All this is a bit like naming planets that haven't been discovered yet.

Thanks Mr. Downtown, and everyone else. It's true that it may be a long time before color-coding becomes a problem. I only wonder if it would become confusing as colors become more similar in appearance. Like would the Gold line not be confused with the Yellow line? It might be better to execute the redeployment of the Yellow color and come up with a less distinctive color for the less prominent Skokie line, as was said. Maroon could be confused with Brown also, and so on and so forth. A directional naming system may be what it evolves to naturally since it's already the Green line to Ashland/63rd or the Pink line to 54th/Cermak etc. As I mentioned with the Paris Metro, the only way to know which direction a train is going is to hear the number and the terminal station (i.e. la ligne 2 à Porte Dauphine). In New York, of course, we have the advantage of Uptown, Downtown, and direction based on which outer borough it's headed to, but I agree with the directional theory.

Aqua is indeed a good color from a cartographic perspective, although from a conceptual perspective, it would be nice to reserve aqua for any future lakefront light-rail or BRT trunk line.

I'm assuming that the Circle Line, if built, would actually be CALLED the "Circle Line", while the other lines would retain their color names. On a map, gold would probably be the best choice, represented as a muddy yellow. There'd be no chance of confusing it with the Yellow Line due to their extreme separation at opposite ends of the map.

All the other heavy-rail proposals are, or can be viewed as, extensions of existing lines. Even the Clinton Street Subway would presumably receive a re-routed Red Line, leaving the State Street Subway for the Orange Line, Purple Line, or both.

Well, the historic CTA line names were a confusing combination of destinations and corridors. Lake, Dan Ryan, Milwaukee, and Congress were corridors, while Howard, Jackson Park, Englewood, Garfield, Humboldt, and Douglas were (more or less) destinations.

To the color-blind, the current color names are already just random words. I see that some signage is now using color stripes only, without the reinforcing words. Visitors don't know that the colored stripes are anything other than decoration.

Has anyone gotten any pictures of the North/Clybourn reconstruction?

All they've done so far is reskin the old building with the kind of beige brick you see on a suburban bank. It looks nothing like an Apple store.

Check out this Flickr set:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zolk/se...7621014018884/

Ugh to the sconces. The rest isn't horrible, but has about all the charm of a 5/3 Bank branch.

^^^ I was going to say, so apple, in all their progressive wisdom, decided that the beautiful moderne station should be "upgraded" to a cheap mcdonalds appearance... Good job Apple, way to shit up our subway stop...

At least Apple isn't touching the platforms, except to scrape/repaint.

Only Clark/Division and Harrison remain un-remodeled on the Red Line... :(

^ Did Apple have a say on design, or were they just providing funds? The only thing I remember about Apple's rights was regarding naming rights and advertising in the station.

Well at least the headhouse now seems to have more in common with the tacky cluttered mess that is the rest of the renovated downtown Red Line stations.

Futura vs. Optima? Futura wins every time.

This caption says "Apple's contractors" I don't know if there's any basis to it or not.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zolk/46...7621014018884/

I'm pretty sure that Apple contractors did the work, because that would avoid the government bidding process, Davis-Bacon problems, Public Building Commission, aldermanic approval, etc. It's why those of us working to get the subway stations listed on the National Register were completely blindsided: we never even thought about a private business doing the evil deed.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel...556,full.story

Reverse commute takes their time
By Dan Simmons
June 13, 2010

Amy McGee got to the bus stop and wrapped Carmen Cartagena in a hug so effusive it almost looked like a tackle. As two dozen other passengers waited glumly for the No. 606 bus on a recent drizzly morning, the women laughed and gossiped like giddy chums.

These two "bus buddies" shared the moment, a kind of we're-in-this-together embrace as they waited at a stop in Rosemont to begin the last leg of their grueling commutes.

Palatine Connector Proposal
 

I haven't posted for a while, hasn't been much of interest to post. But Palatine is updating their master plan for 2010 and in it I saw this proposed "Palatine Connector" route with stops. The 4 in green are ones I added.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...ctorUpdate.jpg

Now the plan doesn't make any mention of technology so I'm not sure exactly what "stops" is supposed to mean. A streetcar? But realistically I think this could work really well as a new Pace bus route, and it makes sense as a way to start reconfiguring the suburbs, especially if the bus is given signalling priority.

