It's not like that, emathias. Durbin is lobbying for the Chicago-StL line BECAUSE 98% of the route is in Illinois, so construction dollars spent on that route would go to and benefit Illinoisans. The Twin Cities-Chicago route will obviously benefit Chicago, but since most of the trackage will be in Wisconsin, them (and Minnesota) are the ones pushing for it in DC. And TUP has done a fairly good job of ferreting out articles about high-speed rail from Milwaukee, Madison, and Twin Cities publications, so you can't say it hasn't gotten exposure.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 8, 2009, 6:24PM ET text size: TT
Agreement reached on high-speed rail corridor

By CHERYL WITTENAUER

MORE FROM BUSINESSWEEK

Union Pacific Railroad and the state of Illinois announced an agreement Friday to assess what must be done to operate both freight and high-speed passenger trains on the Chicago-to-St. Louis rail corridor.

The Omaha, Neb.-based railroad said it will provide the study to the Illinois Department of Transportation by June. The parties described the move as a critical step for Illinois to compete for federal funds to build a high-speed rail line in that corridor.

The announcement followed private talks Friday in St. Louis between Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Claire McCaskill of Missouri and officials with Amtrak, Union Pacific and IDOT.

"IDOT and Union Pacific have a memorandum of understanding to outline the work needed to have a true high-speed rail corridor between St. Louis and Chicago," Durbin said afterward.

He noted that President Barack Obama has told the states that if they're interested in some of the $8 billion in federal economic stimulus funds designated for high-speed rail, they should "step up and be ready to compete."

"We've stepped up," Durbin said.

Durbin and McCaskill have been lobbying for a high-speed rail corridor between the two cities.

The $8 billion is part of $64 billion in the federal stimulus package for roads, bridges, rail and transit. It's part of an overall $787 billion economic stimulus spending package.

Durbin said the money will be awarded on a competitive basis.

McCaskill said she also will pursue high-speed rail for the St. Louis-to-Kansas City corridor.

"It's not just the East Coast that wants high-speed rail," McCaskill said. "It's the grand and glorious middle."

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay applauded the senators for getting "things done." He said high-speed rail is "environmentally friendly, energy efficient and economical."

Illinois Transportation Secretary Gary Hannig said the agreement signed Friday with the railroad was first in the U.S. The study would be completed in time for the federal government's announcement of application guidelines in June. He said it would serve as a blueprint for asking Congress to help fund development of a high-speed rail corridor.

Robert Turner, a senior vice president for Union Pacific, said freight and passenger rail have coexisted unevenly, and that the challenge would be to integrate them. Before rail travel began declining in the 1960s, the Chicago-to-St. Louis corridor had separate tracks for passenger trains and freight. It was later reduced to a single track but the bed of the other track is still intact.

Turner said there are ways to accommodate the two. Slower-moving freight trains could be diverted on turnouts to make way for passenger trains traveling as fast as 110 mph.

The Chicago-to-St. Louis trip would be reduced from almost six hours to fewer than four.

Illinois will pay up to $400,000 for the study. Durbin said developing the line would create 10,000 construction jobs.

I've always wondered about this! I know money is always the issue, but if the r-o-w and even railbeds are there, it seems like a no-brainer.
How many more routes around Chicago have unused railbeds still intact?

The Illinois Central is an obvious one.

^ Where does that run (where in the city, and where in the hinterland)?

I don't think this is correct. The Alton Road may have been double-tracked in places, but that's different from having separate freight and passenger train tracks.

The only place I've ever seen completely separate tracks is the IC north of Kensington, which was rebuilt with 10 tracks into downtown. Even there, I think the freights shared the four easternmost tracks with the long distance trains such as the Panama Limited and City of New Orleans, while the other six tracks were for suburban service.

In the late 80s, the IC single-tracked its mainline to Memphis and New Orleans, a bonehead move that they claimed would make the railroad more efficient.

