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Show Narrow Roads Cost More Than Highway Widening Chicago and Cook county vehicles travel 900,000 miles every day over the paved highways leading Into Chicago, according to the official estimate of government and county observers. Delays because these toads are only 18 feet wide Instead of 40 feet and because of bottle necks and traffic congestion con-gestion cost operators of these vehicles ve-hicles a minimum of $3,000,000 a year. To reach this conservative figure of actual traffic loss engineers assumed that the average speed on county pavements about Chicago should be 20 miles an hour and assumed that each vehicle loses but 4 minutes each hour because of congestion. This dally loss amounts to 8,800 vehicle hours. The ralue of this lost time In gasoline, wear and 'tear and delay of passengers passen-gers is at least $3 an hour or $9,900 ', a day. On the basis of 300 working ' days the loss amounts to $2,770,000. This loss does not Include the serl- J us delays on Sundays and holidays, when 823,000 vehicles use the pave- J ments as compared to 81,800 on week days, according to the government J traffic counts. |