Included in CREATE is a plan to restore a flyover ramp between the former IC and the former NYC at Grand Crossing. The viaduct is still there (you can see it in an aerial), but it needs tracks to be laid. Amtrak wants the old NYC right-of-way anyway as a high-speed-corridor to avoid having conflicts with freight trains on the parallel line - there was an article about it awhile back. I suppose the high-tension lines would need to be moved, but this would avoid the crazy dance of switching that Amtrak trains must do to enter the station from the Air Line, and pull Amtrak and freight off of the lakefront line, allowing expansion of Metra Electric/South Shore, bigger station facilities, or a new rapid transit line.

Anyway, am I the only one to think that Millennium Station already has a valuable location closer to the Mag Mile, State Street, Millennium Park, and the museums than any other downtown terminal? There's plenty of office space in Lakeshore East and in the financial district in the Central Loop that's not far at all from Van Buren/Millennium Stations, and as I said already, it's optimally-placed for downtown attractions.

Converting the Air Line into a linear park may be shortsighted, but there's no reason that the line needs to carry Amtrak or Metra Electric trains. Hell, I'd rather see it converted to a BRT line, allowing buses to bypass traffic on 18th and access the lakefront BRT line.

You got lucky. Your ride last night must have occurred after 6pm? Because the red line was rerouted to the elevated tracks over the weekend up until Sunday evening at 6pm. My ride on the red line from the Randolph station to Addision was slow Saturday afternoon, probably mainly because of all the twists & turns on the brown line tracks from near Sedgwick to Armitage. Though really it seemed the red line train was moving slower than brown line trains typically go through that area. Does the fact the red line was 8 cars vs the typical 6 cars for the brown line require slower movement through the area? Or is it a difference between the types of trains typically run on the red & blue lines vs the types of trains run on the lines that area entirely elevated? Whatever the case is, it's too bad the tracks have to be sooooo curvy through that area.

What Chicago needs is the equivalent of the Times Sq shuttle--an underground train that runs back and forth between Times Sq and Grand Central Terminal, tying together the sprawled-out Midtown office district and allowing Metro Railroad riders access to jobs farther west.

A combined Millennium/Block 37 superstation shuttle to a combined Union/Ogilvie superstation could serve a similar function. People arriving from the south suburbs/NW Indiana/OHare can transfer to the shuttle and get to a job in the west loop.

This is awful. I've written Ron H. and Sen. Durbin with complaints (yes, I know, rational apathy should dictate that letter writing is lame and pointless, but my immediate righteous indignation at a modern day rails-to-trails travesty compelled me to ignore rational apathy). Is there really going to be no more public input on this? If there is, we should really get some civic organizing going.

Nothing really rational about apathy. Durbin is already inclined to listen to people interested in expanding passenger rail, and each letter his office gets on the subject is probably tallied--and if he gets a flood of letters complaining about train expansion but none supporting it, he is going to conclude that that is what the public opinion is. Now if you really want to be heard, you send a handwritten letter...

Everybody things converting these grade-separatd railroad embankments into linear parks and bike paths is such a great idea. I'm with Mr Downtown on this one, it's moronic because of the infrastructure costs. Rehabbing the Bloomingdale Line through Bucktown/Logan Square/etc was first estimated at $50 million, which by the time the multiplier finishes will be closer to $150 million....for what? A bike path with horrible security/safety/liability issues that a few people a day use a few days per year? Run some trains on that bitch, ditto the SAL. Real Estate and Construction costs are so exorbitant that giving up a grade-separated ROW seems unconscionable. Heck, just preserve it as weed-filled embankment failing all else, just cling to it.

That basically describes the proposed West Loop Transportation Center.
It makes way too much sense and costs to much to ever be built though.

^ Sort of. I'm essentially describing an East Loop Transportation Center (Block 37/MP Station) and its West Loop counterpart (Ogilvie/Union), both connected by a shuttle.

Time was, that role would be served by the Monroe distributor subway, which would have been cut-and-cover just below the surface and crossing above the Dearborn and State subways (obviously then bored under the River to hit the commuter station). In theory the Central Area transitway system would eventually include the Monroe line, which could hopefully be at least somewhat well integrated with the commuter stations and transfer facilities where it crosses L lines.

that's where I had my car accident 2 weeks after i bought my car! :hell: Can't wait to move downtown and finally get rid of my car.

Hasn't that plan been changed to an underground bus road? I think this might be a little bit more acceptable publicly than a rail plan that's basically an underground people-mover. Plus, the buses can exit the busway and go in different directions, and it can tie into the bus level in the West Loop Transportation Center.

Of course, the city still hasn't done jack-shit with building the Carroll Street transitway, which gets more needed everyday...

Anything that's going to be buried will be very expensive. Why spend 2/3 of the cost to get less than half of the capacity? If funding is going to be proposed for such a thing, then it should get bang for the buck.
As far as I know, there is currently zero active plan for Monroe, although at various times there have been heavy rail, light rail and busway solutions proposed for it. There is more than enough traffic in that corridor to justify a rail solution, though, especially with the growth in Streeterville and Lakeshore East, which with the original plan would have been tied into the Monroe subway. Streeterville desperately needs to be brought into the rail grid, and tying Streeterville, Lakeshore East, Millennium Park the Loop and the West Loop all together with one line would be idea. A close second to that would be to tie Streeterville to McCormick Place through the neighborhoods being built out between Grant Park and Cermak. Buses are good, but grade-seperated rail would be best.

