Just as soon as they make an initial Public announcement about this, I will start handing out thousands of fliers promoting the Gray Line as an existing rail alternative during the Red Line reconstruction: http://grayline.20m.com/cgi-bin/i/im...lier_front.jpg http://grayline.20m.com/cgi-bin/i/im...flier_rear.jpg

Mike, I think your handout makes it seem that the CTA already has a Gray Line. There's not enough distinction that the Gray Line is a proposal, and not an actual CTA route already in existance. They are probably gonna ask for a cease and desist order. You might want to consisder clarifying the two spheres you're advocating.....ride MED, now, in place of the Red line construction and pressure the pols and transit agencies to adopt your Gray line proposal.

David Harrison

http://chichapter.cmaanet.org/files/...esentation.pdf

The photo here labeled "Hubbard Curve" is looking south on Wells St. at Van Buren.

I wish they would, think of the publicity!! Also at the bottom of each flier it clearly states "Not affiliated with CTA or Metra".

And as I said, I won't do anything until they make a public announcement - then "all bets are off".

This is somewhat of a random question. I have recently noticed that traffic lights around my house have what I perceived to be a longer time when all four ways have red lights and pedestrians have white lights prior to switching over to parallel green/white lights. I can now often times walk half way into the intersection before the red changes to green.

Now I am perfectly willing to concede that I may be going crazy and this is how it always was but I was wondering if anyone else noticed this or if this was a new policy?

^^^ You're not imagining things. These are called leading pedestrian intervals, and they're put in place to increase pedestrian safety at intersections. Since the walk signal is given to peds before the green light is given to cars, the thought is that people will be in the intersection before a car tries a quick turn.

This was one of the things Gabe Klein mentioned as a priority when he arrived in Chicago (see here), so I'm glad to see them going in. Like you, I feel like I see more and more of them each week. Would be interesting to know how many intersections have received this treatment at this point.

On the south side of Fort Dearborn Station post office, in Grand Avenue just opposite an Indian restaurant, there is a pothole revealing (easily to any driver at 30mph) transit rail underneath. I think I remember seeing the same in Grand Avenue several years back before a full resurfacing. How long ago was there rail service there, and I wonder why those are still in there?

This may not be the best thread for this question, but the transit nerd quotient is higher here...

Grand AV was converted to trolley bus on Monday, Dec. 16, 1951 from Nordica to Navy Pier according to my copy of "Chronological Order of Service Changes" published by the CTA. In times of steel shortages, the streetcar tracks might have been pulled up for salvage. but otherwise they were just paved over, except beneath viaducts.

David Harrison

Those are probably the streetcar tracks for the Grand Avenue line (#65). Apparently it was switched to trolleybuses in 1951 and then de-electrified in 1973.

The Grand Avenue line was a neat one... it used to enter the terminal buildings at Navy Pier and run out to the ballroom on a trestle.

Generally, many streets still have the tracks remaining beneath the asphalt. If the original cobblestone paving was in good condition, it was far easier and cheaper to use that as a substrate for asphalt rather than ripping out the cobbles and the rails to put in crushed limestone.

In the trolleybus era:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3331/3...346fa8f8_z.jpg
source

I've seen tracks under Wells, Madison, Irving Park, Grand, just about any street that had streetcar service and has had serious reconstruction. Not only that, but the cobblestone under the asphalt would likely be far more durable. I wonder how much money has been wasted putting asphalt over cobblestone.

Looking for ideas
 

I'm taking a class emphasizing visualization of data, and for one of the projects I want to do some work with the CTA's per-station ridership data from about 2000-2011. The instructors want the visualization to include a number of interactive features. I could add additional data to the visualization to make it more interesting, but I'm wondering if any of you could suggest things you'd like to be able to do with an application that can manipulate ridership (or other, and if other, what) data in real time to display it in some sort of visual form.

So far, I'm thinking of makings 'L' lines different thicknesses based on date ranges, and stations different dot sizes based on ridership in a given date range.

Anyone else have ideas on how they might like to see ridership data displayed in a way that can be adjusted in real time beyond just date ranges?

I'll post the result there at the end of the semester (early May), especially if I get good ideas from any of you. Post here or even PM me if you don't want to post publicly for some reason.

