Millions of tourists must be right

It's something of a burden to bear.  For the thousands of people who live in the New East Side not a day passes without hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tourists wandering their streets asking how to get to the lakefront and Navy Pier.

Long lines of cars snake into, and then back out of, the cul-de-sacs and private driveways of the New East Side as legions of tourists ignore the few tattered signs put up to direct them.  Once an articulated CTA bus got stuck back there and it took the better part of 12 hours to get it turned around.

The opening of Millennium Park only made things worse.  After all -- it only makes sense that the city's front lawn would connect to the lake and eventually on to Navy Pier.  But more than once I have seen a frustrated tourist raise an angry fist to a local when told, "you can't get there from here."

Well, some day maybe they can.

With the impending destruction of Daley Bicentennial Plaza to make way for the new Chicago Children's Museum, there are finally some serious talks about linking the parks and the lakefront in that area. it cost $20 million to do the same thing at 11th Street.  How much it will take farther north remains to be seen.  But a committee is starting work on it, and maybe there will be some logical relief soon.

Chicago to welcome transients -- It's a good thing

There's been a lot of talk among the lakefront set lately about the two new harbors the city plans to open.  The one at 31st street seems pretty straightforward.  But unless you live in the South Loop, who wants to dock at 31st Street?

The other is more interesting -- the new docking area planned south of Navy Pier called Gateway Harbor.  This area outside the Chicago River lock is envisioned as having 350 slips.  But more important than that is that 169 of those slips will be for transient vessels.

That means that, for the first time, people will be able to sail to Chicago, tie up at a transient slip, have lunch, take in a show, and then sail off back home to Michigan or the North Shore or Toronto, or Europe, or wherever they came from.  It's a fantastic idea that is long overdue.

Skippers pay for the transient slips by the hour, like you pay for parking at a parking garage.  High fuel prices notwithstanding, this could open up a whole new tourism avenue for Chicago.

Right now, the plan is to have both harbors open by 2010, but people in the know say that given the current state of the project, that goal is unrealistic.