Homeward-bound traffic jams Bryn Mawr Avenue at 6:00 P.M.Home-bound Andrew residents will only add to the congestion. (Photo: Roger Joseph)

LET'S DRAW THE LINE ON CONGESTION.

We Edgewater residents live with a lot of congestion already.

The streets are crowded, so traffic moves slowly, and there's no place to park. The buses and the El are crowded, and you frequently can't get a seat. It's not as bad as Manhattan, where you feel like you have to do battle for your little piece of pavement to walk on, but it's still not fun.

Let's take a look at how The Andrew would affect congestion in Edgewater. To do this, we need to make a couple of reasonable assumptions.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic on Sheridan Road at 9:00 A.M. on a weekday morning. The driveway in the shot is located about where The Andrew's garage exit would be. How will 200+ cars get out?

Riders wait for the bus in front of The Atelier, 5556 N. Sheridan Road. This picture was taken at 1:00 P.M. on a Sunday afternoon. Imagine how crowded it will be at rush hour if The Andrew is built.

Rush Hour Traffic Congestion.

First, let's assume that 200 Andrew residents would drive to work every day. Some may drive downtown, but others will undoubtedly head north or west.

To do that, the first thing they're going to have to do is exit the building. And that, right there, is where the trouble starts. Look at the photo at right..That's what the 5600 block of Sheridan Road looks like every morning at 9:00 A.M.-after the worst of the rush hour is past.

And Sheridan Road is just the beginning. You'll see more traffic on Bryn Mawr and Hollywood Avenues as well.

Public Transit Congestion.

Let's also assume that 100 Andrew residents would use the Sheridan Road buses to get downtown Monday through Friday at rush hour.

On weekday mornings, the Sheridan Road buses are already crowded by the time they reach Hollywood. With the extra people from the Andrew, it's going to be even harder to get a seat if you get on at Hollywood or Bryn Mawr. And if you get on south of there, it could be well-nigh impossible.

Of course, this problem could be alleviated if the CTA scheduled more service on Sheridan Road. But given the CTA's perennial budget crises, we don't think that's likely to happen.

And Even More Congestion.

The 280 public parking spaces at The Andrew will create their own kind of congestion. Basically, we feel they'll make the 5600 block of North Sheridan Road a magnet for drivers heading to buildings all over the neighborhood. And that will have a particularly hard impact on congestion at the intersection of Sheridan and Bryn Mawr, where east bound traffic trying to turn left is often backed up by traffic coming off Lake Shore Drive.

Now, since the proposed site of The Andrew is a parking lot already, you may wonder why things would be worse than they already are. Here's why: When the present parking spaces are not being used for a St. Andrew's event, they basically stay empty. When The Andrew is built, 200 spaces would be available to the church when it needs them—and to the public the rest of the time, creating more traffic and congestion at more times of the week.

And that's not a good thing. In particular, Hollywood Beach (formally known as Kathy Osterman Beach) is presently one of the undiscovered jewels of the lakefront. With 200 or more public parking spaces available a block and a half from the water's edge, it won't be undiscovered for long.