That covers the initial cost of construction, but doesn't it ignore wear and tear? The road used by 10 people is going to last a lot longer than the road used by 100 people or 1000 people.
So when you factor in that you're replacing the high use roads a lot more often, the costs will balance out a bit more than your example.

^ Yeah, there are plows when necessary, but the trains themselves generally keep the tracks clear, especially most trackage is used 20 hours a day and some 24 hours a day. In some cases, CTA will run work trains during non-revenue hours (e.g. on the purple express tracks) just to keep them clear. All railcars also have "sleet scrapers" that can be deployed to brush snow aside from the third rail; these are small flaps on hinges that lower to scrape along the third rail, when needed.

Of course. One of the CTA's snowplow trains is generally stored at Rosemont Yard. CTA benefits from having some tracks on elevated structure that snow falls right through, but the median lines and the North Side Main north of Wilson have to be plowed.

Mainline railroads in mountainous areas use spreader plows or rotary snowplows that "tunnel" through deep drifts.

^^^ See i don't think that it balances out as much as you might think. Certainly local roads in small towns are never plowed or patched much, but their interstates require just as much work as any other road. My mom swears that 57 has been under construction since she went to Illinois in the late 70's.

But really, this is directed towards the suburbs more. Think of snow removal. A snow plow drives a half mile in the suburbs and clears road for 50 residences, lets say. A snow plow drives a half mile in the city and clears a street for 300 residences.

I think you'd find that the costs of maintaining a street in the city, suburbs, and small isolated town are not totally dissimilar but if you divide up transportation spending per capita, i'm guessing that city people are much more cost effective to transport than anyone else.

I also think that if you compare $1 spent on infrastructure in a city environment versus $1 spent on infrastructure in a less urban environment, the $1 in the city will generate more economic activity.

I think what i've come to realize over the past page or two of threads is that it's not that i'm against roads. I mean, how can you be? They are convenient and necessary whether you have cars or not. I’m not against interstate highways nor 6 lane expressways. I’d much rather have us spend $1 trillion dollars on building luxurious expressways to Joliet than luxurious fighter planes. I just think it is about time we start allocating our transportation dollars where urban planners want them and not politicians or departments of transportation want them. Then I think things like transit, special truck routes, freight trains would get an honest shot. In the meantime I watch projects like the I-355 expansion on down to the expansion of Route 22 (half day road, NW suburbs) get all the funding in the world, while the CTA can’t get enough money to have buses whose windows don’t fly open when the wind blows or to keep its trains on the tracks.

A bit of encouraging news from the burbs. One of my co-workers got fed up with gas prices and is now using Pace to make his Hoffman Estates to Schaumburg commute. He's officially the first person I know to take the bus to work. He said the bus was half full, which is a major improvement.
There's no bus route that works for me, so I'll stick to biking 7 months of the year.

Ridership at Roosevelt station must be up a ton, it looks packed.

Any new news about the future of the CTA? I just recently heard that they are planning on getting the new trains starting new year, and I saw a few different layouts of what expansions they are planning to make and I was wondering if anyone had heard anything about it this as well!

I know it's a daunting assignment, but read this whole thread, you'll find alot of discussion about all these things. :cool: You can use the search tool at the top of the page to search for keywords to maybe help narrow it down (e.g. "Circle Line", "BRT", "slow zone", etc.)

^^^ Someone should put some basic future projects one the CTA on the front page like the rundown. You know, put possible future lines, slow line eliminations, and station rennovations on the front page along with their expected dates, that would be handy!

I echo your sentiment. People i know who would never take public transit are now learning to incorporate into their life and enjoying it quite a bit. Especially event specific service like the pace comiskey park express from woodfield.

And it seems like every few days i'm on my usual metra and i overhear someone saying "yeah, i'm actually on the train, it's much easier than dealing with traffic and paying for parking and it drops me off a few blocks from where i need to be."

I also here them saying "the sox are totally going to beat the cubs in the world series this year!" ;)

There is like 150 pages of comments the go back over a year. I am not really interested in finding out info I already know. I know they were planning the circle line eventually and I have a map of what they expect the CTA to look like in 2055. I will try to post it. I was wondering if there is any info on the gray line? I had heard they were going to try and build a line to run from McCormick Place through museum campus, past Buckingham fountain, and then on towards Navy Pier. I would love to see if this is ever going to come to life because I think it would be a highly beneficial addition to our system. And I know about the new trains I was just wondering if they released any photos of what the trains may look like?

http://www.gapersblock.com/detour/gf...p_for_2055.pdf

If you think that "map" is what the CTA thinks the CTA will look like in 50 years, then you don't know much since that map is just the imagination of someone not even affiliated with the CTA or RTA.

The "Gray Line" was a proposal by a private citizen (Mike Payne, if I recall correctly) that was presented (in very preliminary form with no studies or serious research attached) to the CATS crowd.

The Circle Line is partway through the public comment process, but no funding source is identified, and, at best, it's been sidetracked until the slowzones are resolved and, at worst, perhaps just abandoned since it was really a pet project of the previous CTA president, Frank Kruesi's, more than it was a solution resulting from a studied analysis of the needs of the city.

Yes I know that map isnt an official map for the CTA, but it was put together based on what many different people said they would want to see happen in the next 30 to 40 years. And I believe the Gray Line was a legit proposal because when I first heard about it I read about it on the CTA's website. There plan was to use the tracks that the Metra and South Shore lines run on I think? I just thought that map would be interesting to post on here, no need to get all defensive.