Great article
 

Slow zone
By: Paul Merrion May 11, 2009
Chicago's economy has long been tied to its role as the nation's transportation hub, a position threatened by the recession.
While moving goods and passengers by air, truck, rail and barge accounts for barely 3% of Chicago's economic output, the transportation and warehousing sector draws manufacturers, distributors, service providers and corporate headquarters to the center of the nation's supply chain.

http://www.planning.org/tuesdaysatapa/index.htm

Streetcars
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 • 5:00 p.m.

Streetcars were the primary circulation system of all cities small and large during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Streetcars not only facilitated growth but influenced development patterns and even social structures. Starting in the 1920s, the rise in popularity of the automobile led to the decline of most streetcar systems. Now, cities around the country have reintroduced streetcars to "stitch together" revitalizing downtowns and to promote walkability.

David Wilson from the Chicago Transit Authority will revisit the history of streetcars in Chicago and discuss how other cities are making use of streetcars today.

David A. Wilson works as a Service Planner for Chicago Transit Authority analyzing transit routes for effectiveness and efficiency. After a career in freight transportation, David returned to school and received a master's degree in Urban Planning and Policy with a focus on Transportation from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2006. He has presented programs on transportation history topics to a variety of community and academic organizations. He presented a paper on Streetcar Reintroduction at the 2006 annual meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, and as a guest lecturer at UIC he presented a program on the Evolution of Transit Technology.

A question for those of you in the know..
 

I'm just curious about one tiny thing:

What is it about Ford City Shopping Center that is prompting leaders to look for expensive federal funding towards a heavy rail line extension?

If this seems like a silly question, I'm asking this because it seems like it's kind of arbitrary. There are suburban-type shopping centers all over the Chicago area, including within and in close proximity to the city, with no rail connections, no? I'm just curious how a transit line to Ford City got political backing. From my vague memories of visiting that site once, I think it consisted of a Sears, Marshalls, and a few other humdrum meat & potato stores. Certainly nothing spectacular.

I realize this is mostly about employees, but again it still seems arbitrary unless you're also using this as an opportunity for a large park & ride for southwest siders. Am I getting warm?

Ford City itself is probably only 800,000 sq ft of retail, but it's surrounded by another three million or so in big boxes or power centers. And it's thought that it would be a more convenient bus terminal, for Pace and CTA lines that converge from the southwest suburbs.

I have my doubts, however, that it will make the New Starts threshold for new ridership.

Ford City was always the planned terminus for the Orange Line, since the initial planning in the 1980s. It's the

I just realized Ford City is within the city limits (maybe I heard that before but it didn't quite register). Is there somewhere one can download a relatively detailed map of where the precise city limits are? It's kind of surprising how generally elusive this information is in the world of cartography.

Check out the Chicago GIS

http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/w...OID=-536886490

You could also look at the online bike map

Ford City area

There's more commercial businesses down there than people give it credit for, too. I suppose that better connections could mean better reverse-commute options, too.

^ Thanks for the map links guys. The bike map in particular is really very nice. I think I've actually seen it in print once. I look forward to a PDF version.

Well, the bike map doesn't go up as a PDF, just as the HTML tiles. Printed paper copies shouldn't be too hard to come by. They're supposed to be at all Chase branches, City Hall, Active Transportation Alliance office, etc. The new edition (at the printer now) is sponsored by AT&T rather than Chase, so in June they'll probably be in AT&T stores.

Freight train traffic: Suburban leaders seek help from Obama in rail traffic fight
By Richard Wronski | Tribune reporter
May 14, 2009
Several suburban state legislators and mayors called on President Barack Obama Wednesday to fill a vacancy on a federal regulatory board with someone sympathetic to their opposition to more freight trains in their communities.

State Sen. Linda Holmes (D-Aurora) introduced a resolution in Springfield calling on Obama to nominate a member to the Surface Transportation Board who will consider "significant community impacts related to public safety, noise, vibration, traffic congestion, and other environmental concerns..."

The board in December approved the Canadian National Railway's acquisition of the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern line through their suburbs. Canadian National purchased the line to divert freight traffic around Chicago's congested rail corridor.

