The pool rides can be cost effective, but I'd still imagine that taking an uber or lyft to work once or twice a week is not an insignificant cost.

I agree, I think it's crazy.

Most parts of the city are served by transit - buses. As built, the city contained large (industrial) employment districts all over the place, and fast/frequent buses (or streetcars) connected people to them. Each vehicle had limited capacity, but the frequency was such that huge numbers of people could ride. Today, buses can't operate with the same efficiency because of traffic congestion and the increased cost of labor.

This is not a situation of building rail transit to new, remote places. It is a situation of putting in bus lanes, queue jumps, and other infrastructure to restore the surface transit system to the efficiency it once had. In some cases, like the North Branch, it makes sense to create a new bus route with a few new street connections and bridges. I don't see much need for rail expansion, either, although I do support more efficient use of the Metra system.

Any expansion the CTA embarks on should be one that further increases the connectivity of the transit systems the city has in place. Mile for mile, plans like the Circle Line (linking literally all the CTA lines and some Metra stations in a super-Loop), Clinton St subway (direct connection to Union and Ogilvie), or Brown-Blue Jefferson Park connection would add up to more than the sum of their parts, simply because you increase the ease and ability for people to go from point A to point B with the existing system you already have, without necessarily adding too many new miles of track such that a new rail line entirely would entail.

Although that being said, a line going northwest from downtown along the north branch of the river would be a smart move, especially since all that recently rezoned land is currently an blank canvas that can be molded from scratch, and there already exists rail infrastructure that can be repurposed for this use. At the very least, a ROW should be preserved by the city for potential future transit development.

Yes to all of this.

I wouldn't be opposed to passing on the circle line for the never gonna happen connector.

Seconded. Thirded. Fourthed.

This is the story of transit in Chicago. The city can dramatically boost rail ridership without increasing its population by implementing this. Make transit more useful, instead of just extending it further.

Manhattan’s subways system is so heavily used because the lines are so connected and interwoven.

A dense, interconnected subway system won't draw huge ridership unless the land use is adjusted to allow greater density. A Manhattan-like network of rail lines isn't much good unless you have the Manhattan-like carpet of dense midrise residential. Unfortunately, there's not much chance new rail projects could generate that kind of development. The Circle Line would cross many of Chicago's most virulent NIMBY hotbeds. Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, West Loop, Pilsen.

That's what Mr D is trying to suggest, I think... there's still huge room for ridership growth by simply encouraging more intense development next to our rail stations. The O'Hare Branch of the Blue Line may be largely maxed out for the moment, but there's still room for growth next to countless stations along the Brown Line, Orange Line, and certainly the Green Line. In many cases, that development wouldn't even need a zoning change.

I don't know I think having more of a dense web would be very helpful. Look at Munich. It has 1 million less people than Chicago, but the U-bahn has 1 million daily riders vs. Chicago 767 K riders.

Munich

8 lines
96 stations
64 miles of track

Chicago

8 lines
145 stations
102 miles of track

Chicago has alot more stations, more miles of track, and in a city with 1 million more people, connecting to 2 airports. But yet less riders. Munich's systems is more of a web, while Chicago is a hub and spoke. It's hard to get across the city with a hub and spoke. You can only go to the loop or along your own spoke easily. It's much less connected to all parts of the city.

yea i mean DePaul still has a soccer field directly next to one of the busiest CTA stations in the entire network

Holy crap, why have I never seen a map for this connector project before? That looks amazing. It essentially includes a lot of whats on my wish list into one mega project.. Clinton St subway, Carroll Ave ROW, NW transit ROW...
If obtaining a ROW along Roosevelt isn't feasible, there is always the St Charles Airline ROW to connect the lakefront rail (proposed Gray Line) to the Red/Green/Orange lines as well.

Yeah I know people that Uber to work. While I personally use rideshare as a last resort, I can understand frequent use for commuting from areas served, but not well served by transit. Especially for urgent meetings in the neighborhoods

it’s easy for me to say, wow what a luxury, but that’s because I have a cta station by my house and commute to and from downtown. If someone able-bodied is ubering from Fullerton-Lincoln Park area to the loop...well then, you aren’t getting any sympathy from me for expensive rides or rideshare taxes and fees. The bus or train should be the primary mode

It's great. I love that the South Loop actually becomes the South Loop, lol.

Good thing it hasn't been implemented, at least not with that routing. I wonder if some planners seriously overestimate just how much traffic is likely to go to Navy Pier during non-summer months and weekdays. Yea, it is the most popular destination/attraction in Illinois but I think having a terminus at Navy Pier instead of running a route the length of Illinois Center/Streeterville/N Michigan Ave and connecting River North L stations with an East-West route along Chicago or Grand would be foolhardy.

^ Navy Pier terminus aside, I still think that route is valuable because it gives an east-west route to the River North neighborhood, and is fairly easy to do since the ROW already exists. Once in place, you can easily branch off from there north through Streeterville (possibly along Columbus/Fairbanks) then loop back to the Red Line at Rush/State. Going south to Illinois Center and connecting to Millennium Station is also a very viable idea.

The layout of the existing transit system downtown is such that it's difficult to add or augment in a way that is clear and easy to understand.

The current system is not even all that easy to understand, the two subways were intended as the first phase of a replacement for the Loop, but now that we've made the decision to keep both, they don't connect with each other. Nothing in the downtown system was designed with a regional transit focus, so the L lines don't really connect to Metra very well either.

European cities, to the extent they face this problem, just go underground and play connect-the-dots, but Chicago's skyscrapers and their deep foundations mean that even subway lines have to (more or less) follow the street grid. Not that we could afford to build underground anyway, the last cost prediction for the Brown Line extension was $4B in a low-rise neighborhood.


That's why I like the Clinton Subway; it has been the most logical and simplest addition to the downtown transit system I have seen proposed. It uses industrial areas along the river to deviate from a grid a little bit, jogging from Kingsbury over to Clinton and then, on the south end, back over to Wentworth to rejoin the Dan Ryan Line. It fits existing service patterns, you could send either the Red Line or the Purple Line into the new subway while the other line continues to serve State St. It links Ogilvie and Union directly into the CTA system. Now that North Branch and the Related 78 site are being considered for large-scale development, the Clinton Subway would serve both.

4 BILLION to extend the Brown line?!! That is insane. That can't be right.

^ Extend to where?

To connect to the Blue Line at either Montrose, or Jefferson Park.

Kimball to Jefferson Park. About $950M/km. It's not a detailed projection, I assume CTA just took benchmarks from other US construction projects, probably LA's Purple Line extension is a good comparison. Also I don't know what the YOE (year-of-expenditure) is considered to be, that figure might be the expected sum after 10-15 years of inflation.

The Brown Line extension has not been studied in detail, but CTA keeps submitting it on their wishlist for CMAP's 30-year plan along with other zombie plans like the Mid City Transitway and the West Loop Transportation Center.