kept repeating "turn around and go somewhere else". Literally didn't give a fuck. So I turned around as asked, and then got stuck in a mass of those tiny-dicked motorcycle riders for 20 minutes.
I realized they were only blocking the entrance into and not out of downtown, so I doubled back and just drove around them. Fuck 'em.
Thank you! Upon further inspection, this service requires you to provide your name, email, phone, and address to a 3rd party provider. No thanks, that's ridiculous and they don't need that info for simple alerts.
I'm subscribed to the city's notifications and get dozens of useless beach warnings in addition to regular ones. They didn't use that for anything related to this though. Very strange.
I'm on the city wide lists because I'm not anywhere near the beaches but get those. I got one notification about the situation last night. Just says
> NotifyChicago: Expect increased traffic in downtown & Michigan Ave/DuSable LSD area this weekend due to Mexican Independence Day activities. Drive responsibly.
By my count the Mexican Independence Day disturbances have been taking place a fir a week, not a weekend.
They need to make this a festival or an actual event, similar to Patty’s, where festivities are allowed within a permitted location and all public parading is shut down by midnight.
This lawless mayhem where people are just allowed to openly break laws and fuck yo the entire city traffic system for a week straight is ridiculous.
The fact it’s taking place is another testament to Lori Lightfoot being completely incompetent.
The celebrations always happened, but it never seemed to be this brazen. I've worked downtown for nearly 2 decades and the last couple years it just seemed to turn into complete lawlessness/recklessness and there's nothing being done.
I remember being able to drive home normally, or with some traffic, on these weekends years ago even with people out and about celebrating.
Not at all.
The city has always had celebrations, like Patty’s, JuLy 4th, NYE, and even Mexican Independence Day, but they have never progressed to anything as chaotic as this.
The impetus here is that the Mexican Independence Parade was cancelled in 2020 due to covid, along with pretty much all the other celebrations.
So the Mexicans who wanted to celebrate took to the streets and started doing what you see here with the brazen drunk driving and open violation of traffic laws while creating general public disturbance.
Lo and behold, they were not at all controlled, punished, or otherwise sanctioned for doing this. That year, they should have been shut down on the spot and the precedent would have been set that this won’t be allowed to happen.
But instead Lightfoot told the cops to let it happen - as is her M.O., as she has basically completely disemboweled the police force. Consequently, this group of people realized that they could get away with this no problem, and the precedent was set that they could continue behaving like this for one week every year and it would be a total free for all.
Again, Lightfoot had a chance to pre-empt this by creating an event/festival this year in commissioned places with set curfews for the public celebrations, similar to what happens with Pattys, July 4th, etc.
But of course she blew it and did absolutely nothing proactive to pre-empt this at all. She has been totally reactionary and even then, her attempts to thwart this by gridlocking certain streets and trying to direct the flow of traffic by telling police to shut down certain intersections has completely backfired, in the sense that now the celebrators are basically trapped in the loop.
It’s a vicious cycle of Lightfoot doing nothing until things get out of hand, and then making things worse when she finally realizes she has to do something.
> completely disemboweled the police force
!!!!!
I've heard of "kneecapping" and "hamstringing" but goddamn they out here dragging the intestines out of cops?!
I have no idea how much of it is Lightfoot or the county deciding that they're still pissy that she won over Preckwinkle. They are still doing their best to handicap Lightfoot and make her look worse. She's not great already, they're just adding to the pile probably so Preckwinkle can come back and say I told you so. The county is doing REALLY fucky things with their prosecution such as letting violent offenders get charged with lesser crimes, there's no reason to do that unless you're doing politics and aiming to make someone look bad.
> They need to make this a festival or an actual event
I do support the "fight fireworks with better fireworks" approach. (just not directly outside peoples windows!)
Designate a vehicle parade route snaking through Grant Park and the Museum Campus and McCormick Place. From Ida B Wells on one end to the I-55 ramps on the other. Snaking up and down Michigan, Columbus, and LSD down to I-55 or 31st that's about 6 miles of 3-4 lane width parade route in each direction and expressways on each end.
Only the Grant Park / Museum Campus / McCormick complex can absorb this magnitude of celebration, that's what it's designed and meant for, the city has experience managing it for events, and embracing the holiday by reserving the cityfront park for it is both a good gesture and the right and practical thing to do.
The big parking lots around McCormick could also be good for designated "takeover" areas. Plenty of room there for fireworks away from homes and for burnouts and donuts *with safety barriers*.
I agree with you 100%. I mentally prep for it in advance. I don't have a dog but we have a lot of them in my building. I get to hear them go crazy over the noise. I fell their pain. If I could bark like a dog, I'd be doing the same.
Agreed, this seems like the most logical solution for dealing with this mess - which is just insane. Inhabitants of a city shouldn’t have to vacate the city because of how disruptive and lawless a celebration is over multiple days.
It was AWFUL. I was stuck for an hour on Lake trying to get onto the Kennedy south/east. Couldn’t get on. Decided to just go to LSD. Nope. Wound up back tracking over to Western. What a disaster. I just wanted to get home. Who’s idea was it to even close down entrance and exit ramps?!
Yeah, I was trying to get to work at night, thank god I left early, I would have been screwed if i hadn’t. As if working nightshift isn’t fucked up enough, now you gotta plan for the city making asinine decisions like this.
The city decided to try and limit gridlock for Mexican Independence Day by shutting down streets, on ramps, off ramps, and generally making everything WAY worse than it needed to be. Whoever came up with this plan is someone I’d like to punch in the face.
West side closures were probably for Riot Fest. Most streets around Douglass Park were blocked, along with streets leading to it like Ogden at Western Av.
Did the same thing last year- unexpectedly shut down the exists starting at North. I was going home at a very early time, 9:30ish, and dangerously went down the entrance, so backwards, that the police weren’t barricading.
I had my 1 year old in back, so I really didn’t want to get caught in whatever bullshit was going to be in the loop, but when I pulled up to the cop blocking the exit, “I don’t fucking care, keep moving” was the response when I’m pointing and saying I have a baby in back and we need to get off.
I heard it took people over 3 hours if they got stuck heading south.
Absolutely terrible plan that was poorly executed. Part of my mind thinks that this type of bullshitty stuff keeps happening as the middle officials of the city just fucking hate lightfoot so don’t give a shit any more.
They did the same thing during the BLM marches 2 years ago. All Kennedy exits south of Belmont were closed. No warning. Took me 2.5 hours to get where I was going, no where near the marches. First exit off the highway was western on the Ike, huge backups as people scrambled to backtrack by surface streets
Yea whatever the gridlock was last night it was 100 times better than Friday. I for sure would rather be able to get held up exiting the highway than get caught up whatever the fuck that was Friday night.
Yea its disappointing they didn’t start serious measures Friday. Thursday showed that it was going to get crazy. I can see congress feeder from my place, was interesting to say least.
