i hated strollers. one of my first memories is being claustrophobic in one.

Rail News - CTA awards $25.6 million contract for O'Hare branch rehab project
 

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=...EgHHlJW0Vr7u2Q

The Chicago Transit Board last week awarded a $25.6 million contract to construction firm F.H. Paschen and S.N. Nielsen to renovate five O'Hare branch Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) stations.

The renovation is part of a $492 million modernization project known as "Your New Blue," first announced in December 2013......

Transit riders are warned to brace for possible service cuts, fare hikes
 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...ry.html#page=1

By Jon Hilkevitch
Chicago Tribune

Transit officials Wednesday laid out a grim scenario of service cuts on buses and trains, fare increases, layoffs and commuters returning to their cars in droves as early as summer if lawmakers approve Gov. Bruce Rauner's plan to cut nearly $170 million to Chicago-area mass transit.....

it looks like we're going to have plenty of nice stations and no trains to service them

^^^ I have a feeling it will all be magically resolved after Rahm wins reelection.

i wish i was that optimistic

Race Card being Played: And after he does win reelection Louis, the Black Community B E T T E R have a good 4 year supply of Industrial Strength Lubricant; and lots of pillows to very gently attempt to sit down on (Ouuuccchhh).

WAIT, NO -- I am not playing any damm "card" -- It's THE GAWD DAMNED F 'King T R U T H ! !

Are you saying transit, specifically CTA rail improvements over the past 4 years, haven't been equitable?

No, I don't think he's making that specific claim (but I welcome his argument if he is).

Most likely, the argument he is making doesn't have a place in the Transit thread.

See the fourth image on this page: http://www.grayline.20m.com/photo4.html it is a geographically accurate map of the city, with pretty colored lines representing CTA "L" routes; except that the lower right part of the map has no "L" service anywhere east of Cottage Grove Ave..

There is a lot of Chicago population east of Cottage Grove Ave. (N O T equitable, and I'm tired of not pointing it out - as it should be accounted for, and acting like it's OK, and acting like I don't know the reason for it)

Bonus Question Class: Does anyone know why the Dan Ryan Expy. alignment is where it is along Wentworth Ave.?

Notice how even on official CTA Maps the large SE unserved area, with a convenient CTA Logo to fill up the space (N O T equitable):
http://www.transitchicago.com/assets...tatrainmap.png

But alas, there is no solution......

I take it his argument is that the administration is racist because it isn't building the Gray Line, which is flawed logic considering the amount of money going into rail transit improvements on the south side/black communities over the past 4 years. I really hate when people play the race card on illogical bases it just comes off as extremely ignorant.

At least they have metra coverage. The Green Line use to serve the community much further west, but started to be scaled back around Harold Washington's term.

Given population densities I've always thought the northwest side of the city was the most screwed as far as L lines. You have the blue line and then that's basically it except for the tail end of the brown line.

Most of the current administration wasn't even born when the Dan Ryan was developed. The mayor was a baby.

Because most expressways were routed along rail corridors, and they needed an expressway going south. Putting it in the narrow swath between the Rock Island and the Chicago & Western Indiana railroads was logical, since that area was blighted and did not contain major business districts or neighborhood centers. It was admittedly a racial boundary, but putting the expressway somewhere else would have been more destructive to existing communities and expensive. If we were planning the expressway today, we'd probably put it in the same place, regardless of the skin color of the politicians and planners behind it.

Think about it this way: would the communities in the Black Belt have been better served by a huge hulking viaduct running down the center of King Drive, or a depressed expressway (with a new transit line!) skirting the edge of their neighborhood?

The big exception to the railroad-corridor alignment was the Eisenhower, the first radial expressway, which was built in place of the old Garfield Park branch of the L (imagine tearing up the North Side today with a block-wide trench where the Red Line used to be). That ended up being horrendously expensive, so the planners shifted to the lower-cost land next to noisy, smoky railroads for all future expressways.

Has anyone been by Wilson lately? Has demolition work started?

Yes, quite a bit.

They have demolished a few buildings, and started to lay foundations but it doesn't seem like much has been done tbh. Demolition of the west purple line tracks is imminent.

.

Im curious, how much does everyone think it would cost to install sound walls across the platforms in the highway median stations?

^ I've thought about this a bit. For sight lines, you probably want transparent sound walls.

http://www.acrylite.net/sites/dc/Dow...n%20Bridge.pdf

In that link from 2003, it was $2.8M for 1550' of acrylic sound wall, or $1806/foot. A 10-car CTA train platform is about 500' long and you need both sides, so you'd spend about $2.3M per station in 2015 dollars. Not insignificant, but you could do the entire Dan Ryan branch for only $20M, half the cost of one new station.

Nearly two grand a linear foot is insane. You could probably install inch thick bullet proof glass for that. And you know it will look like shiz after a few months with all the road grime, salt and brake dust. What they should have done was build a walled off station structure when they did the rebuild that essentially made a tunnel like station completely insulated from the sound and filth of the expressway.