why I think Chicago should NOT host the Olympics

I have been against Chicago getting the games since they first tossed out the idea of putting in a bid. Why you ask? Read on.

Size, Chicago is a large city, but not large enough to host the games. I know all Olympic games have some facilities and events that are not in the immediate vicinity of the games however there is talk about staging these events as much as 90 mins away, add traffic into that and it could easily double, throw an accident on those roads into the mix, it could triple or quadruple. That brings me to my next point, traffic.

Chicago cannot handle it's rush hour traffic very well, people are still going to need to get to work during the games so mix regular traffic with event traffic and you're going nowhere fast. Let's not forget that an accident on ANY major roadway here will snarl traffic something fierce. I'll throw parking into this too, our city garages are either over priced or jam packed. I try to go downtown with the kids on a weekend and we either leave at 8am to get to the cheap garages and wait til everything opens or we're stuck going at the time we need to and paying ridiculous amounts for parking. Street parking is at a minimum as well, a lot of residents in the city rely on street parking when they're home, I predict a lot of pissed off people if their spots are taken by game goers. Plus our roads suck, they're some of the worst in the country.

Politics. Chicago and Cook County are perhaps the most crooked political places in the country. Do your research or watch the news, I don't need to go into detail here.

Lack of planning. Mayor Daley would like you to believe that he has everything all planned out and everything is sunshine and roses. He shut down a hospital that served the low income residents of our city to make way for an Olympic Village. He'll tell you otherwise but the timing of its closing is really suspect and especially how quickly it closed.

Public transit. Cabbies in this city have NO respect for pedestrians or other traffic, I can only imagine it getting worse. The CTA and Metra services are great but can barely handle the daily ridership on heavy volume days where people leave cars at home for whatever reason. Chicago doesn't have enough time to fix this if they started last year.

Finances. Tax payers will get stuck with a bill, mark.my.word. Anytime Mayor Daley or Todd Stroger promises the tax payers won't be burdened, we always are.

Does it have a potential to be profitable for the city? Possibly. Does it have an even greater potential to be a complete cluster fuck? I'm willing to put money on it.

Chicago is a great city, I love leaving my house and seeing the Sears Tower (NO, it will never be the Willis Tower, ever.) as I'm driving down the road. Our city offers so much, I think it could offer so much more if we didn't get the games.