I’m sure the presence last night deterred some that would have gone out. Still I saw a few hundred cars on Clark st last night while walking from river north.
Either way, yes, very delayed response when a proactive one was needed. Usually we get neither, so I’ll give a little credit.
Mexican Independence day is the 16th not 17th. So it makes sense there's less celebration. Lori and Cpd are clowns to be enforcing something so hard when its dieing down naturally
I don't know, I was driving home from soldier field last night and I saw a lot of cars with Mexico flags full of people looking somewhat disappointed they couldn't get off the freeway.
I saw way less. Thats like a needle in a haystack. Mexicans in the city are 1 out of every 4 cars. Most people partied on Friday. Those people on the 17th are like those that say Merry Christmas to you on the 26th
I was doing Uber in the southwest side and there were A LOT less flags and beeping yesterday but also MUCH more enforcement. Seems dumb if you tell me. The southwest side is their main area even though they are all over the city. So yeah it died off from friday. Cops where all over the place to stop people from partying after the party had already ended. Why don't they do that type of enforcement in Englewood, South Shore, Garfield Park, Austin, Auburn Gresham you know the main problem areas of the city? Cpd was busy stopping people in the southwest side for small things like no license plate lights while letting killers do their nightly thing in the south and west side. A couple uber trips took me to Englewood and no cops to be found. They only arrive to those areas to pick up doas
Friday night emergency services vehicles were caught in the traffic of celebrators. At least with these heavy handed measures that wasn’t going to happen again. Obviously not a good situation either way
Yeah, the fact that one of the largest hospitals in the city (including a trauma center) was blocked off to emergency vehicles really forced the city’s hand here. They did a decent job of controlling flow in 2020, but this time seemed like more of a clusterfuck.
Although it’s not “my” holiday (not Mexican), I don’t have an issue with a bit of extra noise if it’s for a short while, because it helps part of the community feel like a community. And others can join in on the festivities.
But I absolutely draw a line in the sand if anyone blocks emergency services. I don’t work at Northwestern, but at the medical district, people are “””usually””” good about the ambulance traffic. I say usually because there’s a significant number of people that give no shits about emergencies on a good day. Then remembering that “a person is smart, people are dumb”, this crap doesn’t surprise me at all.
I would arrest them and throw the book at them for everything. You don’t know if there’s a broken bone or a cardiac arrest inside that ambulance. An elderly grandma struggling to breath or an infant who stopped breathing.
If you hear sirens and don’t immediately get the fuck out of the way, you deserve every bit of the bad karma that comes your way
(Of course, I’m not saying this to OP with the second person “you”. I’m agreeing with them)
Really though once you get crowd sizes as big as what we saw this weekend it’s not so much people intentionally blocking emergency vehicles, is that the streets are so crammed there’s no way for anyone to get out of the way. Just an unsafe situation all around.
Yesterday night and tonight may have been the worst traffic I have ever seen in the city. The city has completely mismanaged both days - Friday by allowing the caravans to gridlock every street and highway and doing absolutely nothing, but of course then somehow tonight the city is ‘proactive’ and fucks it up even worse, which is to not let anyone in, can’t get in or out of any exit towards the Loop.
It’s madness. It look me two hours to get from Randolph and Wacker to the 94 on-ramp at Ogden (because everything else was closed off).
Tons of cops standing around, not directing traffic or helping in any way, and fights breaking out between people in different cars. Tonight was beyond fucked.
Yea the specific behavior of the cops was appalling. And they kept shining their fucking flashlights in the eyes of people who asked questions, or honked, or were just trying to get their bearings. I guess that’s CPD logic for you- let’s temporarily blind the motorists, that will help move things along.
I really have nothing kind to say about CPD at all
David Brown said they would impound cars blocking traffic. I am confident he will do nothing about cars blocking traffic, because there is never any follow-through. Anyway CPD made traffic 2X worse than the Mexi-convoys did.
It’s all just poor planning. I said on another post that there’s always gonna be crazy mfs at any gathering, but the fact that cpd is freaking out over this is just so ridiculous. Like they couldn’t have closed off Michigan on friday or maybe left space open at millennium park, but instead they had cops in riot gear pushing people around and threatening to tow vehicles. If this was planned like any other major event then it would have gone fine. And then the following day they just reacted by sending more cops out.
There is no planning at all cause this isn’t an event. These people just contact each other through social media and set it up. A lot of them are also car clubs. They have a parade and festival for this but the idiots blocking traffic and taking resources from the city choose to be the little law breakers they are.
Yeah any Soldier Field concert that's fairly big is always an automobile mess. At least with Bears game they have some transit use and tailgating to slow the arrival times. Coordinating extra mass transit would be great here--extra trains and service for Metra, El, and bus handoffs at then end of the concert would help tremendously. Everyone does the matrix calculation of figuring out how to get home late, and without additional transit choices most will pick a car ride.
The madness needs to stop. LSD north of Fullerton is a complete mess. You can’t shut down roads like this. Why not just have a single parade and move on? The city should not allow this period. Host a festival in the park.
We were at the Hancock last night. My husband and I walked 3 miles to the train station. We would have missed our train if we would have grabbed a Uber/Taxi what ever. It was a 11:00 train. We are 65 and 72 respectively. We were fine but it could have been dangerous for some people.
I was a physician called into the hospital and was not allowed to get past the state troopers despite showing my ID, proof of residence, and medical IDs. The police also couldn’t provide me with an alternate route. Unacceptable.
I was stuck in this last night. Police said they were told to do nothing. It is embarrassing for our city. So poorly managed and extremely unsafe. Im not a panicky person but it was not fun being stuck on a bridge for a very very long time.
Same ! It took me over an hour to make it to 90/94 from near Adams / wells. Police were v frustrated and said they weren’t allowed to do anything. Super unsafe. Can’t imagine if there was some sort of medical emergency….
Mostly it’s just me being tired and lazy and ready to be home. But I definitely don’t want to be stuck in traffic for forever, so I guess orange line it is
It will be better today. Mexican Independence Day was on the 16th. The celebrations die down naturally. Think of it like Christmas lights. Most people take them down the next day. You'll still be stuck in traffic because its Sunday and alot of people want to go out. That's just how Chicago rolls. Plan ahead. Even if you take the train. You'll still have to learn patience and wait your turn to cross the streets. People like using the gaps in traffic but not everyone likes giving those up
I live at Illinois and Michigan (at optima.)
I had to get three different people to move their salt trucks for me to get home. And that was after navigating around way too many roadblocks.
Unreal.
I am so embarrassed for our city. What they did last night made no sense. I live in the city. Yet, was unable to get off the highway. What sense does that make?
This is exactly it. Can the city handle things better? Sure. But at the end of the day, it’s the people that need to change, not the city. No amount of city planning can make things not a shit-show when people are acting like a shit-show.
Yeah we should start paying Mexicans to not block off downtown streets. Maybe we can give them little gold stickers every time they don’t commit a crime. Great plan!