First, it provides critical access between the downtown Metra station and Harper College, and in so doing passes by a grocery store shopping plaza and Fremd HS. It then heads north past the Village Hall/Rec Center, the new Police station / library / office park and a residential midpoint (green) before hitting the big box retail area at Rand/Dundee. Palatine is land locked, so the 2010 plan has that whole area being reconfigured to add in mixed use developments, replace a lot of big parking lots and add back in side street access, while keeping it a main commercial district. Palatine HS is located just south of the Rand/Dundee intersection, so has access as well. At Harper riders could transfer to the 696 bus for most of Schaumburg.

The route is pretty short, under an hour round trip with stops. So 4 staggered busses would give 15 minute service. If it's that reliable, it gives the entire downtown core and everyone along that route car-free access to almost everything they need in town. And it allows much of the town to get to the central area for fireworks, festivals and evenings without a car.

What do you guys think about something like this, shorter, more frequent bus routes that tie suburbs internally together? Sure there's a big chicken/egg problem and no funds. But it would encourage denser transit oriented development, better access to the Metra and make communities more cohesive. As a long term plan to focus new developments it's not bad.


Edit: Okay, so this proposal is essentially just replacing the Palatine portion of the Pace 699 route that was cut in the spring, with the Harper to Sch portion transfered to route 696. Since 699 was cut due to low ridership, is there even any demand for this proposal?

But I guess that's the question. Instead of a long low frequency meandering route from Palatine through Sch to Elk Grove Village that nobody used, is it better to have a much shorter and more frequent route that just focuses on the high density areas, with transfers at the endpoints? Is that a better way to provide service?

I really don't understand why the bus goes up to Lake Cook and Rand. There's nothing there but used-car dealerships. That intersection has massive traffic on the turning movements, so you'll never make it pedestrian friendly, either. The proposed bus should extend to Deer Park, or get cut off at Hicks.

To make the transit service feasible in the short-term, you'd need some sort of major employer. Fortunately, Harper fulfills that role. The bus route, if it ran frequently enough and had nice facilities at Harper, might attract quite a few students and college employees.

I'm skeptical that a single 15-minute bus is enough to attract people looking for a transit lifestyle, though, especially in an auto hell like what exists at Rand/Dundee. Any new development there will still be pretty auto-centric functionally, although it could definitely be urban in form.

The details could make or break the bus route, too... building bus bays at each stop with a nice-looking shelter, and making sure that sidewalks exist in the area, would go a long way toward making the bus a feasible option for more than just the workers at the Wal-Mart.

It's interesting that Palatine is looking to redevelop the Rand/Dundee area, though. The mall with the Whole Foods in it is likely to get redeveloped soon, as Whole Foods is looking for any chance they can get to move into some nicer digs. They had an agreement with a developer to move to Kildeer about 2 years ago, but the developer couldn't line up construction financing.

Just as a matter of principle, I hate to see transit become balkanized, with Wilmette and Niles and Palatine running their own buses, paying inordinate attention to municipal boundaries, and not integrated with the regional system.

It wouldn't anytime soon. The long term roadmap has that entire north area being a new planned development. But that's years and years away, if ever. So the route would probably just turn around at Rand/Dundee and head back south.

I'm not sure it would either, not right away. But I think it could let a 2-car family go down to 1 car, especially for the central area where a lot of the condos only come with one space. The burbs are just too spread out with too many destinations to not depend on the car for a long time.

But if a transit corridor is established and all new high density development is focused on it, then usage will increase long term as density increases. Rather than try to serve all needs, mass transit should focus on replacing the numerous high frequency short trips that people make on a daily basis. And then use that pull to draw in more businesses and services to the areas people are already going to.


I don't want that either, but I also don't see a problem with routes that focus on interconnecting a community, if there are transfers at the borders. So a rider transfers at Harper to Sch. And Palatine already has the Metra. It'd take a lot of rolling stock to provide higher frequency transit along the line than the Metra already does. Why duplicate service?

There's nothing but low density residential to the North and West of Palatine. That leaves East and South. What I'd rather see is another Pace route that connects central Palatine to the Palatine Rd. / Arlington Heights Rd. shopping area, south to downtown Arlington Heights, south to the shopping at Golf, over to Woodfield and back up to Palatine. One loop that connects Palatine, Arlington Heights and Sch, along a route that's aleady carrying a lot of repetitive vehicle traffic.

