How traffic in Lake County can get worse

Today, the intersection of Fairfield and Gilmer closed for 3 months so that they can rebuild the intersection to support constantly flowing traffic in both directions. From what I've heard, it sounded like a pretty typical morning commute for most, unless you were traveling on Route 12. I left my place at 7:15, got to the first back up at Volo Village Road at 7:19 and didn't get past 120 until after 7:30. Then I was good for a few minutes until the backup at Bonner. Now we're talking 7:45. 30 minutes to go 6 miles. It opened up again, albeit briefly, until a typical backup at Old McHenry Rd and then it was fine until Lake Zurich. My old job in North Barrington, which normally took 17 minutes, took nearly 40! I was going to Schaumburg today and when I saw 12 backing up again just past Ela Rd, I cut over to 22, traveled along the beautiful new bypass and right into another traffic stoppage where they are widening 22 between Buesching and Quentin. I eventually made it to Quentin and it was mostly smooth sailing the rest of the way to Schaumburg, but for it to take 40 minutes to get from Volo to Lake Zurich and then 35 to get from Lake Zurich all the way to Woodfield is just an abomination. Thankfully when I return to my job in Northbrook tomorrow, I'll be back on the Metra.

How the people of Lake County can gripe and moan about traffic woes, yet turn down a nominal sales tax increase year after year to improve the roads is beyond me. Hopefully once the Fairfield/Gilmer project ends in September, and the 22 and widening project is done later this year, things will ease up a bit until they start the I-94 widening project and then that will pretty much kill any east west route that needs to get to the highway.