There is obviously someone in City Hall who has the job of coordinating traffic movement via traffic-light operations, but isn’t doing it. Or, they’re doing an excellent job of making sure traffic doesn’t move. I traverse Cicero Avenue quite a bit. The worst traffic movement on it is from North Avenue going south to the Eisenhower Expressway and vice versa.

Instead of the traffic lights allowing for the smooth flow of traffic, we go from one red light to another, creating a very aggravating traffic slowdown. Is it a coincidence or is it a purposeful lack of coordination for traffic movement so that those red-light cameras can generate revenue from drivers who are only trying to get from point A to point B? It is also at the point where Cicero Avenue is at its narrowest. And it is being slowed down in some of the roughest areas as if to make us drivers sitting ducks. Why?

Chicago Avenue is pretty much two lanes here on the West Side. But for some reason that I cannot even begin to fathom, they’ve decided to take one of those lanes and turn it into a bus-only lane. Now if Chicago Avenue had multiple buses as it meanders its way through our side of town, I could understand. But there’s only one number 66 bus. There is no reason to cause hundreds of drivers to have to go in a single-file lane just so they can have an open bus lane for a bus that comes every 15 minutes. It’s not as if Chicago Avenue had a plethora of people standing at the bus stop, all waiting to traverse on it. Meanwhile, all the cars that need to be utilizing that street, which have paid their $100-plus city sticker fee, do not even get the right to use the city streets as they should be used. I need somebody to explain to me why we need these bus lanes? Westsiders should be irate!

Lastly, this is one of the first traffic changes that made me realize how much those traffic people seem to want to make us sitting ducks. For years, there was a left-turn arrow at Laramie and the Eisenhower. But you could also turn left on the green when headed southbound. Now, if you don’t make the left-turn arrow, you have to sit there and wait even when there is no northbound traffic coming. Yet another asinine decision we shouldn’t be tolerating.

It’s as if the people who direct traffic movement on our side of town do everything they can to make us miserable.