According to a new report, Chicago drivers are experienced less traffic congestion last year.

INRIX, an international provider of traffic data, released its Traffic Scoreboard Annual Report on Wednesday, which shows congestion on the city’s many roadways has dropped by 23 percent in 2012.

According to the report, Chicago drivers spent 30 hours stuck in traffic last year, compared to 37 hours in 2011 — a seven hour difference.

This decline has dropped Chicago from its list of top “10 Worst Cities for Traffic in America.” The city was 8th in 2010, 10th in 2011 and now slides into to the 12th-worst traffic city.

Unfortunately, the reason for the improvement is not good news.

According to Jim Bak, INRIX’s Director of Community Relations, Chicago drivers can credit the city’s generally weak economy and high unemployment rate for the traffic improvement.

Read more at DNA Info Chicago.

Three cars get swallowed up by a sinkhole on Chicago's South Side. Photo credit Nancy Loo, courtesy of @NBC News Twitter feed.

Hour after hour the rain continued to pour.

Nearly 6″ of rain fell in just 30 hours according to the National Weather Service, flooding low lying areas and making some roadways impassable.

So by Thursday morning’s rush hour, Chicago area drivers faced some very challenging driving and traffic.

Expressways all over the Chicago metro area had to be closed intermittently due to flooding, including the Edens Expressway (I-94) which, according to reports, had up to five feet of water at the peak of the rainfall.

Underpasses, viaducts and other lower lying roadways on city streets delayed many commuters and in some cases caused vehicles to stall in places where the water was extremely deep.

“Driving into flooded portions of roads can be dangerous and even deadly, as flood waters can quickly carry your vehicle away,” said Illinois Transportation Secretary Ann L. Schneider. “Our crews are working diligently to ensure flooded roads are closed off to the motoring public and will continue to monitor the conditions to ensure safety across Illinois throughout the duration of this storm.”

Finally, at 3 PM all expressways within city limits, save the Bishop Ford, had re-opened–just in time for rush hour.

On the South Side, a few sinkholes opened up and in one case swallowed three cars. One man was injured as the pavement gave way as he was driving over where the sinkhole formed. The other two cars were parked. The man was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

A pedestrian is bathed in purple light as they walk through the tunnel below the Chicago Stock Exchange along Congress Parkway.

As a light mist fell Thursday evening outside the Harold Washington Library, two young girls helped Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Department of Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein flip the switch to light the Congress Parkway Streetscape for the very first time.

Emanuel plucked 7-year-olds Kalaya Sriver and Seda Curvey from the crowd to help make the metal trellises and glass pillars stretching down Congress begin to glow brightly in an array of purples, blues, reds and greens.

About 200 people assembled for the ceremony, which officially marked the completion of the two-year, $24 million roadway improvement project.

The lighted streetscape stretches a half mile from Michigan Avenue to Wells Street and helps show off the widened sidewalks, landscaped medians and a narrowed, better engineered and safer roadway. A full lane of westbound Congress was eliminated and the street was streamlined to rid Congress of its weaving traffic lanes.

“When I was passing President Obama’s stimulus bill, I didn’t know it would end in a light show,” Emanuel joked about the $9 million in federal stimulus dollars that helped fund the project. “Congress Parkway now provides a beautiful and innovative gateway into the heart of downtown Chicago.”

Read more at DNA Info Chicago.

These closures will include the full closures of the express lanes between midnight and 5 a.m. inbound and midnight and 6 a.m. outbound between 43rd and 67th Streets.

Those same lane closures will take place again next week starting Monday night, April 1st for four nights until early Friday morning, April 5th.

Drivers will be restricted to using local lanes only during the closures.

Starting Wednesday, April 3, drivers will face reduced lane widths and lane shifts throughout the construction zone through mid summer according to IDOT.

Lane reductions will also be put in place on ramps to and from the Chicago Skyway (I-90). The outbound ramp from the Dan Ryan to the Skyway will be reduced from two lanes to just a single lane. Inbound, the ramp from the Skyway to the Dan Ryan express lanes will be closed with access only to the Ryan’s local lanes until mid summer 2013.

IDOT says to expect delays, watch for signs, obey the work zone speed limit and be slow down for construction workers.

The Reason Foundation, a think tank which promotes free market solutions to society’s problems, produced a video of a presentation on a study on how to solve Chicago’s traffic congestion issues.

The study, based on market-based solutions, actually came out last year, but Reason only posted the video in the last few months.

The study suggests a combination of user fees, electronic tolling and new financing methods to reduce congestion and the number of hours drivers spent stuck in traffic. The two researchers say congestion costs the local economy billions of dollars every year.

If you have a half hour to kill, it’s certainly an interesting and enlightening look at Chicago’s traffic situation.

The state agency plans to spend over $400 million to improve the traffic flow and decrease the congestion where the Dan Ryan (I-90), Kennedy ( I-94) and Eisenhower (I-290) slam into each at the foot of Congress Parkway.

But according to Streetsblog Chicago,  there are a handful of organizations and transportation planners are at best skeptical and at worst highly critical of all of IDOT’s proposed plans.

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) believes there will essentially be virtually no improvement in commuter times, it will encourage less people to take public transit and there will be further environmental impacts.