Use one route to travel between burbs, and then transfer to a local that shuttles inside the burb. It's a different model, but when gas goes back to $5/gal, I think it would be well used.

Fire in Red Line Subway

Didn't the CTA just spend millions of dollars in 2008 to replace the wood ties with concrete ones? Why would there still be wood ties in the subway?

I thought they just replaced the brackets or whatever they are called that holds the rails to the ties. Part of it was just leveling the tracks for a much better ride. I don't recall seeing new ties during that replacement just brand new shiny brackets which of course are now covered in grime

Anyway, the smoke was being exhausted through chases right over by my building. I'll post more shots maybe later. I saw it at the tail end. I heard fire trucks for nearly 30 minutes but since I hear them all the time, I tend to ignore it. Had I gotten down there earlier you would see the whole street covered in black smoke. If you search around online you can find photos taken in the subway cars from phones. It's bad. The CTA is going to have some explaining to do. The way their spokesperson explained the situation is alarming. "catch fire occasionally" Whatever, how about catch fire never?

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4053/...81eae5d0_b.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4072/...6f00db6d_b.jpg

Those would be "tie clips", I think.

It's my understanding that the ties were only replaced with concrete in degraded sections. I know the State Street Subway has concrete south of the river, but I dunno about north... those may have always been wood.

Most of the tie replacement was in the Dearborn Street Subway - CTA really focused on that after the derailment 2 years ago, and they received a hefty amount of stimulus dollars to revamp the track over there.

I know for certain that at least some of the ties in the subway were replaced with concrete, and I'd thought they all had.

The derailment was actually 4 years ago.

Perhaps they only did concrete in certain sections of the Red Line, but I was pretty sure they did the whole thing that way, but I can't be completely certain. Hopefully someone can find out.

..............

Honestly, this seems like it would be higher. More like 200 B if you throw in wish list projects.

The creosote-soaked wood tie explanation is strange, since there aren't any wood ties left except in the subway at the special trackwork (like the crossover south of Grand or under Division/Clybourn). The amount of smoke was such that debris fire also seems unlikely. Given that it occurred at the curve, my unofficial and uninformed guess (I've been in Denver so have nothing first-hand to offer) is that the grease on the curve caught fire, producing a prolonged smoky burn without highly visible "flames." I suppose it's possible an old wood tie was left down there after the construction, and it somehow caught fire, but the apparent amount of smoke involved suggests more than a little half-tie being on fire.

Somewhat presciently, modernized subway ventilation systems are one of the many backlogged capital projects for all of the older, pre-UMTA subway systems.

Once again, Viva is on the money:

Crains:
CTA fire may have started when track grease ignited

The initial reports regarding creosote soaked ties were 100% incorrect - as Viva said, it is the grease that caught fire. This is very similar to a fire about a year ago in the same area.

The fire itself is likely caused by a large electrical arc that can occur between the rails in sharp curves. Throughout the system in most locations one of the running rails contains a large negative current for the signal system, and the unique design of the restraining rails in these curves results in the potential for a large electric arc. Between the arc, garbage, and grease, you have the makings of a smoky fire.

CTA has been trying to get an updated ventilation system installed for years, but like anything else, it would be very costly and there is no money. In all likelihood it was a very small fire - but it doesn't take long for a small grease fire to fill a tunnel with an unbearable amount of smoke if ventilation is lacking.

The Red Line northbound between Chicago and Clark/Division was agonizingly slow today... I'm assuming that was fire-related?

There may be some damage.

Speaking of grease. I hate walking along state between Bellevue and Oak where it's as if grease or some slippery substance was just poured over the sidewalks. Even more slippery when you walk across the subway grates. It was incredibly annoying and I have no idea where it all came from, but it stank horrible and the sidewalks were slippery.

http://chicagoist.com/2010/06/23/bik...s_to_chica.php

Bike Sharing (Finally) Comes to Chicago
By Lindsey Miller

Mayor Daley announced at the Bike to Work Week Rally last week that Chicago is getting a bike share program come July. He's been talking about this for many years, so we're glad it's finally happening. Chicago is following Denver's lead and using the B-cycle bike-share program, which seems to have been quite popular there since it started in April with 500 bikes and over 18,000 rides so far.

