In the plan here presented, the surface of the elevated boulevard connection at Lake Street would be only 11 feet higher than the present Michigan Avenue, and the upper deck of the new bridge would be only 16 feet higher than the surface of the present Rush Street bridge, and only 9¼ feet higher than the surface of the Jackson Boulevard bridge. Looking south, a pedestrian would see before him Grant Park and the improved Michigan Avenue; the view along the river, both east and west, would offer an interesting picture of the business activities of the city; on the north the wide avenue would end at the water-tower, beyond which can be seen the waters of Lake Michigan opposite the Lake Shore Drive. Thus the plan presents one of the most magnificent highways of the world. It seizes and develops the finest opportunity which Chicago possesses for this purpose. The people of Chicago, during the past twenty-five years, have expended more than $220,000,000 in permanent improvements. This fact proves conclusively that the city is bent on increasing its traffic facilities; yet because there has been no comprehensive plan for development of city thoroughfares, much of this work must now be done over again. The proposed connecting boulevard is but one detail in the plan of a great city, but it is one of the most important. Unless the Lake front is dealt with as one great thoroughfare, there is no excuse for the expenditure of a large sum of money on a single span of it. This great improvement will come because it is a part of a plan which provides a basis of street circulation, and which will weld and unify the three detached sides of Chicago; because it will improve facilities for commercial traffic, and at the same time preserve for the people the uninterrupted use of their greatest and most attractive highway. [Illustration: CXIX. CHICAGO. SKETCH PLAN OF THE INTERSECTION OF MICHIGAN AVENUE AND TWELFTH STREET. COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY COMMERCIAL CLUB OF CHICAGO] No less important than the widening and extension of Michigan Avenue is the improvement of Halsted Street, often called “the king of streets” by reason of its extreme length. This street begins near the Lake, two and a half miles north of Lincoln Park, and thence runs directly south through the center of population of Chicago to the southern city limits and beyond them to Chicago Heights, a distance in the city of over twenty miles. This street will inevitably be called upon to bear a very heavy burden of traffic. One of the longest business streets in the world, it is bound to become also one of the most important. The necessity for widening Halsted Street becomes apparent when one considers that this thoroughfare, situated midway between Michigan and Ashland avenues, is already congested by reason of the traffic poured into it by those important diagonals, Milwaukee Avenue on the northwest and Blue Island Avenue on the southwest.