"People felt like they spoke up but weren't listened to," Holmes said of the thousands of residents who opposed the deal at public hearings.

The board's three-member governing body has a vacancy due to the departure of W. Douglas Buttrey in March. Holmes and other officials asked Obama to make an appointment "that will protect communities from the unnecessary safety and economic concerns that can be caused by railroad expansion."

The officials cited letters Obama wrote as a U.S. senator in opposition to Canadian National's acquisition.

Are there any signs that the cross-town right-of-way parallel Cicero is seriously being considered for rail development? This was an idea floating around a while ago, if I remember correctly.

Looking at a map, it seems that there is some (abandoned? partially built-over?) right-of-way extending north from the 90-94-Cicero interchange through Lincolnwood into Evanston. Does anyone know the story about this right-of-way? If the Cicero cross-town corridor ever came about, one could see this old right-of-way linking places like the Lincolnwood Town Center, the far northwestern Chicago neightborhoods, and maybe even downtown Evanston (with a half-mile subway from Church and Dodge to Church and Davis) in on this new "western north-south trunk line."

In short, it seems there are a few existing rights-of-way in underserved areas that could be put to more intense use and I was wondering if any plans existed to develop them.

There are always plans, but there isn't always money. Chicago has defined priorities, and the Cicero corridor right now is low on that list. One only needs to look at the CTA's "Alternatives Analysis" page to see which projects are at the top: the Red, Orange, Yellow extensions and the Circle Line.

As I said earlier, the Circle Line will probably not be a rail line. In fact, the study might even push out a No-Build result, although more likely it will just be a quite cheap system of dedicated lanes (bye, parallel parking!) and traffic signal priority, something that can be done for under $200 million probably.

The downtown improvements in the Central Area Action Plan are the next group down on the priority list: projects like the 3 circulator lines and the Clinton St Subway. These have been associated with the Olympics, so there's a push to get them done soon. They may eclipse the four current expansion projects at CTA, or they may just get postponed, especially if we lose the Olympics.

After that are the grander and more expensive plans: Mid-City Transitway (Cicero corridor), Blue Line extension to Lombard, Brown Line extension to Jefferson Park, Airport Express, etc.

There are a ton of abandoned ROW's in the near northwest suburbs. I can think of at least two that cross Howard between the Northshore Canal and I-94.

Capital costs aside, one of the biggest questions for any fancy new rail transit service is how its operation will be paid for. Several cities (St. Louis and Dallas come to mind, and I'm sure others) have paired the opening of light rail lines with substantial bus service cuts - much moreso than just to routes paralleling the rail line. Short of cutting service, the only other options are: (1) new public revenue sources via taxes (which seem unlikely) (2) higher fares or (3) improved off-peak and reverse commute utilization of the system, so more revenue can be acquired without commensurate need to increase service levels. (1) & (2) are political hot potatos, and (3) is a land use question in a region that engages in zero comprehensive land-use/transportation planning as well as nearly zero meaningful regional planning to begin with. Long story short, I wouldn't get my hopes up for significant expansion of the rail rapid transit network outside of incremental construction at the margins, e.g. 2 mile extensions here, infill stations there, etc.

About the land use issue:

Are there initiatives on the federal level to require local land use reform as part of the qualification for federal transportation funding? I imagine such an initiative could be sold on the federal level as "demanding a higher return on the public investment," while also insulating local politicians from NIMBY pressures, in a "my hands are tied" kind of way. It would be something like what often happens in Europe, where local politicians can retain popularity despite enacting painful reforms by claiming "Brussels is making us do it."

^^^Oh God, the wingnuts and ditto-heads would really be screaming their socialism screeds if that happened; so French so EU...UUUUUUUU

Is the Brown Line extension anything more than a twinkle in a geek's eye -- has it ever actually been identified by CTA or some other body as an actual potential project?

^^ It was included in some official document that I saw. :shrug:

It's not in CMAP's 2030 Plan, but neither are the downtown transitways.

