Southwest just yesterday tweeted that they would begin to fly to O’Hare Airport in 2021. This would add to the services they have had for several years at Midway Airport. Below you can see their tweet:

We decided to see how our north side looks in Chicago and Houston. Keep your eyes here in the coming months for route specifics. pic.twitter.com/rtBTUCd1hN

— Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) October 12, 2020

Southwest has a giant presence at Midway. According to the latest statistics from the US Department of Transportation Southwest had a share of 96% of all passengers at Midway over the period of July 2019 to June 2020. In fact Southwest’s share at Midway is the highest share that any airline has in any of the 50 busiest airports in the United States. American and United have not flown to Midway for years and Delta just had a few flights pre-Covid to Atlanta and Detroit. Competition comes from O’Hare where both American and United have hubs so Southwest is somewhat limited in what they can charge in ticket prices.

If Southwest is so dominant then one wonders why would they want to have flights to O’Hare too. Southwest in the last few years has been pushing into several new markets where they have not flown before. The tweet mentions Houston but they also have announced new service to major airports like Miami and have been adding new cities in California like Palm Springs. With this, they will serve all the 10 busiest airports in California. Whereas most other airlines have been cutting destinations in 2020 Southwest has been adding destinations. Their goal in all of this seems to be a little bit like Walmart’s: trying to serve all cities / airports that have a decent size. Because of the pandemic it should be easier to steal market share from competitors and get additional gates.

Some say that Southwest will add competition to O’Hare and this would result in lower prices. In my experience Southwest really isn’t that much cheaper than other airlines like American and United. You do get benefits like free baggage but you pay indirectly for that benefit with the price of the ticket. The two airlines driving down the price of airline tickets at O’Hare the most are Spirit and Frontier. With these two airlines you pay for all the extras and the seat pitch is tight resulting in lower costs and ticket prices. Destinations to smaller airports where tickets are expensive like Northwest Arkansas or Huntsville, AL will remain expensive because Southwest will never fly to these airports in the foreseeable future.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone in these times that people are riding less on the CTA trains than they used to due to social distancing. One of the easiest places to get sick is to be crammed shoulder to shoulder in a small subway car with poor ventilation. People’s ability to social distance depends a lot on their social-economic status. The New York Times reported in an article in late March that even though in wealthier areas ridership has fallen sharply this was not the case in poorer neighborhoods.

This situation is not unique to New York. We can see a similar situation in Chicago according to data from the CTA. Now it is well known that the North Side is in general (with exceptions) wealthier than the South Side. The Red Line CTA train is the only train that links the North Side with the South Side. It is also by far the busiest of all the CTA train routes. I plotted the number of boardings on a daily basis in the graph below. The red plot is the number of boardings south of the Loop, the blue plot is the number north of the Loop, and the gray plot is for stations in the Loop (downtown) itself (Lake, Monroe, and Jackson stations). Not surprisingly there was a sharp drop off in the Loop because several people are working remotely instead of traveling to work downtown. But you can also see in the graph below that ridership fell much more strongly on the North Side than the South Side. (Note: Downward spikes in graph are due to lower ridership during the weekends.)

Below in the next table you can see the drop in passengers for each station on the Red Line. (Please note some stations like Belmont and Fullerton serve more trains than just those on the Red Line.) The stations from the South Side (those in red) top the list but even the stations that are at the top of the list for the North Side serve less wealthy areas.

There has been a discussion on why minorities are more susceptible to COVID-19. One reason could simply be that because of economic conditions they are forced to ride on the subway and are not able to work from home. I am sure the people riding on the CTA today are not doing it because it is fun or they are going out. People from wealthier neighborhoods on the North Side can work from home and don’t have to ride the CTA at all - an option several don’t have.