In Chicago, riders will need to have a membership card to get a bike and lock (helmet not included). Cards are $10 for one day, or $35 for 30 days, $45 for 60 days, and $55 for 90 days. The first half-hour on the bike is free, and each additional half hour is $2.50. Bikes will be available for pickup at McCormick Place, Museum Campus, Buckingham Fountain, the Chicago Park District headquarters at 541 N. Fairbanks Ct., and two downtown locations to be announced. Drop-offs are at any B-station, Navy Pier, North Avenue beach, Millennium Park, and any Bike & Roll rental station.
---

Given the price points, does anyone find this an attractive option?

B Cycle station in Denver
http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/4...4383849b9b.jpg
tracy out west / flickr

That's a pretty stiff price for bike rental, which is normally $20-25 per day. Odd that they're starting with the visitor market, which is already well served by private firms at many of those same locations.

This is probably 100% coincidental, but isn't that almost exactly where the fire/smoke was during the red line incident?

Is it possible that the two are linked? That something spilled on the surface leaked onto the tracks and eventually caught fire?

My guess is that some of it's from those nearby restaurants, whether it's spilled garbage bins or precipitation from grease-laden smoke, although some definitely sounds like left-overs from the fire and/or response.

The hourly charge seems acceptable, but what's with the membership card fees? That's just absurd!

I would use it if there are neighborhood locations added. Until then, its too pricey for its limited scope. Its not expensive if multiple locations blanket inner-city neighborhoods, because you wouldn't be on the bike for more than a 1/2 hour to hour at a time. This is how it works in Paris, you keep checking bikes in/out every half hour, and your rides are free.

This is also how it works in Montreal, where the central neigbhourhoods are blanketed by 5000 Bixi bikes spreaded over 400 stations. You can never more than 2 blocks away from a station. See the map. The pricing is somewhat similar to the one in Chicago: $5 for a 24 hours "membership" (you can also get monthly or yearly passes), and then it's free, as long as you keep each of your rides shorter than 1/2 hour. It's hugely popular.

if you could add this to your transit card (like I-Go) that would be great

When the Chicago Card was first promoted and introduced circa 2003-2005, the idea was that eventually it would indeed function as basically a universal transportation card: transit, car-sharing, taxis, rentals, possibly even parking, etc.

As with most strategic plans, this dream too only lasted a few years in reality. The current trend in the transit industry, and CTA is making some moves to join in, is to completely outsource fare collection to an intermediary, presumably a bank, to issue the fare media (card/fob/whatever) and deal with the actual transactions, customer service, equipment maintenance, and so on, with revenue then remitted to the transit operation on some percentage or fixed-fee basis similar to the advertising contracts. At this point, the more likely scenario than the current Chicago Card is basically you'd have a credit card with a smart chip, or possibly some little keyfob, issued by MegaConglomerateBank, for universal quasi-instant payment. Depending on the RFID technology, this could potentially even remove the need to take anything out of your pocket, and fare collection would occur more similar to Open Road Tolling.

CDOT went to bid for an Alternatives Analysis study for the Carroll Avenue transitway. Solicitation materials here:

http://www.cityofchicago.org/content.../Spec79089.pdf

Nothing too noteworthy. The original concept of an Ogden-Carroll transit line is officially scaled back only to the West Loop <--> River North portion of an eventual downtown distribution system that would also connect West Loop to East Loop. The study would be structured to conform to FTA Small Starts (under $250m) and New Starts programs. A small starts project, which based on cost would obviously be a bus project, could be up and running much faster than a new starts project, so there will be some interesting cost-benefit tradeoffs in a year or two when the "locally preferred alternative" is being refined.

^At this point I'd rather wait for new starts funding for a full fledged light rail link than settle for a lame underground bus that will probably instantly be deemed outmoded and ill-suited.

By the time they build the damn thing it will be too little, too late.

This particular route is much better suited to BRT than light rail, because you can do the circulation at both ends on ordinary streets without the engineering problems of light rail that eventually doomed the Central Area Circulator in the 90s.

^I disagree. I think the climate in which the original early 90's circulator was proposed couldn't be more different now, where more and more not just industry people and advocates, but everyday people understand and want a modern fixed rail system, because of it's "psychological" and real dependability and the huge generation of private investment that is understood to come from new public transport rail infrastructure.