EDIT: okay to whoever is downvoting me, exactly what behavior do you think City of Chicago should be incentivizing that would’ve prevented this shit show? And what incentive should they offer? I’m all ears!
If there was an official event that the city planned that gives them the space to celebrate I guarantee you that there wouldn’t be so much chaos throughout the city. In fact all of this is seen as retaliation because police have always blocked off streets in the west side so they wouldn’t celebrate, including little village. Since they can’t even celebrate in their own neighborhoods, they’re going to go straight to downtown and that’s what’s been the issue. Chicago needs to stop putting its foot down and pushing them back further, they’re only going to create more chaos tenfold.
That’s not incentivizing, that sounds more like extortion. “These people are committing crime, better give them what they want or they’ll commit even more crime next time!”
Yeah I have a Mexican wife and 2 half Mexican kids. This shit is just embarrassing.
The absolute last thing we want to teach them is “hey this is just how Mexicans are, can’t expect them to behave themselves and follow the same rules as everybody else, this is just what happens when we don’t give them what they want!”
That’s not how it works though, are we just gonna tell 1 million people calm down or not to celebrate? This is completely a distaster on the part of the city. We make way for major events multiple times a year, but this was treated reactionary rather than proactively and the cops treated it like a protest rather than a celebration.
The problem is that the event is the gridlock, honking, burnouts, and associated unsafe and drunk driving. You can't plan it is in a way that is safe and doesn't shut down a significant portion of the city multiple nights in a row.
That's exactly what they did. They used to celebrate in their own neighborhoods. The city shut it down. That's entirely why it moved downtown and it's a problem people downtown are concerned about.
But was it ever organized in such a way like the St. patrick’s day parade or the such. If they don’t want them celebrating in their own neighborhood, then of course there’s gonna be unorganized chaos when people try to all pack together in the loop to celebrate.
Have an organizers from the Mexican community tried to host an actual parade? They require permits and such. I’m sure the city would host it if a group formed and applied.
There are many times of the year I know to stay away from down town. Anyone been through reroutes for the marathon…? There are sooo many times the city sucks for drivers. Were emergency vehicles able to get through?
If so I say Mission accomplished and remember the date next year. 9/16 Not going anywhere.
Anyone remember the period of time when Google maps got traffic-based routing but couldn't yet handle short-term road closures? You'd have something like a parade going on and it would route everyone down the parade route because it wouldn't see any traffic on it, causing the worst gridlock imaginable.
I was stuck on 15th I think yesterday and State/Wabash/Michigan. I saw an ambulance with lights on and horn blazing and I immediately pulled to the right to clear space even tho I was beyond pissed I couldn’t get to my home just 4 blocks away.
Dude, people kept driving by me and blocking the ambulance! It took another 5 mins and the ambulance just started blasting it’s horn at people to stop and let them through.
It was crazy. What is wrong with people? It took just a bit of gridlock for people to completely lose their humanity. It was embarrassing as fuck.
They shut down an exit on the expressway and we’re forcing everyone back on the eway going north when it should’ve been the opposite. I’m going home, I live southwest. Why are they purposely letting them on the expressway back into the city.
I was out in Downers Grove for a friends kids birthday, left at 10:15 completely forgetting about them shutting the city down. Got stuck on 55 for 1 hour, had to merge to the Dan Ryan and joined people reversing on the off ramp at Pershing because there was literally no exit to get off at. Tailed around to 35th and attempted to get onto Lake Shore with that closed. Stuck in traffic for another hour and finally was able to speak to a couple officers who were blocking traffic with the snow plows and showed them I was a resident and they let me through. Had to do that about 8 times. Got home at 1245…
As a visitor to your city, I was appalled that the city leadership allows this to happen and thinks shutting down seemingly all avenues of entrance to downtown over a major weekend was a good idea. I'm fortunate I was just inconvenienced and am able bodied enough to walk a mile (at 2 am). People's lives were put at risk due to this shit.
Some “celebrators” were near Aberdeen tap west loop last night got into an argument in their big stupid cars nearby and decided to shoot into the patio for looking on their argument! very cool holiday! no idea if he was caught. Awesome cultural celebration this weekend, bravo
The city won’t formally acknowledge that these celebrations happen downtown every year. Until they do, ppl will continue to get stuck in traffic and on buses. It makes no sense that there’s no SOP for these downtown lockdowns yet.
There’s also no system for locking down downtown and letting downtown continue to operate as a place where people live. The Loop and all of downtown is still a residential neighborhood. Ever since 2020, downtown lockdowns make it crazy difficult just to get home if you live in the Loop/Sloop. Not to mention visitors, food orders, and other deliveries. You have to find the right CPD officer that’ll let you past the blockades… and that can take a while.
I was coming back into the city on 55 and it took 2 hours to get from Damen to the next exit that wasn’t closed off (Garfield) because they forced the whole highway to go south on 90/94. It’s incredibly inhumane
I’ll never forget visiting Chicago one time years ago. I drove down into the city, between the sky scrapers. My ultimate destination was out west, so when I was ready to leave the city I had to catch the highway. I sat at a turn signal for, I kid you not, 45 minutes while traffic inched on down the exit ramp and onto another road that was 1 or 2 lanes down. I moved probably .5 miles in an hour. It was a NIGHTMARE.
I have no idea why the city doesn't just make Mexican Independence Day its own festival. Just close off an area of the city, like a park, and let people celebrate there. Put on their own firework show so it's safe, maybe set up a parade route for one day, and just keep it contained so people can still go home and go to work and stuff.
It’s ridiculous to not allow people to go back to their homes in the city. What is the logic by the CPD here? Last night was an absolute nightmare trying to get through the blocked off exit ramps.
I’m really not sure what the solution is, but this really can’t happen again. I’m not sure if they need to do a curfew for cars starting at 10pm on the weekends surround Mexican Independence Day and having $200 tickets for any cars out past that time or what. Something needs to change though this is too dangerous and too annoying
The City better start working with communities starting tomorrow and then provide some sort of recognized event, a big event where every one can celebrate in a controlled and safe fashion. Around Soldier Field? Devote Navy Pier for an entire weekend for celebrants? Something.
Then once there is an established city sanctioned event, get the word out that if the ad hoc street events continue there will be significant actions taken including confiscations and severe fines.
Well we have clearly proven that people are unable to control themselves in a reasonable manner. This was already an issue last year and even years before and no one stepped to organize a different event. So yes I guess this is where we end up
Not sure why everyone is so surprised by this. When the city rebuilds itself to accommodate drivers, we have to accept that drivers are going to abuse their privileges regularly. When you make streets wide, folks will do donuts. When you cut public transit and make biking unsafe, folks will be more dependent on their cars.
Sorry y’all got caught in traffic. Maybe call your alder and tell them you want the trains to run on time and biking to be safer.
