Is this a white flag on the international-style, long-seat configuration? Not that I have a preference either way.

If they want to better manage crowds on trains, the new articulated trains are best, but maybe Chicago's curves are too tight for that.

:shrug:

I don't see what's wrong with it.

If anything, I like that they've got their logo engraved in the concrete, gives it a sense of permanence. There isn't enough 'sense of permanance' in the way we do things enough these days, as it often was in the past...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That we all know. But as a graphic designer, I'm telling you it's bad.

Are there alternative designs for their logo? I'm pretty sure that has been the same logo I remember when I was a kid (90's).

Since the 80s. Nuff said.

It's not great, but it's just a company logo. Not sure how much better or worse it could be?

All they had to do was switch to some god-damn benches. As I have mentioned before, this is a huge step backwards.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../RATP_logo.png
Paris' city transit agency (this is an abstraction of Paris... circular city with squiggly river... plus a face looking skyward)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...n_logo.svg.png
Dutch Railways... conveys the motion of a two-track rail line, does not rely on text to convey meaning

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...enHft_logo.jpg
New Haven Railroad... prominent serifs conjure ties while the uprights of the letters resemble rails. note that this is subtle.

http://www.daylightsales.com/images/...0rail%2058.jpg
Illinois Central... letters spell "IC/ic" while also referencing the cross-section of a running rail.

For comparison:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...a_Logo.svg.png
The letters are fussy and inconsistent (each curve has a different radius, there are little points and tabs,varying widths, etc). The lowercase letters are set above the baseline, which is jarring. The letters have a slant - probably the designer's attempt to conjure motion - but it doesn't really work. The double underline is pretty awful, especially when the ends of the lines don't slant the same way as the letters.

The New Haven logo was arrived at after hundreds of crappy designs. The Metra logo was fashioned by some bored staffer in his basement.

all images courtesy of wikipedia

Are those better or worse examples!? Lol I guess these kinds of things don't bother me.

Third Chicago Airport
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2...eotone-airport

Discussion moved from General Developments thread:

Capital cost of BRT is roughly a third of LRT cost. Per-mile costs of both types of systems vary wildly, and it’s really hard to find any comparison studies not done by advocates of one type of system or the other.

What surprises most people is that the operating costs are also much less for BRT, about 60% of LRT costs, on a place-mile* basis.

*A "place mile" is a passenger place (seated or standing) carried one mile.


Fairly impractical. The tunnels are only about 8 feet wide and the same height. So you could squeeze a Vancouver ALRT car through them, but it would be single-tracked. So westbound riders would be under Jackson and eastbound under Adams, or whatever. The existing turnouts have about an eight-foot radius, so any corners would require new excavation. Needless to say, there’s no ventilation, fire suppression, passenger escape stairways, or room for platforms. And of course, you’d have to kick out some of the ComEd and fiber-optic cables currently using the tunnels.

One of the mortal blows to the tunnels was when the Dearborn and State Street subways were built at the same level in the 1930s, cutting all the east-west tunnels as well as removing those two streets from the network.

http://i.imgur.com/vo1aNuN.jpg

The Metra identity & logo was done by Din & Pangrazio, a design & marketing firm in 1985
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1...tion-authority

Mods/admins: is there a way to get this thread to show up on http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/tags.php?tag=chicago

That's the page I come to now, and it seems to contain every Chicago-related thread on the board except this one.

But Metra's logo does need a refresh, just like pace did a few years ago. If you want to talk bad logos, how about IDOT's bizarre ligature party?

http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/green/P...mages/IDOT.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...symbol.svg.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...symbol.svg.png

Their graphic isn't the most pleasant either.

Yeah... the graphic seems to be a gordian knot, which I guess is appropriate for a big inefficient bureaucracy

LOL... proving that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I always liked IDOT's logo... we have complex webs of infrastructure in Illinois; I always just assumed that was an abstracted version of the weaving between various modes of transportation. It also pays homage to the Celtic heritage of Illinois politicians.

Never noticed the weird ligatures, though, and the gordian knot interpretation is equally apt.

Has construction started with the new Cermak green line station? I thought construction was going to start in June.

As a designer, I really dislike when other designers tell others what is "good" or "bad". There are certainly better ways to go about communicating why you may not like something.