Station	Count work week 1/6/20 - 1/10/20	Count work week 3/22/20 - 3/27/20	% of remaining traffic
79th	28655	11503	40.14%
63rd	13624	5192	38.10%
95th/Dan Ryan	42747	16148	37.77%
69th	20192	7554	37.41%
87th	17062	5809	34.04%
Garfield	13451	4509	33.52%
47th	12501	4140	33.11%
Howard	23847	7127	29.88%
Jarvis	6617	1554	23.48%
Wilson	28927	6263	21.65%
Roosevelt	45906	9852	21.46%
Sox-35th	17213	3389	19.68%
Morse	19958	3880	19.44%
Loyola	18764	3627	19.32%
Berwyn	14801	2793	18.87%
Argyle	14161	2539	17.92%
Lawrence	12783	2271	17.76%
Granville	15707	2730	17.38%
Bryn Mawr	21267	3504	16.47%
Thorndale	13876	2002	14.42%
Clark/Division	34916	5029	14.40%
Cermak-Chinatown	16872	2284	13.53%
Chicago	57632	7173	12.44%
North/Clybourn	25901	3006	11.60%
Sheridan	23288	2373	10.18%
Belmont	56007	5158	9.20%
Lake	95063	8686	9.13%
Harrison	14485	1271	8.77%
Grand	47931	3956	8.25%
Addison	30155	2440	8.09%
Jackson	45634	3651	8.00%
Monroe	46340	3289	7.09%
Fullerton	69160	3803	5.49%

One proposal that has has been made by some is to turn city streets into pedestrian zones. This can be beneficial because people would be able to spread out and keep better social distancing from each other. One neighborhood on the North Side where this could work well is Clark St. in Andersonville. I have noticed when I am walking on the sidewalk it has felt a bit too crowded this spring. There is an additional benefit for closing Clark. We could have outdoor dining on the street which would definitely make it easier for restaurants to spread people out. As you can see below it would not be a big deal for drivers to detour around the closing. They would just need to take Ashland which I have outlined in green in the Google Map snippet below.

There is just one big problem why this wouldn’t work. When Mayor Daily decided to privatize the parking in Chicago they made a clause that forces the city to reimburse the parking meter company every time a street shuts down. The Chicago Tribune explains it well: “The mayor mentioned downtown, Andersonville, Logan Square and Wicker Park as neighborhoods where city officials may want to close streets — a complicated and potentially costly proposition due to a provision in the city’s parking meters deal that means the city has to pay for meters put out of commission.” Clark is shut down already once a year for Midsommar but of course it would cost the city a lot more to reimburse the parking meter company for 6 months to a year versus a weekend.

I found out yesterday from Streetsblog Chicago that the city is proposing to close Glenwood which is a residential street which runs parallel to Clark and does not have paid parking. It is marked blue on the map. Today there is already a bike line for a good portion of Glenwood so this would work well.

I did call my alderman in the 48th Ward to make the suggestion to close Clark. I know this is a long shot considering the parking meter deal fiasco. But if you feel motivated to call please do. Strangely Andersonville is split into 3 wards as you can see on the map from the city. Notice that Clark splits the 40th and 48th Ward unless you are “SOFO” (South of Foster) which is the 47th Ward.

Ward	Adlerman	Phone Number
40	Andre Vasquez, Jr.	773-654-1867
47	Matthew J. Martin	773-868-4747
48	Harry Osterman	773-784-5277

As you may have heard there is a movement afoot to have Chicago succeed from Illinois. I am not here to justify whether this is a good idea or not but it does have an interesting result - the rest of Illinois would become a swing state.

Now it is not clear what people mean exactly when they say Chicago would succeed from Illinois. I can think of three ways this could go:

1. The city of Chicago would succeed but all other parts of Cook County would stay in Illinois.
2. All of Cook County would succeed from Illinois. This means Illinois would go from 102 counties to 101 counties. (This is assuming no townships succeed from Cook County)
3. Cook County and all 5 collar counties (DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will) would succeed. With this Illinois would go down from 102 to 96 counties.