RTA's Goroo.com
 

Here's the URL: http://www.goroo.com/

I checked it out, and the FIRST transportation option it gives you is driving.

WTF. We all know that for the vast majority of trips, driving is going to be fastest. But does the RTA REALLY need to be reminding people of that for every single trip search? It's like saying, "Ride us, we're slower than driving!"

I ride transit despite it being slower for a lot of different reasons, but demonstrating for every trip search just how much slower it is just plain stupid in my opinion.

What on earth posessed the RTA to do that?

For example, just to see what it does, I searched from 500 W Madison to 1800 W Lawrence (Ogilvy to the Ravenswood stop on UP-North), leaving at 1:30pm (there's a 1:35 train).

Here's what it came up with:
17 minutes to drive (yeah, RIGHT - I used to live there and work near there, it NEVER took less than 20 minutes in a cab, even in the dead of night).
20 minutes to "drive to train" - yeah, I'm at the station's address and they say it's faster to drive to the train than walk in the front door. They're seriously screwing themselves if they don't provide estimates on time to park.
21 minutes to take the train. Okay, that's probably the most accurate time on their site.
Then it gives you some other "drive to train" and train options to take the "L" instead of the UP-North, ranging in time from 43 to 60 minutes.

Seriously, does the RTA even actually think about what they're doing?

I just messed around with that site for a bit - and yeah - it is total crap. Apparently walking is not an option at all. On one trip it told me I would have to drive 75' to get to the Milwaukee Ave. bus.

Looking at the route you entered I think even 21 minutes to take Metra seems long, I take that train quite a bit and it takes about 10-15 minutes.

I compared to Google maps just to see if this is a difficult route to plan for some reason. Google maps gives a time estimate of 14 minutes by Metra and even provides a cost comparison:

Nice! The RTA should just get out of the way and let the people at CTA who partnered with Google run everything for the whole system.

:shrug: :yes:

The bike map is one of the best maps of the city. To add to Mr Downtown's list, they are, of course, also available at probably every bike store in the city. They're free, just make sure you get the Chicago map and not the (not-free) Chicagoland map.

The formula may be better than you give it credit for. Consider that, if you are sitting in a car at 500 W. Madison, it will take you quite awhile to find a place to stash the car so you can walk over to Ogilvie. Depending on the time of day, the West Loop parking lots can fill up. Circling around, finding an entrance, getting a ticket, finding a space, leaving the car, and making your way to Ogilvie can easily eat up 20 minutes, especially for those who are not particularly city-savvy.

Today was the first day I noticed this, but they have built a temporary (looks permanent) mechanical station just south of Lake/Wells on the West side of Wells basically where the old Randolph platform used to be. The guy I talked to said it was going to be used as a temporary tower while Tower 18 is rebuilt.

^ They sure had been doing a lot of work there at night.

Hope it's gonna be an interesting tower once they've completed it. Chicago has a history of treating control towers as important architectural objects - well, at least at ORD. Maybe this will rub off on the CTA (yeah right).

Are you kidding? Have you seen the ugly things they've built over the tracks in the Kennedy and Dan Ryan?

^^^^
It is sad to see the aesthetic appeal fly out the window in the name of budget constraints. The entire Loop L system has been used as a utility pole for shit in recent years.

No, you misunderstand. The 20 minutes is NOT for the driving portion alone, it's for the entire trip, including the transit portion.

I believe the new metal building on the rebuilt section of the old Wells/Randolph platform also houses the new signal plant so they can take the old stuff on the opposite side out of service (and hopefully remove it).

Hopefully this is a good sign of rising Metra ridership.

Of course not a Jahn or Pei, or even Pappageorge or Loewenberg, or anything like that, but at least I thought I'd hope for something displaying a small tip of the hat to aestheticism. It's springtime; a guy can hope for things a bit even if, well, unrealistic.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,6493170.story

$29 billion public works program: Illinois legislators back plan to start rebuilding program that would mean increased taxes and fees

By Ray Long, Rick Pearson and Ashley Rueff | Tribune reporters
May 21, 2009

SPRINGFIELD -- State lawmakers on Wednesday fast-tracked a $29 billion public works program that would start to rebuild crumbling roads and transit systems and pay for it with a slew of increased taxes and by legalizing video gambling across Illinois.