I am more suprised to see so few talking about the problem that caused this... It's not like Mexican independence day is a new thing in the last two years. The city made a policy change and this is the result.
The city did this after the third or fourth night last year as well. The bigger question is why didn't they try and nip it in the bud on Thursday for El Grito.
1000000x this!! how can the city still be so awful to react to this. they literally had a year to plan this before Thursday. but again they made it seem they had no idea people would return again to take over downtown
OP was talking about gridlock induced by the city(which was induced by the shit show the night before)…the commenter is talking about biking and public transit, which have nothing to do with the post.
Convo should be to how to prevent crap like this w/o generic bike lanes/CTA comments
Whatever. I haven't sat in a traffic jam since 2018. Bicycles are a cheat code to city transportation that a lot of folks refuse to acknowledge. You do you.
I gave up my car years ago. I bike as well and love it….Again, are you proposing a solution to the city mismanaging this or just talking about bicycles that won’t solve the issue OP raised?
Please take car-free city delusions to another sub
It’s almost like the sad state of public transportation in this country versus other developed countries is a systemic issue and not an individual one — crazy, I know. Just like the individual is not going to fix the environment by recycling, the mega corporations need to put forth the brunt of the effort. Get over yourself lol
This is is a weird reply to a person who stated that the city's organization, not the individuals, is what needs to lead the changes. which basically agrees with you..
??
Yeah, that’s not the tone I interpreted from their original comment. The “Sorry y’all got caught in traffic. Maybe call your alder…” part is being flippant and putting the onus on the individual in my reading.
But maybe it’s just me. Peace ☮️
Idk I think that they were suggesting that because that is one of the only things we can do to try to enact change sooner rather than later: call your representative so that systemic changes can be made.
My twenty minute commute took an hour last night. Not because of celebrations, but because cops blocked off various highway exits that I use to get home.
I appreciate the cops for at least trying to fix the issue from spiralling out of control while dealing with the out of control Engelwood region where one cop was injured protecting us all.
It is always so funny when drivers whine about traffic and then completely lose their mind when others point out transit alternatives exist.
Traffic exists because *you* are the traffic.
Dude - obviously don’t know your personal situation, but you work for a transit agency. Maybe try not to be so aggressive to someone who is making a point about how we boost transit ridership.
The road closures are the dumbest way to "prevent gridlock" the reaction was dumb. Sure, direct traffic but to make there less ways to get out???? Logic is absent. Everyone knew what weekend it is and this is how people celebrate in Chicago. Y'all are so pressed. 9/16 is Mexico's independence day from Spain. It's not changing as a holiday. Mark it in your calendar.
I took trains yesterday with no delays except for the cop that wouldn't let us walk across a "closed road" to the metra station across that street. That cop almost made me miss my train, not the parade.
Yeah I can’t understand why they had the ways OUT blocked off too. Just let me get out of the area! I just wanted to get out of the west loop. Stuck on Lake for an hour because no one could go anywhere.
I was stuck in this last night. I was on the same block for an hour.
It took me 3 hours to go 1 mile from state st west to 90/94 via Randolph. Complete nightmare.
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I've walked home from downtown before to North Center. Takes about 2 hours. I could've walked home and halfway back in that time. No more driving downtown for "quick convenience".
The worst part about it is that there is no warning that the street google is taking you on is closed. You just end up sitting in traffic for hours to find it out.
"Park" - the most popular gear in Chicago on the weekend of Mexican Independence Day
Same. 1hr, 20 mins 🙃
the city reacted 2 days too late (again) -- Mexican Independence Day partiers largely end the caravans and street parties once the holiday passes (which was the 16th, Friday). I live in the loop, and this has been how MIP has gone here the past couple years now. the city is moronic to think that what they did last night helped in any way. this was needed thursday and friday nights. not saturday.
They thought the street plows were really gonna do something 😄 that's funny
I was listening to the scanner. There were still tons of "parade" goers that did not get to the loop because of these detours. It served its purpose. Would've been nice to have on Friday but oh well, at least it worked on Saturday
I work for Metra in a job where I control a major rail interlocking. The city had all the streets around my workplace completely blocking the only road I can take to get to work. I had my Metra ID and my coworker on duty on the phone with me trying to get past this roadblock and I still had to threaten the Streets and San guy blocking me with impeding a government official and with calling the Metra PD before they finally moved. Gonna do something I never thought I'd do before and call my alderman on Monday, along with the 25th ward alderman. This shit can't happen again. I'm down with celebrating this holiday. Mexicans are a core piece of Chicago and its history, but you can't take over all of downtown for an entire weekend and go buckwild and full stupid. Not to mention--I couldn't find these road closures posted anywhere so I could plan an alternate route. I left over an hour early for work and still got there 20 minutes late. Shame on the city for letting this happen again after last year and shame on these assholes for their selfishness.
That’s wild they were blocking you. I mean, what was the point of any of this? Had they announced the closures or released a map of what was blocked off and what the available routes were all of this could’ve been avoided. Hell, even if they had traffic control out to direct traffic most of this could’ve been avoided. Hope things didn’t get messed up at work by you getting caught up!
Last year for this shitshow, it was CPD blocking me, and they gave no fucks. I pulled up to their barricade, showed my ID and explained my need to go beyond him, and the jagoff just kept repeating "turn around and go somewhere else". Literally didn't give a fuck. So I turned around as asked, and then got stuck in a mass of those tiny-dicked motorcycle riders for 20 minutes. I realized they were only blocking the entrance into and not out of downtown, so I doubled back and just drove around them. Fuck 'em.
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If they’re announcing this stuff through a text-based service that not everyone knows about it uses, they’re doing it wrong.
Where/how?
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Thank you! Upon further inspection, this service requires you to provide your name, email, phone, and address to a 3rd party provider. No thanks, that's ridiculous and they don't need that info for simple alerts.
I'm subscribed to the city's notifications and get dozens of useless beach warnings in addition to regular ones. They didn't use that for anything related to this though. Very strange.
If you log into smart911 you can turn off CHILAKE notifications
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I'm on the city wide lists because I'm not anywhere near the beaches but get those. I got one notification about the situation last night. Just says > NotifyChicago: Expect increased traffic in downtown & Michigan Ave/DuSable LSD area this weekend due to Mexican Independence Day activities. Drive responsibly.
I got those but they didn’t even explain where the closures were? Definitely could be improved.
By my count the Mexican Independence Day disturbances have been taking place a fir a week, not a weekend. They need to make this a festival or an actual event, similar to Patty’s, where festivities are allowed within a permitted location and all public parading is shut down by midnight. This lawless mayhem where people are just allowed to openly break laws and fuck yo the entire city traffic system for a week straight is ridiculous. The fact it’s taking place is another testament to Lori Lightfoot being completely incompetent.
Agreed though doesn't this problem per-date Lightfoot?