I've been waiting for this... but I'm with Mr. D. Allowing the buses to transition onto street-level allows them to serve multiple destinations, and to detour around accidents and so forth. Street-running light rail may work in the sleepy downtowns of Dallas, Portland, and Charlotte, but in the extreme traffic of Chicago, it's just not gonna happen. There's a reason New York doesn't have light rail. In Europe, light rail is only a solution in suburbs or medium-sized cities. Of course, you can certainly use light rail in dense places, but only if it's grade separated somehow. You might be able to make it work somewhat if you shut down a street and converted it to a transit mall, but which streets can we afford to lose?

On the other hand, sending the buses from the transitway onto unmodified city streets with the worst traffic in the city is not the greatest idea. Signal priority is often bandied about, but it's not a good idea for the Near North, where the lights are already coordinated and signal priority would only mess up the system that prevents literal gridlock.

Prepaid boarding, on the other hand, and rush-hour street parking prohibitions (to allow for 3 buses to queue at each stop) would go a long way towards making the buses run more quickly. Michigan Avenue, in particular, really needs this stuff. I was at Water Tower today and was astonished at the 30-something people trying to board a 147. Prepaid boarding would greatly reduce the problem, and it would prevent tourists from fouling up the bus, in the place where the tourist concentration is highest.

Tend to agree with ardec --- bus can work fine if and only if it includes significant amounts of pavement with bus exclusivity or priority, with significant additional benefit from pre-paid/honor-based fare collection. To answer the question of "which streets can we lose?" the one that always comes up is Monroe, which one could imagine supporting a facility somewhat reminiscent of Denver's 16th Street, whose buses are very user-friendly and well-utilized. North of the river, one could postulate that Hubbard or Kinzie would make better bus malls than underground-out-of-sight Carroll Ave, depending on travel patterns in the area and whether the ideal service would be more streetcar-style (frequent stops, short trips) or fastest-possible connections between two or three endpoints (e.g. minimize travel time from the rail stations to Michigan Ave). While Carroll might seem ideal for said 'express' service, there is the consideration that Lower Wacker and Lower Michigan already exist, and depending on riders' actual origins and destinations, the travel market could arguably be served by a more modest investment in pavement/signal/vehicle projects for the 12X-series routes that already connect west loop to the Mag Mile/Streeterville/Navy Pier/Illinois Center areas.

I don't remember offhand --- when N-S Wacker is rebuilt, where will the access/egress locations be in each direction? I know headed WB/SB there is an exit onto Randolph, which allows for convenient access to the contraflow bus-only lane on Canal serving Ogilvie, but seem to recall that the NB/EB direction was more problematic for gracefully feeding buses.

Ardecila, I'm shocked at how wrong you are about this. Heard of Berlin? Rome? Prague? Budapest? Vienna? These are very large cities with street running light rail/tramways. Some may have forms of grade seperation (minor curbs, surface material) but they do a lot of mixed traffic street running. I see NO reason that a fixed rail system with as much grade and mode seperation as possible couldn't coexist and thrive on ANY street in Chicago. Are we forgeting that we used to have the largest streetcar network in the country?

^Largest in the world. Which we got rid of because the streetcars were always getting stuck in traffic!

^One of the reasons. Imagine if instead of converting to trolleybus and diesel bus, the CTA had modernized those corridors (always comes to mind:Ashland), done central row partial grade separations(picture any number of European examples), trolley priority signaling (was there a primitive signal tech at the time) and coordinated streetscaping. OH if we could go back in time and just shake those fools.

I've never been to those European systems besides Amsterdam, but I have ridden the grade separated systems in Toronto, SF, Boston, Houston, Portland, and LA, and I'm not sold. I don't find them to be that more efficient and faster than a bus. The most grueling line I've been on is the Green Line from DTLA to Long Beach. The portions of the trip that are completely separated from the street run fast, but at the beginning and the end of the ride, it feels like the scenic railway at Six Flags Great America. And to make matters even more complicated is that there's almost no traffic in the industrial area it runs through on the way to Downtown LA. It just creeps. In Houston, the light rail running down main street took twice the time driving. Same thing with Portland. I got off the train and just took a taxi the rest of the way to the airport because it was so slow. I used these as illustrations because they're relatively new, as opposed to SF, Toronto and Boston, which also run slowly. These ideas sound good in theory, but when the maximum speed is 25 MPH, it doesn't offer much of an alternative to a bus. Hell, I'd rather have dedicated bus lanes, especially in a city with never-ending commercial streets like Chicago.

Buses clearly solved that problem extraordinarily well:whip: :jester: :shrug: