A L L that stuff is imprisoned, entangled, and enmeshed in S L E A Z Y CHICAGO-STYLE POLITICS ( "Having just one Transit Board is Crazy" ) and NO POINT AT ALL in even trying.

Rep. Quigley wants to be the head the TASC, and write Bills -- My testimony in Washington W I L L accomplish something (How to save the Whole Country Billions of Grickles -- instead of stuffing it into Chicago area "Campaign Contributor's" G R E E D Y Bottomless Pockets).

And after 16 yrs of being laughed at, a little bit of overaggressiveness feels really good.

[QUOTE=CTA Gray Line;6316825]A L L that stuff is imprisoned, entangled, and enmeshed in S L E A Z Y CHICAGO-STYLE POLITICS ( "Having just one Transit Board is Crazy" ) and NO POINT AT ALL in even trying./QUOTE]

http://www.suntimes.com/23199639-761...aign-work.html

"When a Metra employee named Patrick Ward complained to Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan last year that he wasn’t being paid enough, his gripe got him a higher-paying job. And it ultimately led Alex Clifford to leave the transit agency’s top post with a hefty severance deal and a host of explosive complaints about patronage demands that are now under review by a governor’s task force......."

I don't know if y'all are following this, but the Midwest HSR Association is unveiling a "CrossRail Chicago" plan this Wednesday. If it's anything like its London namesake, it will allow commuter trains to pass from one side of the city to the other, and provide a needed conduit for high speed intercity trains as well. I'm pretty confident that the plan will utilize the Metra Electric line significantly and link to O'Hare somehow.

Rick Harnish at MHSRA has been doing the hard work of securing financial and political support from Chicago's business community, and he's received favorable press from Greg Hinz and others at Crain's. His pressure led Gov. Quinn to allocate several million dollars of state money to study a 220mph line from Chicago-St Louis. If anybody can break through political infighting to push sensible rail improvements, it's him. I'm really excited to see the CrossRail Chicago plan.

I can't go -- but I really want to see what they recommend......

That's exactly what it is...Allow me to direct you to a copy of Senate Resolution 639, currently circulating through the Illinois General Assembly.

It calls for the creation for an electrified track from the South suburbs and the South Side, through downtown Chicago, to O'Hare and the Northwest suburbs. The vision is to eventually extend it, so that it runs from Rockford, all the way to Cham-bana. It would one day serve as the backbone for a 220-MPH passenger line that would connect the region to other Midwest cities.

Thanks for the advance info! Sounds like this is a fusion of Metra Electric, the I-90 branch of the STAR Line, and an undetermined route between McCormick Place/O'Hare.

I'm a little leery of the I-90 alignment but it may help to build political support in the NW suburbs and buy-in from Metra. It also avoids some thorny electrification problems on UP-NW or MD-W. I love how it's justified on the jobs-population imbalance, which could help to build support from the Southland. I wish this was the bone Quinn threw at the Southland instead of Illiana.

The St. Charles Airline would serve that purpose almost perfectly (with the addition of a new curve structure in the NE Quardrant from the Chicago River Bridge North to CUS), then use the present crossovers to access the riverside tracks which go through to the North Concourse to the MWD; then onto the NCS to the new O'Hare Transit Center.

It could also utilize the presently un-electrified two eastern tracks in the MED ROW South of McCormick Place to the South Suburbs.

RTA makes bid to control all transit bonds
 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,2650085.story

By Jon Hilkevitch, Chicago Tribune reporter
8:54 p.m. CDT, October 28, 2013

The CTA and Metra quickly shot down a proposal Monday to consolidate all borrowing authority for Chicago-area mass transit projects and equipment under their parent agency, the latest salvo in a fight over control of billions of regional transportation dollars.......


...........A state task force is holding hearings aimed at improving mass transit, in part by ending turf wars between the agencies and appointing more qualified people to their boards of directors.

jhilkevitch@tribune.com

Viva, Mr Downtown, does anybody know whether there was a specific reason for never assigning a number (like uncertainty as to what would eventually connect to what), or whether there simply was never any reason to assign any numbering back in the '90s (especially given that named, non-numbered highways are quite common in other parts of the country) ?


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,7409078.story

Number's up for Elgin-O'Hare
By Richard Wronski
October 29, 2013

... Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday bestowed a numerical designation, Illinois Highway 390, on the 20-year-old route.

Quinn addressed hundreds of state and local officials, union members and others at a groundbreaking in Itasca that marked the ceremonial transformation of the expressway into part of the Illinois Tollway system.

...

It's unclear why the Elgin-O'Hare never had a numerical designation like most major thoroughfares. Spokesmen for the Tollway and the Illinois Department of Transportation could provide no explanation Tuesday.

390 would have implied that the highway was a spur of 90, and when the original segment was built, the 90 connection was years into the future.

I know the Elgin-O'Hare isn't an interstate so it's not bound by the same numbering conventions, but obviously IDOT's intent is to integrate limited-access highways with the interstate system (see IL 394). I was actually expecting IDOT to shift the alignment of US-20 onto the higher-grade roadway, but that might pose a legal issue since the Elgin-OHare will be tolled.

