Willow Springs built a brand new downtown next to the heritage corridor, and it never really had one before. Its about half completed, partially stalled by the recession.

Grayslake does have a traditional downtown, but the Metra stations in town are not located there. Despite this, Grayslake has seen some infill development.

Two questions:

I thought the Clark/Lasalle/Division Red Line station (re)construction was supposed to start this summer. I can't find any info about it on the CDOT site - anyone know when it's actually going to start?

For the Wells Street bridge reconstruction, which is supposed to start this coming December, anyone know what sort of Brown Line impact that will have?

Re Brown Line, expected closure from Dec 2012 - Dec 2013. The impact will be minimal, meaning most work will be done on the weekend and/or offpeak hours. If worst comes to worst, I foresee them running Brown via Red Line subway, and through routing to Midway OR simply end service at Mart as they have in the past.

Re Clark/Division, from what I've read they had to borrow money from the Clark/Division project to pay for Grand...so it's been delayed.

Unless they had to borrow a second time, that's not the case. They were fully funded again as of earlier this year.

I saw a drilling rig doing soil testing at the intersection/on the sidewalks a few days back. Probably wasn't noticed since they're resurfacing LaSalle.

CDOT already awarded the construction contract for Clark/Division which came in well under budget, and a good chunk of the utility relocation work is already complete.

That's good hustle!

Glad to see the project is ready to go. Possibly the reason we haven't heard more is that the work will not affect the existing mezzanine for over a year. I do expect lane reductions on Division and LaSalle though.

Does anyone know why they do this around bus stops after re-paving a road? Do they have to compensate for the weight of the bus?

Tonight
http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...N/8b56c34b.jpg

short answer: yes. I think time out chicago had it as their question of the week in the last year. And could probably give a more eloquent answer.

Yes-- in other cities it is quite typical for major bus stops to be paved with concrete while the surrounding area is asphalt. I haven't noticed that here though. I do, however, occasionally notice while biking the results of a bus stop that was not properly supported.

Buses are heavy.

It's not just the weight, it's also the heat from the underside of the bus softening the asphalt and causing deeper ruts. That's why it's usually just at the stops, although I think the city is foolish not to pave the entire right lane on North Michigan and State Street through the Loop in concrete. You get buses lined up the entire length at rush hour, and you can see literal waves in the asphalt after a couple summers. Seems much more rational just to pave the whole lane in concrete.

They've only been doing it in Chicago for about 10 years, and only in certain areas or as streets get completely rebuilt, not just resurfaced.

Cool! Didn't know about the Willow Springs development. I drove down Archer a few months ago but I don't think I noticed it.

Now, if only service on the Heritage Corridor didn't suck so much...

Or even better, an attractive permeable paver on top a base suitable for the weight. Too much damned concrete in the US.

^That's good for the first year, but once it clogs with fines, you've just got extremely expensive concrete.

^ What're "fines"?

Just for that, I'm going to ask you a traffic question. (This has been niggling me for a long time.) Why are all the traffic signals at a busy intersection sometimes switched to flash red? They're just broken enough that they can't work correctly, yet not quite so broken that they can't flash red? Seems like that'd be a narrow range of circumstances. I mean you almost never see them completely dead, which you'd think would be the more common ailment. Is this just a question of a single green or a single yellow not working, so they dumb the whole thing down to red-flashing?

I've always assumed that, for whatever reason, it means that the lights have lost connection to the control-box on the corner and they're wired to flash-red when that happens as really the only plausible and safe reaction if, for example, the North-facing lights can't be properly coordinated with the East-facing lights. If you can't coordinate perpendicular lights, then flashing red is the only control you can give without risking an accident.

Just to be clear, we're not talking about an intentional downgrade of a signal to a four-way stop, which often happens at sleepy intersections during the night?

Many high hopes for permeable pavers have been dashed by the discovery that small (fine) particles of sand and gravel collect over time in the perforations, rendering the pavers impermeable within a few months.

As for flashing red, that's the fail-safe mode for modern traffic signals that use solid-state or sophisticated electro-mechanical controllers. If one of the relays or controller boards fails, you don't want to take chances that one of the intersection legs will show the wrong aspect or no aspect at all. In many cases, though, you'll see that a technician is already there with the control box opened up and has switched the signal to flashing red while he replaces a control board.

In a total power failure, of course, there are no aspects displayed at all and you're supposed to treat the intersection as a four-way stop. A lot of intersections have folding stop signs mounted on the standards that the local police unfold until power is restored. These are common in the suburbs but not in the city, so they might be mostly on state- or county-maintained routes. Because Cook County doesn't put up route markers, few people realize how many arterials are actually under its control.

That's a slight mis-characterization. The collection of fines is a well known and studied process since the implementation of water filtration (100+ years). Permeable materials are designed with this fully in mind to mitigate this problem. With that said, I don't know the efficacy of these materials in real world situations as I haven't seen the data. I do know most permeable pilot programs throughout Chicago are trying to determine exactly how long these function based on loading/porosity/design and whether or not they end up being cost effective.

Interesting - so the problems tend to be with the controllers, rather than in any of the actual fixtures themselves. That's infinitely easier to triage, as you don't need a cherry-picker or cops to effect lane closures. Now, when a fixture bulb goes out (I've seen a lot more of this in the last year or two), does the equipment automatically contact somebody, or is the system reliant on an Alert Citizen calling 311?

Right, I guess I figured that would be people's assumption (plus, most frequent commenters here live in the city, where the former is a frequent nuisance and the latter rarely if ever occurs).

Now let me throw in something related a lot of people might not know about. I haven't seen these for eons, but a long time ago (let's just say late last century) on a drive in rural New England you could encounter flashing-green traffic signals. These were "sleepy intersections" that, at night, didn't even merit a flashing red or flashing yellow -- they'd go all the way to flashing green, meaning that you could completely ignore there was any light there at all, and not worry about yielding, not worry it was a green about to turn yellow, but just feel free to continue zipping along. Remarkably driver-friendly. I'd guess that nowadays any accident that occurred there could result in an injured person suing the town/county/state for negligence in not at least warning drivers of an intersection with a flashing yellow or something, so I wouldn't be surprised if they don't exist anymore.

I actually have a vague recollection of flashing green being taught in driver's ed, so maybe it's something people know about, but I sure haven't seen one in the Midwest. I think that given the way narrow, windy roads connect little towns in New England, where there are few interstate highway options, maybe they wanted to lessen the noise impact of vehicles slowing down and accelerating just steps from people's homes at night -- as well as the (dangerous, in small towns) urge to speed up upon spotting each green, fearing it might soon go yellow.