The CTA's tricky to map because of the geography of the system, which is extremely sparse at the outer edges of the city and extremely dense at the core.

Before you do anything, it makes sense to consider the question of whether it makes sense to start from a geographical map or a topological one (distorted and not to scale, but shows relationships within the system). Chicago's maps are mostly geographical, while DC's are topological.

The problems with a geographical map could be numerous. For example, if you put a huge dot at Belmont to denote its high ridership, you can't put a correspondingly large dot at Clark/Lake because the dot would obstruct other lines and stations. Traditionally, CTA's solved this by doing an inset at a larger scale to show downtown, but I think this is clumsy for the kind of diagramming you want to do. On the other hand, if station spacing is information you want to include in the diagram, then the map needs to have at least some geographical aspects.

Thank you for the input. I plan to address those by making the map big enough that I can keep the size scales from interfereing with each other, and probably making it zoomable.

Did you perhaps have any suggestions on data relationships that might be interesting to see? It could even require the incusion of additional data sets, so don't feel limited by only ridership data.

Well, I've always wanted to map employment density against CTA service, but the data sets are limited. We have a state dataset called Where Workers Work that's by ZIP code, and there's the census transportation package, which is by tract but can be (I hear) hard to work with.

We think transit ridership varies directly with employment, but it would be interesting to see how closely the two trend lines match over a 30-year period.

FWIW, I'm the designer of the CTA map, both the big folded system map and the diagrammatic rail map that CTA uses with a Loop inset. I have a version that I use for other clients where it's all one diagram (no inset) but it's very tight in the center.

It would be nice to have the chronological record of surface system service changes mentioned above by David, but that's a huge GIS data input exercise rather than a data viz project. Slightly easier would be the rapid transit lines only, as in this map I did for the Encyclopedia of Chicago.

I simplified the Grand AV change. It actually went from streetcar to bus to trolley bus. I guess they used buses while they made changes to the overhead trolley wires. Plus there was a bus substitution on weekends, with streetcars on weekdays.

Under "streetcar abandonment"
Dec. 04, 1949 Buses on weekends
Apr 01, 1951 Streetcars discontinued

The trolley bus conversion was in anther section...."chronological...."

It would be quite complicated to map out. An "L" comparison would be trying to map out the equipment changes on a particular "L" line including when the line went from wood/steel cars to all metal and then to high performance cars.

Mr. Downtown...excellent map by the way.

David Harrison

Thanks for the history guys.

Mr Downtown, that Encyclopedia map could use some refreshing (Paulina Connector partial revivification, etc.); I guess you just have to wait until they call upon you for updating? Or is the Encyclopedia is not intended to be updated until the print edition is?

Yeah, that map gives the impression that the segment between Lake and Milwaukee is still intact. If only it were...

Unfortunately, that's a very good question. Jim Grossman, who led the project at the Newberry Library, is now in Washington, and the woman who had charge of the electronic edition was laid off by CHS three years ago. So someone new will probably have to apply for some grant money and go through a whole process that may or may not end up hiring me. I've offered to change most of the maps to color, and update a few, for a couple hundred dollars, but nothing came of it. Obviously they also need to update the web viewer now that some people use monitors bigger than 640 x 480.

Here's a shot of Milwaukee Avenue's old pavement & streetcar rails:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paytonc/2076881564/
To pre-emptively answer the inevitable question, you can tell that the old streetcar rails are in awful shape and would be nearly impossible to excavate.

As much as we might complain about asphalt, it's much smoother than stones. You can blame us cyclists for encouraging the switch.

Metra adds ticket vending machines at downtown Chicago stations
 

http://www.progressiverailroading.co...ations--30259#

Metra recently installed credit card ticket vending machines at three downtown Chicago terminals.

Three machines were installed at Union Station, two at the Ogilvie Transportation Center and two at LaSalle Street Station. The commuter-rail agency already employs 31 credit card vending machines at the busiest stations on the Metra Electric Line, including that line’s two downtown stations, Millennium and Van Buren.

This spring, Metra plans to install additional machines at the McCormick Place and Route 59 stations. The agency has purchased 43 machines, which cost about $2 million.

Passengers can use the machines to purchase one-way, 10-ride and monthly tickets.