What's interesting to me is how IDOT will number the south leg of the O'Hare Bypass. Obviously the north leg will receive the 390 designation to meet up with 90 in Des Plaines, but the south leg (if also numbered 390) would form a weird three-legged highway.

Right, which can't really exist, unless they decide to sow confusion in many ways (like having non-continuous mile markers, etc.).
I think 594 would make the most sense? It's a spur off of 294 - although I'm not sure the spur-odd, bypass-even rule applies when the reference roadway itself is already a three-digit interstate; in that case, 494 might be allowed.

Actually I kind of figured the west bypass would have a single number from terminus to terminus. But then I never really understood the purpose of the west bypass in the first place (other than access to western ORD terminals - but nobody talks about those anymore), since it kind of duplicates 290 and I don't think will be generating new employment or residential centers, given the distribution warehouse nature of Elk Grove Village and environs.

CrossRail Chicago
 

http://www.midwesthsr.org/crossrail-chicago

http://www.midwesthsr.org/sites/defa...il_Chicago.pdf

^^^YES!! Thanks for posting the link.

Pretty much exactly what I suspected, although MHSRA calls for building the I-90 segment in a later phase.

With the exception of a short stretch (4mi) of tracks in Franklin Park, this would run entirely on publicly-owned trackage. That should make electrification, high-level platforms, and FRA crashworthiness waivers a lot easier to obtain.

Phase I looks like a decent plan with a long-range plan in the later phases. The intercity phases look way too expensive, but who knows.

The problem I see are that there are inadequate stations and connections to other transit. It is mostly O'Hare -> Union Station -> McCormick Place. They should consider having locals & express and connecting to other transit as much as possible.

One other question is operating costs. It's not clear whether electricity + catenary maintenance will be less expensive than diesel. You would hope so, but it will definitely depend on volume and desired speed.

Admittedly this is a problem but there are no good intermodal points along the chosen alignment. That's the hazard of having a city where the rapid transit lines run in the interstices between railroad lines and never the two shall cross.

I believe the "ballpark" $1.5B estimate for "Loop-O'Hare Transfer" involves only the existing Metra station location, and not the construction of the proposed tunnel to the terminals. So, is the idea of a tunnel extension from the Rosemont/Balmoral area to T5, and then to the former T4 area, an utter, fanciful, pipe dream of Midwest HSR, or has anyone actually conceived of a workable plan for this? I guess the idea of TBM'ing a mile or two is not particularly crazy, maybe not even under airfield tarmac, but it would probably have to be at some depth (including due to TSA concerns?), so you are talking about 2 very expensive stations.

When you add up all that expenditure ... maybe it would be more cost-effective to stick with the existing Metra station location and instead radically upgrade the existing ATS, so that it runs much faster, maybe with express runs to the far (T1) end, and so that the escalators/elevators and other aspects of the 4 terminals' stations are up to 21st century standards.

Plus, one day there will be a T6 (perhaps likely on the eastern side of the airfield, not on the once-proposed western side), and it will be easier to run the ATS to it than to deal further with HSR alignment or new stations at that time.

The western terminal is far from dead. Pretty much everybody wants it, both in suburban and city power structures. The only hurdle is convincing the airlines to pay for it - Greg Hinz just speculated that Rahm's vocal support for the American-USAir merger is a bargaining chip for continued airline support of O'Hare expansion.

As for the tunnel, it's not that far-fledged. Minneapolis built a sizable tunnel for the Hiawatha Line beneath two active runways at $71M/mi. 3 miles of larger HSR tunnels at O'Hare would be about $600M in today's dollars (back of the envelope).

^ So can it be done for $1B including the stations? They've got to excavate under the main parking structure, and engineer connections (circulation, emergency exits from and emergency access to the subterranean level, etc.) that do not conflict with the CTA station. At T5, presumably there would be a subterranean connection horizontally (plenty of moving sidewalk capacity) until the passenger is under the arrivals level, and then significant elevator/escalator capacity up to arrivals and departures.

As for T6, while there may be support for creating a western terminal complex, there seems to be adequate space at the eastern airfield (and there will be plenty more once all the car rental lots are vacated), not to mention ready proximity to ATS, roadways, and rail. In contrast, using the western airfield seems like it would basically be little different from constructing a greenfield airport, sans runways -- and then you've got to tie west with east with airside passenger circulation. (If Da Mare can convince the airlines to pay for a starter airport there, then great, more power to us.)

Also, maybe my timeline is off, but didn't the rise of the western terminal complex idea come entirely prior to the eventual O'Hare Modernization Plan that is now being carried out? In other words, OMP and the rental car facility seem to supersede the necessity for a western complex (accommodating it, but for a future generation of projects).

^ Idea: Build a modern, replacement Hilton on the opposite side of the parking structure, where surface lots now sit half idle. Then tear down the original Hilton, and presto -- plenty of staging and construction space for an HSR station! (I like the architecture of the original ORD's hotel, control tower, and parking structure, but progress demands change, and all those things are aging.)