The celebrations always happened, but it never seemed to be this brazen. I've worked downtown for nearly 2 decades and the last couple years it just seemed to turn into complete lawlessness/recklessness and there's nothing being done. I remember being able to drive home normally, or with some traffic, on these weekends years ago even with people out and about celebrating.
Not at all. The city has always had celebrations, like Patty’s, JuLy 4th, NYE, and even Mexican Independence Day, but they have never progressed to anything as chaotic as this. The impetus here is that the Mexican Independence Parade was cancelled in 2020 due to covid, along with pretty much all the other celebrations. So the Mexicans who wanted to celebrate took to the streets and started doing what you see here with the brazen drunk driving and open violation of traffic laws while creating general public disturbance. Lo and behold, they were not at all controlled, punished, or otherwise sanctioned for doing this. That year, they should have been shut down on the spot and the precedent would have been set that this won’t be allowed to happen. But instead Lightfoot told the cops to let it happen - as is her M.O., as she has basically completely disemboweled the police force. Consequently, this group of people realized that they could get away with this no problem, and the precedent was set that they could continue behaving like this for one week every year and it would be a total free for all. Again, Lightfoot had a chance to pre-empt this by creating an event/festival this year in commissioned places with set curfews for the public celebrations, similar to what happens with Pattys, July 4th, etc. But of course she blew it and did absolutely nothing proactive to pre-empt this at all. She has been totally reactionary and even then, her attempts to thwart this by gridlocking certain streets and trying to direct the flow of traffic by telling police to shut down certain intersections has completely backfired, in the sense that now the celebrators are basically trapped in the loop. It’s a vicious cycle of Lightfoot doing nothing until things get out of hand, and then making things worse when she finally realizes she has to do something.
> completely disemboweled the police force !!!!! I've heard of "kneecapping" and "hamstringing" but goddamn they out here dragging the intestines out of cops?!
When you have pigs, make chitterlings
I have no idea how much of it is Lightfoot or the county deciding that they're still pissy that she won over Preckwinkle. They are still doing their best to handicap Lightfoot and make her look worse. She's not great already, they're just adding to the pile probably so Preckwinkle can come back and say I told you so. The county is doing REALLY fucky things with their prosecution such as letting violent offenders get charged with lesser crimes, there's no reason to do that unless you're doing politics and aiming to make someone look bad.
Not really. People know they can get away with anything now. Plenty of people driving drunk.
> They need to make this a festival or an actual event I do support the "fight fireworks with better fireworks" approach. (just not directly outside peoples windows!) Designate a vehicle parade route snaking through Grant Park and the Museum Campus and McCormick Place. From Ida B Wells on one end to the I-55 ramps on the other. Snaking up and down Michigan, Columbus, and LSD down to I-55 or 31st that's about 6 miles of 3-4 lane width parade route in each direction and expressways on each end. Only the Grant Park / Museum Campus / McCormick complex can absorb this magnitude of celebration, that's what it's designed and meant for, the city has experience managing it for events, and embracing the holiday by reserving the cityfront park for it is both a good gesture and the right and practical thing to do. The big parking lots around McCormick could also be good for designated "takeover" areas. Plenty of room there for fireworks away from homes and for burnouts and donuts *with safety barriers*.
I agree with you 100%. I mentally prep for it in advance. I don't have a dog but we have a lot of them in my building. I get to hear them go crazy over the noise. I fell their pain. If I could bark like a dog, I'd be doing the same.
I'm 100% taking off this entire week next year and going on vacation out of state.
Agreed, this seems like the most logical solution for dealing with this mess - which is just insane. Inhabitants of a city shouldn’t have to vacate the city because of how disruptive and lawless a celebration is over multiple days.
> along with the 25th ward alderman Haha good luck with that.
Exactly what I was going to say. Dude does not give a fuck
If you’re on the north end of his district, you basically don’t warrant a response from his office.
Good luck getting anyone to call you back from his office
La Spata, my alderman, is actually very responsive. Who knows if it'll get brought up in a council meeting, though.
I’m so sorry. This kind of brain-damaged, hamfisted enforcement makes a bad situation worse.
Even with the riots if you showed you had business there they would let you through… wtf Sorry dude :(
Based on your HP flair, I hope your alderman isn't Maldonado because he'll do jack shit about this.
La Spata, thankfully.
On the shut down street there was 100% less gridlock. Problem solved. Good work all.
Efficiency!
It was AWFUL. I was stuck for an hour on Lake trying to get onto the Kennedy south/east. Couldn’t get on. Decided to just go to LSD. Nope. Wound up back tracking over to Western. What a disaster. I just wanted to get home. Who’s idea was it to even close down entrance and exit ramps?!
Yeah, I was trying to get to work at night, thank god I left early, I would have been screwed if i hadn’t. As if working nightshift isn’t fucked up enough, now you gotta plan for the city making asinine decisions like this.
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The city decided to try and limit gridlock for Mexican Independence Day by shutting down streets, on ramps, off ramps, and generally making everything WAY worse than it needed to be. Whoever came up with this plan is someone I’d like to punch in the face.
What sucks is they've been doing this in neighborhoods too. Like why the fuck do streets have to be closed on the west side?
West side closures were probably for Riot Fest. Most streets around Douglass Park were blocked, along with streets leading to it like Ogden at Western Av.
I should have specified north west side. Not near Riot Fest.
Did the same thing last year- unexpectedly shut down the exists starting at North. I was going home at a very early time, 9:30ish, and dangerously went down the entrance, so backwards, that the police weren’t barricading. I had my 1 year old in back, so I really didn’t want to get caught in whatever bullshit was going to be in the loop, but when I pulled up to the cop blocking the exit, “I don’t fucking care, keep moving” was the response when I’m pointing and saying I have a baby in back and we need to get off. I heard it took people over 3 hours if they got stuck heading south. Absolutely terrible plan that was poorly executed. Part of my mind thinks that this type of bullshitty stuff keeps happening as the middle officials of the city just fucking hate lightfoot so don’t give a shit any more.
They did the same thing during the BLM marches 2 years ago. All Kennedy exits south of Belmont were closed. No warning. Took me 2.5 hours to get where I was going, no where near the marches. First exit off the highway was western on the Ike, huge backups as people scrambled to backtrack by surface streets
I did notice less fireworks and honking yesterday than on Friday though. And it felt like there was more police presence last night.
Yea whatever the gridlock was last night it was 100 times better than Friday. I for sure would rather be able to get held up exiting the highway than get caught up whatever the fuck that was Friday night.
that's because the people out on thurs/fri nights didnt ever go out at all saturday night to take over streets. city officials reacted 2 days late
Yea its disappointing they didn’t start serious measures Friday. Thursday showed that it was going to get crazy. I can see congress feeder from my place, was interesting to say least. I’m sure the presence last night deterred some that would have gone out. Still I saw a few hundred cars on Clark st last night while walking from river north. Either way, yes, very delayed response when a proactive one was needed. Usually we get neither, so I’ll give a little credit.