My gut feeling says #3 is really unlikely just because there are many people in the suburbs who would rather stay in Illinois than leave together with Chicago. However, I am leaving in #3 for completeness. Below you would see the percentage of the Democrat candidate for president if Chicago (and its suburbs) broke off from Illinois:

	Illinois Today	#1 Illinois w/o Chicago	#2 Illinois w/o Cook Co	#3 Illinois w/o Cook and Collar Counties
2000	56.2%	49.6%	46.8%	47.8%
2004	55.2%	48.7%	45.4%	45.1%
2008	62.7%	56.9%	53.7%	51.9%
2012	58.6%	52.2%	48.3%	46.3%
2016	59.0%	52.0%	46.6%	40.3%

Sources: [1][2]
Note: for calculation of percentages I only considered votes for a Republican or Democrat and did not consider third party candidates.

As you can see in the table above once you take out Chicago the presidential elections since 2000 would have become very close for Illinois.

The chances of Chicago succeeding from Illinois is pretty slim. The last time a state was broken up is when West Virginia succeeded from Virginia in 1863. However even if this is more of a thought experiment than anything else it does make the point that in the end Democrats would probably benefit more than Republicans. This is a bit ironic because it is mostly Republicans in Illinois, not Democrats, pushing this issue. The Democrats would get 2 more presidential electoral votes and would have great chances to win the rest of Illinois. Even in the Senate the Democrats would probably get those 2 extra seats with Chicago as a state.

Unfortunately one of the things Chicago is most known for is its crime rate. Clearly Chicago has a problem with violent crime but it is also important to keep it in perspective. Chicago is more dangerous than cities like Tokyo or Stockholm but is also safer than cities like New Orleans or St. Louis. If we look at the 12 largest cities in the Midwest Chicago does not look great but some cities in the Midwest have even a much higher murder rate than Chicago. Rate is per 100,000 inhabitants per year.

City	Population	Murders in 2017	Rate
Saint Louis	310,284	205	66.1
Detroit	670,792	267	39.8
Kansas City	484,948	150	30.9
Cleveland	385,351	107	27.8
Chicago	2,706,171	653	24.1
Cincinnati	298,116	70	23.5
Milwaukee	595,168	118	19.8
Indianapolis	870,788	156	17.9
Columbus	872,205	142	16.3
Minneapolis	418,971	42	10.0
Wichita	391,084	35	8.9
Omaha	449,388	31	6.9

Perhaps the biggest misconception with Chicago is that murders happen all over the city. In fact most murders only happen in a few neighborhoods. If we separate out Chicago into the 77 official Community Areas and look at the murder rate you will see most communities have an average murder rate but a minority of communities have rates that are quite high. For a reference I have included the rates of El Salvador (rate = 61.80), the country with the highest murder rate, the United States (rate=5.30), and Japan (rate=0.20), a country with a very low rate. Please note I also included Iraq (rate=9.85). Contrary to what you may see on the news most Muslim countries have a lower murder rate. Notice some community areas in Chicago even exceed the rate in El Salvador!

Source: https://data.cityofchicago.org/widgets/53tx-phyr - rates are yearly average for dates 1/1/2010-10/31/2019. Population is based on 2010 census.

Below you can see the rate in each community based on time span 1/1/2010-10/31/2019. Surprisingly perhaps Edison Park has a rate of 0.0 because they have not had a murder since 2002. Columns are sortable by clicking on column headers.

