> I live in one of two Chicago suburbs notable for excellent connectivity to Chicago's transit fabric (we're on both the Blue and the Green CTA train lines, a m

> I live in one of two Chicago suburbs notable for excellent connectivity to Chicago's transit fabric (we're on both the Blue and the Green CTA train lines, a major regional commuter rail route, and a zillion bus routes). But people have jobs all over the metro area; to live here, take a job anywhere but the center of the city, and rely on public transit, you'd have to commute downtown and then back out, adding 45-90 minutes to your commute each way. Even if you don't drive every day, most people still need cars. Taking one of the few existing affordable apartments here essentially requires you to kick in several hundred dollars extra per month for a parking spot somewhere else in the area. This is more of a problem with our lackluster transit network than a problem requiring cars. If we just stopped investing into car infrastructure and instead focused on build new train lines to increase interconnectivity and updated our current train lines to run at least 80-100 MPH in the city, you'd be singing a different tune. I'm personally of the opinion that Chicago itself should have a massive congestion fee for the entire Central Business District and that the parking taxes should be ramped up massively both inside the district and anywhere in the city with a population density of 20,000 people/sq. mi. or higher even without increasing our transit capacity. That system should include an exemption for people with disability tags or placards; delivery vehicles performing a delivery to the area; and registered and taxed taxi and livery service vehicles. Currently, it's a $6/exit tax on parking structures in the Central Business District. I see no reason why that shouldn't be $20/exit or even $50/exit to truly discourage individual passenger vehicles there. Now, where you live, you're well below that 20,000 people/sq. mi. metric and not even in the city. So no need to get extreme on modifications. But, if we invested more in high-speed, highly inter-connected transit, you would not need a car.