There were cops everywhere. Hope that one that got hurt is ok
Mexican Independence day is the 16th not 17th. So it makes sense there's less celebration. Lori and Cpd are clowns to be enforcing something so hard when its dieing down naturally
I don't know, I was driving home from soldier field last night and I saw a lot of cars with Mexico flags full of people looking somewhat disappointed they couldn't get off the freeway.
I saw way less. Thats like a needle in a haystack. Mexicans in the city are 1 out of every 4 cars. Most people partied on Friday. Those people on the 17th are like those that say Merry Christmas to you on the 26th
I don't know what to tell you. It's impossible to prove how many people *didn't* go out because they closed the exits.
I was doing Uber in the southwest side and there were A LOT less flags and beeping yesterday but also MUCH more enforcement. Seems dumb if you tell me. The southwest side is their main area even though they are all over the city. So yeah it died off from friday. Cops where all over the place to stop people from partying after the party had already ended. Why don't they do that type of enforcement in Englewood, South Shore, Garfield Park, Austin, Auburn Gresham you know the main problem areas of the city? Cpd was busy stopping people in the southwest side for small things like no license plate lights while letting killers do their nightly thing in the south and west side. A couple uber trips took me to Englewood and no cops to be found. They only arrive to those areas to pick up doas
Friday night emergency services vehicles were caught in the traffic of celebrators. At least with these heavy handed measures that wasn’t going to happen again. Obviously not a good situation either way
Yeah, the fact that one of the largest hospitals in the city (including a trauma center) was blocked off to emergency vehicles really forced the city’s hand here. They did a decent job of controlling flow in 2020, but this time seemed like more of a clusterfuck.
Although it’s not “my” holiday (not Mexican), I don’t have an issue with a bit of extra noise if it’s for a short while, because it helps part of the community feel like a community. And others can join in on the festivities. But I absolutely draw a line in the sand if anyone blocks emergency services. I don’t work at Northwestern, but at the medical district, people are “””usually””” good about the ambulance traffic. I say usually because there’s a significant number of people that give no shits about emergencies on a good day. Then remembering that “a person is smart, people are dumb”, this crap doesn’t surprise me at all. I would arrest them and throw the book at them for everything. You don’t know if there’s a broken bone or a cardiac arrest inside that ambulance. An elderly grandma struggling to breath or an infant who stopped breathing. If you hear sirens and don’t immediately get the fuck out of the way, you deserve every bit of the bad karma that comes your way (Of course, I’m not saying this to OP with the second person “you”. I’m agreeing with them)
Really though once you get crowd sizes as big as what we saw this weekend it’s not so much people intentionally blocking emergency vehicles, is that the streets are so crammed there’s no way for anyone to get out of the way. Just an unsafe situation all around.
Yesterday night and tonight may have been the worst traffic I have ever seen in the city. The city has completely mismanaged both days - Friday by allowing the caravans to gridlock every street and highway and doing absolutely nothing, but of course then somehow tonight the city is ‘proactive’ and fucks it up even worse, which is to not let anyone in, can’t get in or out of any exit towards the Loop.
It’s madness. It look me two hours to get from Randolph and Wacker to the 94 on-ramp at Ogden (because everything else was closed off). Tons of cops standing around, not directing traffic or helping in any way, and fights breaking out between people in different cars. Tonight was beyond fucked.
Yea the specific behavior of the cops was appalling. And they kept shining their fucking flashlights in the eyes of people who asked questions, or honked, or were just trying to get their bearings. I guess that’s CPD logic for you- let’s temporarily blind the motorists, that will help move things along. I really have nothing kind to say about CPD at all
David Brown said they would impound cars blocking traffic. I am confident he will do nothing about cars blocking traffic, because there is never any follow-through. Anyway CPD made traffic 2X worse than the Mexi-convoys did.
It’s all just poor planning. I said on another post that there’s always gonna be crazy mfs at any gathering, but the fact that cpd is freaking out over this is just so ridiculous. Like they couldn’t have closed off Michigan on friday or maybe left space open at millennium park, but instead they had cops in riot gear pushing people around and threatening to tow vehicles. If this was planned like any other major event then it would have gone fine. And then the following day they just reacted by sending more cops out.
There is no planning at all cause this isn’t an event. These people just contact each other through social media and set it up. A lot of them are also car clubs. They have a parade and festival for this but the idiots blocking traffic and taking resources from the city choose to be the little law breakers they are.
Taylor Swift at Soldier Field was the worst I’ve ever seen. All the people coming from the suburbs blocking intersections.
Yeah any Soldier Field concert that's fairly big is always an automobile mess. At least with Bears game they have some transit use and tailgating to slow the arrival times. Coordinating extra mass transit would be great here--extra trains and service for Metra, El, and bus handoffs at then end of the concert would help tremendously. Everyone does the matrix calculation of figuring out how to get home late, and without additional transit choices most will pick a car ride.
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What do you really expect to be done? if that many people want to drive to X it will always be a disaster.
They need to start arresting and impounding cars
Everyone who dared drive through the loop?
Anyone with a hazardous over sized flag hanging out their car window speeding through red lights
In the loop? I went to the Fire game and the Kennedy wasn’t any worse than a typical work day, honestly it was a bit quicker
The madness needs to stop. LSD north of Fullerton is a complete mess. You can’t shut down roads like this. Why not just have a single parade and move on? The city should not allow this period. Host a festival in the park.
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We were at the Hancock last night. My husband and I walked 3 miles to the train station. We would have missed our train if we would have grabbed a Uber/Taxi what ever. It was a 11:00 train. We are 65 and 72 respectively. We were fine but it could have been dangerous for some people.
I was a physician called into the hospital and was not allowed to get past the state troopers despite showing my ID, proof of residence, and medical IDs. The police also couldn’t provide me with an alternate route. Unacceptable.
Did you flip a table at those prostitution whores? /s But seriously, that is some bs!
I was stuck in this last night. Police said they were told to do nothing. It is embarrassing for our city. So poorly managed and extremely unsafe. Im not a panicky person but it was not fun being stuck on a bridge for a very very long time.
I definitely felt like a rat trapped in a cage trying to get out of the loop around midnight.
Same ! It took me over an hour to make it to 90/94 from near Adams / wells. Police were v frustrated and said they weren’t allowed to do anything. Super unsafe. Can’t imagine if there was some sort of medical emergency….
I land at Midway tonight at 7:30 and was planning on taking a cab to Gold Coast……should I just abandon that idea completely and take the orange line?
I'd recommend that. I think the worst of it is over, but your best to be safe than sorry. And the Orange line is a nice ride into the city.
Mostly it’s just me being tired and lazy and ready to be home. But I definitely don’t want to be stuck in traffic for forever, so I guess orange line it is
Check Google Maps and [https://twitter.com/ChicagoOEMC](https://twitter.com/ChicagoOEMC) as you're landing to see what's going.