Community #	Name	Population	# of Murders	Rate
1	ROGERS PARK	54991	45	8.2
2	WEST RIDGE	71942	35	4.9
3	UPTOWN	56362	48	8.6
4	LINCOLN SQUARE	39493	8	2.0
5	NORTH CENTER	31867	2	0.6
6	LAKE VIEW	94368	11	1.1
7	LINCOLN PARK	64116	6	0.9
8	NEAR NORTH SIDE	80484	41	5.1
9	EDISON PARK	11187	0	0.0
10	NORWOOD PARK	37023	4	1.0
11	JEFFERSON PARK	25448	8	3.2
12	FOREST GLEN	18508	1	0.5
13	NORTH PARK	17931	6	3.4
14	ALBANY PARK	51542	28	5.5
15	PORTAGE PARK	64124	20	3.2
16	IRVING PARK	53359	28	5.3
17	DUNNING	41932	14	3.4
18	MONTCLARE	13426	5	3.8
19	BELMONT CRAGIN	78743	67	8.6
20	HERMOSA	25010	21	8.4
21	AVONDALE	39262	24	6.2
22	LOGAN SQUARE	73595	43	5.9
23	HUMBOLDT PARK	56323	230	41.5
24	WEST TOWN	81432	59	7.3
25	AUSTIN	98514	478	49.3
26	WEST GARFIELD PARK	18001	183	103.3
27	EAST GARFIELD PARK	20567	154	76.1
28	NEAR WEST SIDE	54881	99	18.3
29	NORTH LAWNDALE	35912	234	66.2
30	SOUTH LAWNDALE	79288	120	15.4
31	LOWER WEST SIDE	35769	48	13.6
32	LOOP	29283	12	4.1
33	NEAR SOUTH SIDE	21390	12	5.7
34	ARMOUR SQUARE	13391	11	8.3
35	DOUGLAS	18238	26	14.4
36	OAKLAND	5918	13	22.3
37	FULLER PARK	2876	21	74.2
38	GRAND BOULEVARD	21929	82	37.9
39	KENWOOD	17841	21	11.9
40	WASHINGTON PARK	11717	86	74.5
41	HYDE PARK	25681	14	5.5
42	WOODLAWN	25983	108	42.2
43	SOUTH SHORE	49767	208	42.4
44	CHATHAM	31028	153	50.1
45	AVALON PARK	10185	33	32.9
46	SOUTH CHICAGO	31198	138	44.9
47	BURNSIDE	2916	13	45.3
48	CALUMET HEIGHTS	13812	18	13.2
49	ROSELAND	44619	216	49.2
50	PULLMAN	7325	15	20.7
51	SOUTH DEERING	15109	40	26.8
52	EAST SIDE	23042	21	9.3
53	WEST PULLMAN	29651	126	43.1
54	RIVERDALE	6482	44	68.9
55	HEGEWISCH	9426	5	5.4
56	GARFIELD RIDGE	34513	20	5.8
57	ARCHER HEIGHTS	13393	12	9.1
58	BRIGHTON PARK	45368	74	16.6
59	MCKINLEY PARK	15612	19	12.3
60	BRIDGEPORT	31977	21	6.6
61	NEW CITY	44377	177	40.5
62	WEST ELSDON	18109	17	9.5
63	GAGE PARK	39894	78	19.8
64	CLEARING	23139	6	2.5
65	WEST LAWN	33355	16	4.8
66	CHICAGO LAWN	55628	171	31.2
67	WEST ENGLEWOOD	35505	247	70.7
68	ENGLEWOOD	30654	251	83.2
69	GREATER GRAND CROSSING	32602	186	58.0
70	ASHBURN	41081	54	13.3
71	AUBURN GRESHAM	48743	193	40.2
72	BEVERLY	20034	5	2.4
73	WASHINGTON HEIGHTS	26493	80	30.6
74	MOUNT GREENWOOD	19093	1	0.5
75	MORGAN PARK	22544	52	23.4
76	OHARE	12756	4	3.2
77	EDGEWATER	56521	24	4.3

Update: Replaced graph so it is more readable on mobile devices

Things have not been the greatest for American Airlines recently. Their share price is down over the year and they continue to struggle on several fronts such as the Boeing 737 MAX fiasco and the labor dispute with the mechanics unions. There have been several articles on-line complaining of cramped seats, no more seat-back video screens on most domestic flights, and all-around problematic.

I remember as a kid American Airlines was our go-to airline in the family. We could have just as easily flown with United Airlines as with American but it seemed American always had a better schedule and/or pricing. My first international flight, to London, was with American Airlines. When I lived in Berlin most of the time I ended up flying American Airlines when I flew home. In the last couple of years though it seems like American isn’t so great when you fly internationally.

