Chicago has a similar problem LA does, it has a dense downtown area surrounded by miles of low density suburbs. There's no easy fix as a result, the issues Metra has parallel those of LA's Metrolink. Meanwhile cities like NYC and SF have a much easier time due to geography.
The SF Bay Area in particular has a halfway decent transit network because each individual county ponies up for it. As a result, you get multiple networks (SMART, BART, Caltrain, ACE) but it all works and counties are able to easily upgrade and expand their systems. It's a more efficient bureaucracy, even if it looks like trash on paper. The extra money from the state's HSR program helps push things along.
But, unfortunately you can't do that in LA or Chicago due to the geography. So I guess the best "solution" is to use state money to add more tracks to separate freight and passenger traffic. LA spend over a billion dollars building the Alameda Freight Corridor in the 90s which allowed for much more efficient railroad operations.
>>888720Because Illinois and the midwest is the middle child of America. Anyone with brains either stays in New England, or they move out west to California or the Cascades. People who don't like either coast go to the Gulf Coast (Texas, Georgia, Florida). So the midwest has both a brain drain issue (though not as severe in Chicago), as well as an issue attracting qualified professionals that (among other things) demand their politicians not go full retard. The affiliation with the "rust belt" doesn't help either, the death of US light manufacturing only intensifies the severity of the problems.