The new railcars will be somewhat similar to the new cars on the IRT lines in New York, though with 2 doors on either side. The exterior will be roughly similar to the 3200-series, with maybe something more interesting on the endcaps. The interiors will have longitudinal seating, with the same seated capacity of existing cars but much more standing capacity. There has been some back and forth on the actual seat materials, whether they will simply be benches a la New York or seats a la the current L cars; I'm not sure if this has been decided for sure yet. For the most part, the interior aesthetic will probably look more modern than the current cars. They will have LCD screens to display advertising and information (don't worry, the ads won't have sound), as well as digital route map displays like in the New York railcars.

Delivery of the prototype trainset should occur either Q4 '08 or Q1 '09, with about 9 months of testing to follow before the full order begins delivery. I don't know all the electrical engineering specifics, but it's a pretty big deal to integrate the new AC propulsion system with the existing DC traction power and cab signaling systems; lots of issues with electromagnetic interference, etc. The "next" order of railcars was planned to be another batch of DC which would have already arrived (I think procurement was to take place around 2001/2002 if memory serves), but the whole procurement was canceled and restarted when the decision was made to move to AC propulsion, so between creating the specifications and bidding/negotiating contracts, the contract wasn't awarded to Bombardier 'til 2006 - hence the major gap in railcar deliveries and the presence of the ancient 2200s.

That is very exciting. I heard they were leaning towards actual seats with stain resistant materials. Also I know trains will start coming in 2010, but they are only ordering enough to cover half of their fleet that they have. Do you know which lines might get first dibs on the new train cars as opposed to others that wont get the new train cars yet?

I wish it was possible to get the cars that they have on the barcelona system.

There are no dividers for each car (meaning you have a special front/back car) This allows you, on a strait track, to see from the front of the train to the end and walk from end to end without going through doors. I think it really makes someone feel alot safer on the train. Especially at night when its just you and one creepy guy who keeps yelling and running back and forth. I think it would be more efficient for big rushes too as it would allow people to equally disperse themselves among the train. I'm not sure how it handles tight curver though...


Other topic... There's no plans to add a stop between cermak and roosevelt, are there? Like something to serve the growing south loop on the green or orange line.

It would be cool to get better-integrated trains like in modern systems (Barcelona is but one example). The common reason given/excuse is that it would require a total redesign of the maintenance facilities, which is a reason but I'm not sure it should put the cars totally out of reach - we have to eventually get modern designs, don't we?

It makes perfect sense to add a stop between Roosevelt and Cermak, but if you look at the area it's a harder project that it at first appears. 16th Street would be an obvious candidate but if you look at the existing tracks there, and the existing buildings there, it become a very difficult, expensive project. There are a lot of tall buildings in the area, and there are four tracks and tracks merge in from the old subway connection when the State Street subway used to come up to what is now the Green Line (interesting note that once the tracks under Block 37 are done, if they finished the west-bound portal from the Blue Line tot he Lake Street "L", you could run the Green Line through the subways instead of over the Loop, possibly freeing up capacity on teh Loop structure). Then there is the split, where the Wabash alley "L" splits to the Orange Line and the Green Line at about 18th. Putting something at 14th woudl be too close to Roosevelt, at 16th is probably too expensive, and at 18th is the split so you'd kinda need two stations - one Orange, one Green, or have to choose which line gets the station and if you chose Green, you might as well put the station at Cermak if you're adding one south of 18th anyway. So basically, the only place it could be added reasonably would be along 18th on the Orange Line, but then again that "L" is about 2-3 times as high as a normal "L" track, making a station there really tricky, too.

So I'm sure they've thought about it, but jeez is it ever a hard question to answer. :-)

With apologies (seriously), but it wasn't defensiveness - it was condescension.

Anyway, just watch your use of the unspecific "their" because I'd hate to see people get the impression that the CTA failed to do something it wasn't even on their planning radar to do. :-)

This is the most significant reason. Curves on the CTA system are much too tight. The Red Line could theoretically handle some mild level of articulation in the cars, but there's alot of value in having completely interchangeable railcars. Which leads to the next point, which is the wildly differing passenger volume levels between lines, by time of day, and type of day. CTA ridership is so packed in the peak, and on some lines extremely light in the off-peak, so it makes more sense to have married pairs that can be joined to provide an appropriate level of service, rather than the fixed articulated trainsets of European cities.

Articulated cars were actually prototyped on the CTA way back in the day, they were called the 5000 series; each carset, which could be combined into multiple trains, was actually 3 short cars with articulated portions between, and I believe the trucks were actually at the pivot points of the cars. This allowed it to navigate the tight curves.

I think it basically ended up being too much hassle for something that could be better acheived with married pairs.

Every now and then there is talk of a Cermak- Green Line stop to serve McCormick Place, which could theoretically have a north entrance at 21st or Cullerton. This would almost definitely happen if Chicago wins the Olympics. The Circle Line concept also involves making Chinatown a transfer point, with an Orange Line platform and an Archer entrance, but (1) Circle Line is still barely more than a pipe dream and (2) this seems superfluous given Roosevelt transfer is mere blocks away.

Failing the above, a #3 BRT line would do some serious good, too.

In all, a Cermak Green Line and maybe an auxiliary farecard-only entrance at Archer at the north end of the Chinatown stop, and that would be adequate and reasonably affordable. Cermak/State also has some potent TOD possibilities.

So then is the Grey Line not going to happen? I had heard alot about it and I figured that would definitely get more attention because it would be a very beneficial new transit line!