Ten years ago you can see the intercontinental network of American Airlines from O’Hare was pretty robust. Even though American has never had flights to South America from Chicago, several major cities in Europe and Asia were served year-round. Based on the historic Wikipedia article from exactly 10 years ago today the following intercontinental destinations were served (seasonal destinations are in orange):

Map produced by Great Circle Mapper.

Since then the flights from O’Hare to India and China have been canceled. Today the only two intercontinental flights from O’Hare are to Tokyo-Narita and London-Heathrow. However the flight to Tokyo is 4 days/week and will be totally canceled on Jan 2nd, 2020. That means only London is left as a year-round destination, even if with 4 flights/day this city pair is well served. If you look at the map below of the schedule Summer 2020 you will see what is left.

Map produced by Great Circle Mapper.

It should be pointed out these destinations like Krakow (KRK), Budapest(BUD), and Prague(PRG) will only be on offer for the summer season from the end of May to October. They are really geared to summer tourists and not business travelers. More surprisingly many large airports such as Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Zurich are totally left off the map. What does this mean if you want to go to Europe? If you want to fly with American and you are not going to a hot tourist destination like Prague or Krakow in the summer you will need either to connect in London onto a British Airways flight or connect in one of American’s other hubs like Philadelphia. With Asia you have to connect in Dallas or Los Angeles because American doesn’t have Chicago-Asia flights beginning next year. It really is amazing how meager American’s network has gotten.

If you compare American Airlines you United Airlines you will notice how much more filled out United’s route map is. United has flights year-round to several European cities, still has flights to Asia, and even a flight to Brazil. This is especially surprising considering American’s market share is not much less than United’s.

Map produced by Great Circle Mapper. Note: São Paulo, Brazil (GRU) has been left off map because it is south of the equator.

American needs to defend their hub in Chicago because it is their only hub left in the Midwest. American being one of the big three global airlines in the US wants to have a hub in the Midwest so they can say they can serve all corners of the country. Giving up market share to United would be fatal in the long-run because worst-case scenario it could shrink to becoming a regional airline with international hubs only in Dallas-Ft. Worth, Charlotte, Miami, and Philadelphia. (I don’t think this would happen though even if they have really struggled in Los Angeles and New York recently.) They keep pushing to add new flights in Charlotte and Dallas-Ft. Worth but I am not sure they have a good plan for Chicago today.

I don’t think I would surprise anyone if I pointed out that rail service leaves something to be desired in the United States. Anyone who has been to Europe or East Asia can sing a song on how the trains are cleaner, faster, and more punctual than the trains here in the States. However I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that train service isn’t a total catastrophe here in the Midwest.

First off let’s be clear that the Midwest has the strongest rail network in the US outside of the Northeast Corridor. (Northeast Corridor is everything between Washington DC and Boston.) Chicago Union Station is the busiest station outside of New York. Most cross-country trains either begin or end in Chicago. The only way to travel from the East Coast to the West Coast by bypassing Chicago is one measly train via New Orleans that travels 3 times a week. Still today there is only one daily non-stop train between the Bay Area and Los Angeles that takes a crazy 12 hours to travel 464 miles. That is an average speed of less than 39 mph. Clearly in the graphic below you can see how Chicago is a really important rail hub for Amtrak:

High-speed rail the Midwest has a lot of potential. Here are some advantages:

1. The Midwest around Chicago is really flat. No need for expensive bridges or tunnels through mountains and valleys.
2. Public transportation is decent not only in Chicago but in many other cities around the Midwest. For example St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, and St. Paul all have trams which leave from the Amtrak stations. This is important because people are more apt to take a train to another city when they know there is good public transportation when they get off the train.
3. For rail to be competitive with the airlines the travel time should not exceed 4 hours. An airline flight itself is less than 4 hours within the Midwest. However because of going through security, having to drive to the airport outside the city center, and generally having to arrive at the airport a couple of hours before the flight makes flying more time-consuming.

