Chicagoland renters and buyers are itching for walkable suburbs. Enter 'surban.'

[10023]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Shhhhh, don't say things like this. You might get branded as a horrible person

Too late. And it certainly doesn’t bother me.

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Metra is in another class compared to Tri-Rail. Metra carried around 17 million passengers in 4Q 2017, while Tri-Rail carried around 1 million passengers.

Per APTA, Metra is the #4 commuter rail agency in the U.S., and the #1 commuter rail agency outside the NYC metro (though BART, functionally like commuter rail, is officially considered urban heavy rail).

http://www.apta.com/resources/statis...rship-APTA.pdf

Well, Chicagoland is bigger and more populous than South Florida. But I still find the latter impressive since it's mainly car-centric. I would expect big numbers from Chicago and its suburbs.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

detroit - grand trunk/SEMTA from pontiac
milwaukee - milwaukee road from watertown
cleveland - erie-lackawana from youngstown
pittsburgh - B&O/PATrain from versailles
pittsburgh - P&LE from beaver falls

that has got to be a woefully incomplete list of defunct legacy commuter rail lines in the US. does anyone have a more complete list?

there were at least three or four lines converging on downtown st. louis at union station (largest single rail station in the world at construction) and some auxiliary stations...north, south, southwest, and west...it wasn't an organized system back then...the big one that i know specifically of was the missouri pacific (MOPAC) commuter line from downtown to pacific (as in missouri pacific because it was obviously a rail town) missouri. the longest string of railroad suburbs in st. louis county follow this line and many of the suburbs still have one or more extant stations that have been proposed to be resurrected as part of a new commuter line in this corridor. here's an article about the last day of service of the MOPAC line in 1961...



http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/m...fe9b5802c.html

there is also the extant wabash station in the far west end of the city limits that served local (express to downtown) and "regional" lines :

nextstl.com

i believe washington university owns it, now, and metrolink light rail uses the right of way under it:

rrpicturarchives.net

skinkerdebaliviere.files.wordpress.com

[Centropolis]

there were also electrified elevated lines from illinois...some of the el tracks have been renovated to trails.

stlbridge.com

here is an article about the rest of the el that was proposed in 1882...





https://nextstl.com/2011/01/st-louis...ansit-railway/

[Centropolis]

on the above figure you can see two more commuter lines, stations denoted as "20" and "23" that served the far south and far north to downtown that did not converge on union station, along with the previously discussed MOPAC and "W" wabash. i don't recall what the northern line was called but the southern line was the iron mountain railroad, denoting the fact that it was originally built to service the iron mountain iron mine in the ozarks. theres some sketches of some really crazy cincinnati-style bluff commuter stations on the far south end of the city that i've seen before.

[the urban politician]

Stories about the decline of commuter rail in smaller but older cities like St Louis and Pittsburgh are always very sad to read.

The car really fucked up a good thing, didn’t it?

[JManc]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

The car really fucked up a good thing, didn’t it?

No. The car did't do anything. Easily bought local/ state/ federal officials really fucked up a good thing by allowing the auto/ tire/ oil&gas industries influence policy.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by JManc

No. The car did't do anything. Easily bought local/ state/ federal officials really fucked up a good thing by allowing the auto/ tire/ oil&gas industries influence policy.

i don't think it was a conspiracy that put commuter rail out of business in so many cities. in the tier 1 cities, commuter rail remained intact because it was simply impossible to get enough suburbanites downtown without the aid of trains, but in tier 2 and 3 cities, where commuter loads were much less crushing, once every family owned a car, they could all just drive downtown and live according to their own schedule as opposed to the train company's.

from doing some research, it sounds like a lot of commuter rail service in many tier 2 and 3 cities was pretty limited (like 3 inbound morning trains and 3 outbound afternoon trains), and that the margins of viability were always fairly thin compared to the robust systems (that still exist) in places like NYC, chicago, philly and boston.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

from doing some research, it sounds like a lot of commuter rail service in many tier 2 and 3 cities was pretty limited (like 3 inbound morning trains and 3 outbound afternoon trains), and that the margins of viability were always fairly thin compared to the robust systems (that still exist) in places like NYC, chicago, philly and boston.

Though even in the NYC area, some commuter lines were lost, and proposals for reactivation involve megabillions. In NJ, especially, there were a number of lines that lost passenger service due to postwar-era stupidity, and NJ Transit has been exploring feasibility of reactivation.

One line (Lackawanna Cutoff) is in construction. There are two really important lost lines in Bergen County, through some of the wealthiest suburbs in the country (so NIMBYs) and an additional line through Central Jersey.

[Dblcut3]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

Maybe Cleveland? Didn't the Lackawanna had commuter service there up until sometime in the 1960's or 1970's? Also what were the origins of the Red Line before it was converted to rapid transit?

Speaking of suburban commuter rail in Cleveland, there's a huge transit oriented mixed use neighborhood going up in the affluent suburb on Shaker Heights. I hope other suburbs in Ohio can follow the same model. You can read more about it here. But other than that, there aren't really any good suburban rail connections into the city.