A new spirit of cooperation that's bloomed since the January ouster of indicted ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich was a key factor cited as cheering state senators approved the bills by wide margins, predicting the House would soon sign off on the first statewide construction program for transportation and schools in a decade.

...

The capital bill includes $3 billion for new road projects. Chicago-area mass transit would receive $1.8 billion out of the $2 billion set aside for local bus and train service statewide. The breakdown: $900 million for the Chicago Transit Authority, $810 million for Metra commuter rail and $90 million for Pace suburban bus.

...

^ Wow, the CTA provides what, triple the rides of Metra? But it gets hardly more money.

^ Metra has some big committements to CREATE that the CTA doesnt. We will have to see if METRA follows up and designates CREATE projects with some of this budgeted money. Good news is that the new ILL state transit budget does include $600 million directly to CREATE.

^ Nice catch. That's good to know

Does anyone know if that CREATE money includes funding for Grand Crossing? That's the most important project from a passenger's perspective.

Only 2 billion out of the 29 is for transit? Thats pretty weak.

I am very happy that the state is finally legalizing video gambling machines. There are many bars that have these things in full operation and pay out under the table. This is a great idea, we need more ideas like this to raise revenue outside of hiking fees and taxes as usual.

It's a statewide construction program that also includes school construction, university funding, and quite a bit of highway resurfacing work, bridge replacement, and additional lanes - but not the infamous "roads to nowhere". Also, Huffington Post puts the amount at $26 billion, not 29.

That huge amount, by the way, is only the total amount that will be spent, including all Federal money. In fact, IL is only contributing $12 billion out of the 26, to satisfy their requirement for matching funds in order to receive the other $14 billion in Federal dollars that are waiting.

Although I'm sure the figures vary from article to article, Huffington Post also reports that Illinois' contribution for roads is $2.8 billion and their contribution for transit is $2 billion. Looking at these figures, I'd say this is actually a budget heavily in favor of transit, considering the proportion of auto trips to transit trips in the state. These monetary amounts will probably double when Federal funding is factored in. And, since this bill creates dedicated sources of funding for capital construction, this ensures a relatively steady supply of money for construction in the near future.

-------------

As far as transit expansions go, I think CTA's line extensions are farthest along. Orange and Yellow, and soon Red, will begin their Environmental Impact Surveys and, once those are completed, Federal funding is imminent. I have not yet heard a cost estimate for Red, but Orange and Yellow combined is roughly $550 million. Given a state-Federal funding match of 40-60, IL will be responsible for 40% of this cost, or $220 million. This amount does not seem exorbitant, and I'm sure it can be worked into the budget.

Metra will also probably try to get their UP-W and UP-NW expansion plans funded. Despite the rhetoric about the STAR line, I'm pretty sure Metra realizes that this money is best spent on upgrading their 3rd- and 6th-busiest lines, which are running at full capacity right now. These two projects are also quite far along, also in their EIS phase and nearly ready for Federal funding.

EDIT - underreported the orange line cost, added $100 mil to the figures

$450 million for the Orange and Yellow extensions doesn't seem that bad at all, especially considering the Orange extension would be one piece of the Mid-City Transitway if that is ever built. The Red Line extension is obviously the most pressing by far, though.

Speaking of Metra, I missed this post at Hyde Park Progress from February on what could happen to the CN lakefront line if the railroad switches entirely to the EJ&E line. Basically, this would free up two tracks adjacent to those used by the Metra Electric and South Shore lines. The post doesn't really have any information about what could be on the table for this right of way and only does a little bit of speculation. Any ideas about what is realistic or likely here?

Is/was the Mid-City Transitway envisioned to ever go beyond Ford City (like heading east to Englewood or something) ?

It would be nice if some of that funding could find it's way into rebuilding State/Lake.