Waiting to do this stuff isn't really an option - the longer we wait, the more we need it and the more it costs to build. The whole solution could have been built in the early 70s for about a billion dollars. Without a doubt, it would be the heaviest used set of lines in the city right now, but to build the Monroe-related portions of the 1968 plan now would probably cost far more than that now.

Whoever wins the White House is going to be slammed left and right by almost every single city for infrastructure monies - I hope Obama wins simply because he's at least said he knows infrastructure needs investment and, his being from here, would hopefully give us a leg up in the allocations.

Hallelujah!!! My signature has said this for about a year. The Bloomingdale "trail" makes me want to barf. I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Bloomingdale ROW should be used as the Airport Express. Do a satellite view and follow the ROW all the way to O'Hare. Then imagine it connecting to the Metra mainline alongside the Kennedy and all the way downtown with two tracks branching off and connecting to the Milwaukee subway NW of the riverbend and continuing into B37, or possibly a future West Loop transportation center as well.

You will have noticed that demand is low for East Loop office space. While clerical workers may arrive on Metra Electric and the L, managers (and the folks who make leasing decisions) more often arrive at Ogilvie or Union. That's pulling the office district west, so much so that Wacker is now the center rather than the western edge of it. East Loop office space is in so little demand that it's being converted to residential.

South suburbanites coming to Millennium Park or the museums once a year is charming, but it's not the core of Metra's ridership. It's a system organized (perhaps too much) around bringing suburbanites downtown in the morning and home in the afternoon.

Running some Metra Electric trains (perhaps the South Chicago branch) via SCAL into Union would allow the south suburbs better access to West Loop jobs--and help make the south suburbs a viable residential choice for West Loop officeworkers. Union is nearing capacity at the south end, but since Electric division trains wouldn't be serviced in the old Burlington yard, they could just run into Union Station on one of the riverside run-through tracks (fitted with high platforms) and have a step-on engineer to reverse ends and run back south.

I think the problem American cities face is with their reliance on the Federal Govt to fund transit expansions. The Federal Govt, by its very nature, has an antipathy towards cities and urban environments and will always hold a bias in favor of private versus public transportation. American railways and transit systems were largely built without the aid of large amounts of Federal money. In fact, the only significant national transportation system that has ever been built entirely by Federal dollars was the Interstate Highway System.

There are exceptions, of course, and in the past few decades cities have relied heavily on Federal dollars to build transit lines, but look at the end result--the construction of transit lines has virtually slowed to a trickle for a very long time.

Just as the city is trying to do with an OHare express line, has there ever been an effort to get a private developer to build a new route? Take, for example, a lakeshore route--connecting Streeterville, Navy Pier, LSE, the Museum Campus, Central Station, and McCormick Center together. What are the prospects of the city submitting a RFP to developers with the following stipulations:

1) The city will provide a ROW which can be leased to a developer for 50+ yrs
2) The developer must build a transit line, perhaps with the city pitching in a certain, small proportion of the costs
3) The developer must operate the transit line but may charge whatever he wishes and reap 100% of the profit. No connection to the CTA is necessary. And if the venture is a financial failure, the developer can declare bankruptcy and turn over the transit line to the city earlier, which will assume the rest of the costs (yeah, this part's a bit shady)
4) When the lease ends, the city has the option to either extend it or merge the established transit line with the CTA (or CTA's successor)

Isn't that how a lot of American urban transit systems evolved anyhow? Why can't the same be done today? Screw the damn Feds, I say. They're just too slow.

^Who would make up the difference between what people will pay and what it costs to provide the service? And who would pay for the construction costs?

It's only the smallest exaggeration to say that no one has ever made a profit transporting passengers. Virtually every streetcar line and rapid transit railway was either subsidized by real estate development, or was a scam that only made money for the founders' construction company and then went bankrupt. The story was much the same in the 19th century for railroads.

There are a few corridors in the world--Kowloon to Hong Kong, across Sydney Harbor, across San Francisco Bay, Brooklyn to Manhattan, Manhattan north-south, and maybe Lakeview to Loop--that have such intensive demand that they could pay both operating and capital costs of rail transit. I'm pretty sure that McCormick Place to Navy Pier ain't one of them.

^ Of course, that was just an example. What the city could do is open this discussion up to private contractors, who can propose routes in the city which would have enough demand to actually be profitable, if the city were to lease them the space/ROW to build it. I am assuming the contractor would build and operate the line themselves.

Isn't the city trying to do this with the OHare Express Line?

Eventually, Metra is planning to run the Southwest Service into LaSalle street, which would free up some capacity.

A private operator could probably operate an Airport Express service profitably, but the fares would be exorbitant to cover the capital costs.

I had to make a run to Champaign today and took Amtrak. Union Station and the trains were packed, way busier than I expected. My train only had a handfull of empty seats.

Are the Amtrak ridership numbers up from past years?