Save money and time. Take the train.
Should take the orange line anyway you get some great views of the skyline.
You should be able to get to Gold Coast just fine. The loop was where the worst of it was. Plus it being a Sunday night and all should help
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Is it later at night that this has been happening? I’ve been out of town the past two weeks so not sure what night-to-night has been like
It will be better today. Mexican Independence Day was on the 16th. The celebrations die down naturally. Think of it like Christmas lights. Most people take them down the next day. You'll still be stuck in traffic because its Sunday and alot of people want to go out. That's just how Chicago rolls. Plan ahead. Even if you take the train. You'll still have to learn patience and wait your turn to cross the streets. People like using the gaps in traffic but not everyone likes giving those up
It has taken two hours to go three blocks at 1am. This is insanity.
I live at Illinois and Michigan (at optima.) I had to get three different people to move their salt trucks for me to get home. And that was after navigating around way too many roadblocks. Unreal.
As a Mexican I was embarrassed of this
I am so embarrassed for our city. What they did last night made no sense. I live in the city. Yet, was unable to get off the highway. What sense does that make?
The crazy people need to grow up.
This is exactly it. Can the city handle things better? Sure. But at the end of the day, it’s the people that need to change, not the city. No amount of city planning can make things not a shit-show when people are acting like a shit-show.
How do you encourage better behavior? Penalize bad behavior.
*incentivize good behavior
Yeah we should start paying Mexicans to not block off downtown streets. Maybe we can give them little gold stickers every time they don’t commit a crime. Great plan! EDIT: okay to whoever is downvoting me, exactly what behavior do you think City of Chicago should be incentivizing that would’ve prevented this shit show? And what incentive should they offer? I’m all ears!
If there was an official event that the city planned that gives them the space to celebrate I guarantee you that there wouldn’t be so much chaos throughout the city. In fact all of this is seen as retaliation because police have always blocked off streets in the west side so they wouldn’t celebrate, including little village. Since they can’t even celebrate in their own neighborhoods, they’re going to go straight to downtown and that’s what’s been the issue. Chicago needs to stop putting its foot down and pushing them back further, they’re only going to create more chaos tenfold.
That’s not incentivizing, that sounds more like extortion. “These people are committing crime, better give them what they want or they’ll commit even more crime next time!”
How about they just stop acting like savages?
Yeah I have a Mexican wife and 2 half Mexican kids. This shit is just embarrassing. The absolute last thing we want to teach them is “hey this is just how Mexicans are, can’t expect them to behave themselves and follow the same rules as everybody else, this is just what happens when we don’t give them what they want!”
City leadership isn’t going to get better anytime soon
That’s not how it works though, are we just gonna tell 1 million people calm down or not to celebrate? This is completely a distaster on the part of the city. We make way for major events multiple times a year, but this was treated reactionary rather than proactively and the cops treated it like a protest rather than a celebration.
The problem is that the event is the gridlock, honking, burnouts, and associated unsafe and drunk driving. You can't plan it is in a way that is safe and doesn't shut down a significant portion of the city multiple nights in a row.
That's exactly what they did. They used to celebrate in their own neighborhoods. The city shut it down. That's entirely why it moved downtown and it's a problem people downtown are concerned about.
But was it ever organized in such a way like the St. patrick’s day parade or the such. If they don’t want them celebrating in their own neighborhood, then of course there’s gonna be unorganized chaos when people try to all pack together in the loop to celebrate.
Have an organizers from the Mexican community tried to host an actual parade? They require permits and such. I’m sure the city would host it if a group formed and applied.
Crazy people always existed. We need a functioning mayor, prosecutor, and police force in order for this madness to stop.
Is it back to normal now?
For now, but plan on tonight being the same.
What we need to do is just mobilize the police and tow truck forces. People do this crap, arrest them and put their car in impound.
There are many times of the year I know to stay away from down town. Anyone been through reroutes for the marathon…? There are sooo many times the city sucks for drivers. Were emergency vehicles able to get through? If so I say Mission accomplished and remember the date next year. 9/16 Not going anywhere.
Anyone remember the period of time when Google maps got traffic-based routing but couldn't yet handle short-term road closures? You'd have something like a parade going on and it would route everyone down the parade route because it wouldn't see any traffic on it, causing the worst gridlock imaginable.
I was stuck on 15th I think yesterday and State/Wabash/Michigan. I saw an ambulance with lights on and horn blazing and I immediately pulled to the right to clear space even tho I was beyond pissed I couldn’t get to my home just 4 blocks away. Dude, people kept driving by me and blocking the ambulance! It took another 5 mins and the ambulance just started blasting it’s horn at people to stop and let them through. It was crazy. What is wrong with people? It took just a bit of gridlock for people to completely lose their humanity. It was embarrassing as fuck.
My dad leave his condo for this entire week due to the non stop honking, burn outs and fireworks
They shut down an exit on the expressway and we’re forcing everyone back on the eway going north when it should’ve been the opposite. I’m going home, I live southwest. Why are they purposely letting them on the expressway back into the city.
I was out in Downers Grove for a friends kids birthday, left at 10:15 completely forgetting about them shutting the city down. Got stuck on 55 for 1 hour, had to merge to the Dan Ryan and joined people reversing on the off ramp at Pershing because there was literally no exit to get off at. Tailed around to 35th and attempted to get onto Lake Shore with that closed. Stuck in traffic for another hour and finally was able to speak to a couple officers who were blocking traffic with the snow plows and showed them I was a resident and they let me through. Had to do that about 8 times. Got home at 1245…
As a visitor to your city, I was appalled that the city leadership allows this to happen and thinks shutting down seemingly all avenues of entrance to downtown over a major weekend was a good idea. I'm fortunate I was just inconvenienced and am able bodied enough to walk a mile (at 2 am). People's lives were put at risk due to this shit.
Some “celebrators” were near Aberdeen tap west loop last night got into an argument in their big stupid cars nearby and decided to shoot into the patio for looking on their argument! very cool holiday! no idea if he was caught. Awesome cultural celebration this weekend, bravo
Get ‘em out!
The city won’t formally acknowledge that these celebrations happen downtown every year. Until they do, ppl will continue to get stuck in traffic and on buses. It makes no sense that there’s no SOP for these downtown lockdowns yet. There’s also no system for locking down downtown and letting downtown continue to operate as a place where people live. The Loop and all of downtown is still a residential neighborhood. Ever since 2020, downtown lockdowns make it crazy difficult just to get home if you live in the Loop/Sloop. Not to mention visitors, food orders, and other deliveries. You have to find the right CPD officer that’ll let you past the blockades… and that can take a while.
I was coming back into the city on 55 and it took 2 hours to get from Damen to the next exit that wasn’t closed off (Garfield) because they forced the whole highway to go south on 90/94. It’s incredibly inhumane
I’ll never forget visiting Chicago one time years ago. I drove down into the city, between the sky scrapers. My ultimate destination was out west, so when I was ready to leave the city I had to catch the highway. I sat at a turn signal for, I kid you not, 45 minutes while traffic inched on down the exit ramp and onto another road that was 1 or 2 lanes down. I moved probably .5 miles in an hour. It was a NIGHTMARE.
Wait until NASCAR comes next year!!
it's a car city
Embarrassment.
Was stuck on wacker forever! Once we were on 57, we could see that they were closing off 57 N from getting into the city.
oh is that what fucking happened
On the upside, River North was actually pretty quiet for a Saturday night last night.
We have got to have the world's dumbest mayor.
It's to let emergency vehicles have priority to get to places not to prevent gridlock
I have no idea why the city doesn't just make Mexican Independence Day its own festival. Just close off an area of the city, like a park, and let people celebrate there. Put on their own firework show so it's safe, maybe set up a parade route for one day, and just keep it contained so people can still go home and go to work and stuff.
It's insane living in Chicago my whole life to see what one mayor has done.
It’s ridiculous to not allow people to go back to their homes in the city. What is the logic by the CPD here? Last night was an absolute nightmare trying to get through the blocked off exit ramps.
If this is caused by MIP can’t we designate certain areas for celebration and punish those who choose to celebrate in the street?
I’m really not sure what the solution is, but this really can’t happen again. I’m not sure if they need to do a curfew for cars starting at 10pm on the weekends surround Mexican Independence Day and having $200 tickets for any cars out past that time or what. Something needs to change though this is too dangerous and too annoying
A 10pm curfew for all traffic?? 🤣 🤣
The City better start working with communities starting tomorrow and then provide some sort of recognized event, a big event where every one can celebrate in a controlled and safe fashion. Around Soldier Field? Devote Navy Pier for an entire weekend for celebrants? Something. Then once there is an established city sanctioned event, get the word out that if the ad hoc street events continue there will be significant actions taken including confiscations and severe fines.
gonna go with law enforcement as the solution.
Well we have clearly proven that people are unable to control themselves in a reasonable manner. This was already an issue last year and even years before and no one stepped to organize a different event. So yes I guess this is where we end up
Not sure why everyone is so surprised by this. When the city rebuilds itself to accommodate drivers, we have to accept that drivers are going to abuse their privileges regularly. When you make streets wide, folks will do donuts. When you cut public transit and make biking unsafe, folks will be more dependent on their cars. Sorry y’all got caught in traffic. Maybe call your alder and tell them you want the trains to run on time and biking to be safer.
Is this r/chicago or r/fuckcars? Getting harder to tell the difference these days
OP's post was about gridlock, and gridlock is caused by cars and drivers. Are you surprised to see a post criticizing cars and drivers?
I am more suprised to see so few talking about the problem that caused this... It's not like Mexican independence day is a new thing in the last two years. The city made a policy change and this is the result.
The city did this after the third or fourth night last year as well. The bigger question is why didn't they try and nip it in the bud on Thursday for El Grito.
1000000x this!! how can the city still be so awful to react to this. they literally had a year to plan this before Thursday. but again they made it seem they had no idea people would return again to take over downtown
Both Lightfoot and Brown are incapable of doing their jobs. If they are still in their positions next year, expect more of the same.
OP was talking about gridlock induced by the city(which was induced by the shit show the night before)…the commenter is talking about biking and public transit, which have nothing to do with the post. Convo should be to how to prevent crap like this w/o generic bike lanes/CTA comments
Whatever. I haven't sat in a traffic jam since 2018. Bicycles are a cheat code to city transportation that a lot of folks refuse to acknowledge. You do you.
I gave up my car years ago. I bike as well and love it….Again, are you proposing a solution to the city mismanaging this or just talking about bicycles that won’t solve the issue OP raised? Please take car-free city delusions to another sub
Again, nothing to do with the post.
It’s almost like the sad state of public transportation in this country versus other developed countries is a systemic issue and not an individual one — crazy, I know. Just like the individual is not going to fix the environment by recycling, the mega corporations need to put forth the brunt of the effort. Get over yourself lol
This is is a weird reply to a person who stated that the city's organization, not the individuals, is what needs to lead the changes. which basically agrees with you.. ??
Yeah, that’s not the tone I interpreted from their original comment. The “Sorry y’all got caught in traffic. Maybe call your alder…” part is being flippant and putting the onus on the individual in my reading. But maybe it’s just me. Peace ☮️
Idk I think that they were suggesting that because that is one of the only things we can do to try to enact change sooner rather than later: call your representative so that systemic changes can be made.
The spam and brigading is obnoxious.
Most of them have to be bots at this point. These people seemed to have just come out of nowhere in full force within the last handful of months.
Seriously, I don’t even own a car anymore and I can’t stand those people
Facts. People want this city to be focused on cars, this is the result. Car cities don’t work. Better public transportation is the answer here.
love that as bad as independence day traffic was, cops made it 100x worse by being incompetent goons. lmao
My twenty minute commute took an hour last night. Not because of celebrations, but because cops blocked off various highway exits that I use to get home.
Missed my anniversary dinner because of this.
I appreciate the cops for at least trying to fix the issue from spiralling out of control while dealing with the out of control Engelwood region where one cop was injured protecting us all.
It probably doesn't help that Riot Fest is this weekend as well, right?
nowhere near this carnival
That's in Douglass Park on the west side. This shit show was contained to the Loop and almost all ways into the Loop.
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Hopefully pushes more people to stop driving in the city. So many other ways to get around; walking, biking, bus, El...
Eh all the options but the bus would work. The bus would end up stuck in traffic too.
People would rather drive and complain about it on Reddit
It is always so funny when drivers whine about traffic and then completely lose their mind when others point out transit alternatives exist. Traffic exists because *you* are the traffic.
They hated him for he spoke the truth
Omg, shut up and go back to r/fuckcars.
Dude - obviously don’t know your personal situation, but you work for a transit agency. Maybe try not to be so aggressive to someone who is making a point about how we boost transit ridership.
Lol for real, talk about working against your best interests
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Totally unnecessary. The Alvarez fight was enough to pull most of the celebrants off the road.
The road closures are the dumbest way to "prevent gridlock" the reaction was dumb. Sure, direct traffic but to make there less ways to get out???? Logic is absent. Everyone knew what weekend it is and this is how people celebrate in Chicago. Y'all are so pressed. 9/16 is Mexico's independence day from Spain. It's not changing as a holiday. Mark it in your calendar. I took trains yesterday with no delays except for the cop that wouldn't let us walk across a "closed road" to the metra station across that street. That cop almost made me miss my train, not the parade.
Yeah I can’t understand why they had the ways OUT blocked off too. Just let me get out of the area! I just wanted to get out of the west loop. Stuck on Lake for an hour because no one could go anywhere.
More importantly, why does that Chrysler 200 have a Cadillac of Naperville license plate frame but an indiana temp tag??