While not surprisingly, the Active Transportation Alliance, which exists to support walking, biking and public transit, is fully against the project essentially saying the money would be better spent on promoting alternative transportation choices.

CMAP, which has to sign off on the IDOT plans before it can move forward, will hold a meeting in mid-March to discuss the project.

Read Steve Vance’s full story, “IDOT’s $400 Million Circle Interchange Expansion Won’t Fix Congestion.”

View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.

Downtown drivers are not responding well to the new protected bike lanes going in along Dearborn from Kinzie Street to Polk Street according to NBC 5 News.

The lanes are still under construction and motorists are not happy with the city for removing a full lane for motor vehicles, reducing Dearborn from three lanes to two and then offset parking by moving it closer to oncoming traffic.

“The Dearborn Street two-way protected bike lane project will balance roadway space to ensure pedestrians, transit users, bicyclists and motorists can travel along and across the street safely,” Chicago Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein said in a press release.

One wonders if the city considered removing the street parking along Dearborn altogether in order to keep three lanes for traffic? But of course, the city wouldn’t be able to remove the metered parking spots without compensating the new lease holder of the city’s metered parking system, Chicago Parking Meters, LLC.

That would have probably cost the city millions of dollars a year if they wanted to do that.

Plus, these are ultra fancy bike lanes. While the motor vehicle traffic will remain one-way, the bike lanes allow two way traffic and have special traffic lights just for the bike lanes every block according to the Chicago Department of Transportation.

When asked about the problems these new bike lanes may pose to downtown traffic at a press conference Tuesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel defended the concept.

And while other cities rely on such tired concepts lower taxes, tax incentives, keeping crime rates low, affordable housing and reducing the cost of doing business by keeping fees minimal to convince businesses to move here, Mayor Rahm Emanuel believes bike lanes is the key to bringing new business to Chicago.

The mayor was quoted by the Sun-Times saying, “It’s part of my effort to recruit entrepreneurs and start-up businesses because a lot of those employees like to bike to work.”

Construction began last Friday and the project is expected to be completed by mid-December.

Here’s NBC 5′s full story, “Not All Drivers Loving Protected Bike Lanes.”

Heads up downtown drivers.

Starting Monday, November 5th, drivers, bike riders and pedestrians headed downtown will lose use of the Wells Street Bridge over the Chicago River, for a full year while it undergoes major structural reconstruction.

CTA trains will continue to use the bridge during what is essentially a gut rehab of the 90-year old structure, except for two 9-day periods when train service will be interrupted this coming spring when another portion of the CTA’s infrastructure is rebuilt nearby.

“This is a great opportunity to fully restore the historic Wells Street Bridge, which has outlived its useful life, and is in need of a complete reconstruction,” said Chicago Department of Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein. “It has been in service since 1922, and has been a key transportation link for cars, trains, bikes and pedestrians for the past 90 years.”

Wells is a southbound one way street at the Chicago River and gets reasonably heavy use with an average of 12,200 motor vehicles every day according to CDOT traffic counts. CDOT says drivers heading downtown will be rerouted to either the LaSalle or Clark Street bridges. Since both spans boast even larger traffic volumes than Wells Street, the additional traffic volumes from the detour will most probably have a negative impact on congestion on both bridges.

CDOT has had placed electronic message boards at the work site on the street in advance to Monday to warn motorists who take Wells regularly they’ll have to find a new route starting Monday morning.

CDOT says the bridge will have all of it’s distinctive elements restored to preserve the historical 1920′s look.

The multi-million dollar project is scheduled to be completed by the end of November, 2013.

Photo copyright and courtesy of Vincent Desjardins.

Check out his impressive Flickr photostream.

Coming off last month’s 15th anniversary bike ride, it is again the last Friday of this month and time again for Critical Mass Chicago.

With cooler, and perhaps wetter weather on Friday, turnout will most likely be depressed–a good thing for drivers who will routinely be delayed 10-20 minutes by the hundreds if not sometimes, thousands of riders who have been known to participate in this monthly display of bike power.

Critical Mass steps off from Daley Center Friday evening at 5:30 PM.

Happy Friday?

The entire 26 mile length of the Chicago marathon race course will be closed to vehicle traffic for the race. This means no parking will be allowed on these streets starting at 7 AM Sunday morning. OEMC warns that police and Streets and Sanitation tow trucks will be removing cars parked in violation of the parking ban–a ban which begins as early as Saturday night depending on the location along the route. Streets closures along the route will extend until 3 PM, but may open earlier as the last of the runners finish the course.

Cars that are towed will be brought to one of the city’s auto pounds, which will cost drivers $165 and possibly the cost of a parking ticket too. If your vehicle does get towed, call 311 to find where it has been relocated. Historically, with a race course this long, hundreds of vehicles will end up at the auto pound Sunday morning.

Drivers should be vigilant about reading temporary signs restricting parking and make sure you move your vehicle before restrictions go into effect. It may be smarter to find a safe parking spot the night before.

Also, additional parking restrictions are in effect along the course beginning early Sunday morning. The race route extends north to Addison Street, west to Damen Avenue and south to 35th Street.

But OEMC also warns that there will be large traffic impacts Sunday morning and early afternoon as street closures along the route and surrounding the route will cause detours and backups.

If you’re going to the marathon, public transportation is probably your best bet.