It may come as a surprise to many but is some aspects Amtrak has actually gotten better in the last decades. Since the time Amtrak was founded in 1971 ten destinations have been served consistently from Chicago. They can neatly be separated into medium-distance and long-distance destinations. Long-distance trains travel at least one day overnight and have sleeper cars. Medium-distance trains don’t leave the Midwest and don’t have sleeper cars and can be considered day trains.

Long-distance	Medium-distance
New York, Washington DC, New Orleans, Seattle, Bay Area, Los Angeles	Detroit, Carbondale (Illinois), Milwaukee, St. Louis

Note: For the Bay Area the final destination was Oakland until 1994, since then Emeryville in California.

In the graphic below you can see the development of the train speeds since Amtrak was founded in 1971. For all the years except 2019 I took the first of the year Amtrak timetable available on www.timetables.org. For 2019 I used the current timetables available on the Amtrak web site. I took the fastest train available in the timetable.

As you can see most long-distance trains have gotten slower as the decades have gone by. This is somewhat unfortunate but this is the direction Amtrak seems to be going toward. Amtrak seems to think the future is in medium-distance trains. The Wall Street Journal has a good YouTube video on how Amtrak wants to concentrate on medium-distance trains instead of long-distance. Just this month Amtrak has begun to kill “traditional” dining service to trains that leave east from Chicago. Just to prove a point look at the photo of the pasta in the press release. It looks more like a TV dinner from the 1980s than anything exclusive. Considering people pay more than $1000 round-trip to travel in an Amtrak sleeper I consider it an outrage, but I digress…

However the medium-distance trains that connect Chicago are almost just as fast or much faster. The greatest improvement is with Detroit which I have marked in red in the graph above. Work began in 2002 to increase the speed of trains to Detroit to 110 mph. Today the fastest trip takes just 5 hours and 5 minutes whereas in 1971 the same trip took 50 minutes longer.

Even if Detroit has been a success story the same cannot be said yet for trains to St. Louis. St. Louis is marked by the thick gray line in the graph above. An Amtrak train from Chicago to St. Louis travels through Illinois the entire way until the last mile when it crosses the Mississippi and reaches Downtown St. Louis. Chicago Magazine had an article on how delays and cost-overruns have prevented faster trains to St. Louis. According to the article we should see faster service soon even if it has not been reflected yet in the schedules.

Even if you could consider Amtrak service to Detroit a success it could still be a lot better. Remember above to be competitive we need a train trip to be less than 4 hours but Detroit is a little bit more than 5 hours away. If we had real high-speed we could easily make the trip in less than 4 hours. As a thought experiment let’s say we would have a French TGV or Chinese Maglev from Chicago to Detroit. How fast would that be knowing Chicago-Detroit is 281 miles?

mode of transit	average speed	travel time
fastest trip on Amtrak today	55.4 mph	5:04
car trip according to Google Maps	65.9 mph	4:16
speed based on French TGV trip Paris -> Bordeaux	96.9 mph	2:42
speed based on Maglev in Shanghai	151 mph	1:41
flight from O’Hare to Detroit	176 mph	1:20

Please note for the TGV and Maglev this is average speed, not top speed. For example the top speed of the TGV in regular service is 198 mph but total average speed is less because the TGV having to travel slower when pulling out of Paris/Bordeaux, making stops along the way, and buffering for irregular operations.

My Take:

Clearly for the United States the Midwest has good rail service but it could be a lot better. I would be interested in seeing what happens to Chicago-St. Louis in the near future. Considering how many people there are in Chicago who choose not to drive better train service is a plus. Clearly Chicago - Detroit could be a lot more competitive with faster rail service.

Welcome to my new web page “Chicago Really Isn’t That Bad”. In my humble opinion there are a lot of misconceptions concerning Chicago. This city is much maligned in the press and by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Of course Chicago is by no means perfect and has several problems but it has several positives too. I hope with this site I can use my Midwest mannerisms and give a clear direct picture of where the city stands today.

Please send me feedback if you must. Easiest way to reach me is through Twitter.