When I was living in Lincoln Square, I used the shuttle to get home after going out in Boystown. I was definitely appreciative of having that option for getting back to my apartment. Transit systems that shut down their trains before last call at the bars suck! Probably leads to more people driving to the bars and as a result driving drunk back home. The CTA's rail schedules are generally pretty good and something I certainly appreciated during my 2.5 years in Chicago. Having an additional option besides the bus & taxis made living without a car that much easier.

Yeah I forgot about that.

But there have been times when I have been down in the west loop and wished I could grab a brown line but instead had to hike over to state st.

I still think it might make sense to run it to the loop 24 / 7

Morgan/Lake Station
 

Lake Street remake
Morgan el project gets federal help, intersection to be cleared of columns
09/02/2009 10:00 PM
By MICAH MAIDENBERG

http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/3706/4841.jpg http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/8325/greenline.jpg

A new el station in the West Loop is getting some help from the ultimate infrastructure funder: Uncle Sam.

The City of Chicago will use $8 million in federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality funds to help pay for the planned Morgan and Lake station, which would serve riders on the Green and Pink lines.

Originally, the city assumed dollars from the Kinzie Industrial Tax Increment Financing District would pay for the entirety of the project, according to Brian Steele, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation.

But then the city learned in the late spring the Morgan Street station project was awarded the federal grant. The news delayed finding a contractor to build the station, but Steele said the pause was well worth it.

In all, $36 million has been secured thus far for the station.

Bids for the project will be opened Sept. 24. Work could start within 60 to 90 days of when the contract is awarded — possibly late this year, Steele said. Initially, the chosen contractor would procure equipment and relocate utilities, with actual construction eyed for 2010.

Bids have been opened for a project that would move support columns for the Green and Pink line out of the Lake and Ogden intersection. Work is expected to start in October and be finished by 2011.

“It will be somewhat similar to the reconstruction of Wacker Drive during 2001 and 2002, when we replaced column structures at Wells and Wacker,” Steele said. “There will still be column supports, but instead of them being on the roadway, they’ll be in the sidewalk area.”

The el stop and column removal projects are expected to be carried out simultaneously.

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Hopefully the column relocation project will give us another cool truss structure. The one on Wacker is massive, and something similar would look dynamite at Lake/Ogden.

I'm really digging that mesh screen with the CTA logotype on it. I hope it survives all the inevitable value engineering and bean counter driven aesthetic mediocrity.

Agreed - hopefully the Federal money will help allow that feature to survive the process :)

..

^Finally, a suburb-to-suburb transit plan that makes some sense.

Too bad there's not a regional planning agency that could anoint this and finally put a stake through the heart of the STAR Line.

The demand isn't there - the overall demand for North-South travel to/from downtown is met by the Red Line running every 12-15 minutes during the late night and early morning hours. It leaves a few gaps in coverage - namely around Diversey and Armitage Brown Line stations, and the West Loop. However, the demand in these areas can also be met by the #8 Halsted bus, which also runs until about 2 and starts up around 4:30. If anything, probably more cost effective to just make that an owl route at a 20-30-minute frequency than to run the rails, staff the stations, etc.

The Lake-Dan Ryan line ran 24 hours over the Loop until the early 90s, but only on the Wabash and Lake legs. I'm not sure of the last time the Wells and Van Buren legs had owl service - maybe MrD knows exactly. If I had to guess, the last time would have been the 1960s before the Dan Ryan line opened, the Loop ran unidirectionally (both tracks running counterclockwise) and the Lake Street line looped instead of running through.

I'm not sure... it only works if the express lanes are used as a segment of larger routes connecting the parking lots to employment centers. The employment centers are usually off the Tri-State, sometimes by a few miles, not within walking distance of Pace's planned park-n-ride lots. Fortunately, the bus routes can be endlessly tweaked and modified, since they're not on a fixed guideway.

I'm glad they want to use stimulus funds for this... that way we can save traditional highway funding for other valuable projects (Elgin-O'Hare, 53 extension, Illiana). On the other hand, the use of stimulus money necessarily shortens the planning process dramatically. I hope studies have been done to demonstrate ridership before $200 million smackers of my tax money are spent.

CTA Budweiser Commercial
 

Apparently they're only running this in Ireland. You'd think it would do fantastically well on Chicago TV, since it features CTA and the cityscape so prominently. :shrug: It's really made quite well.

• Video Link

Way cool. Very clever. Apparantly American ad interests think that we'd rather see something funny than clever. Imagine that.

^ Great ad. I can see it working in Europe, but not America.

The usa does not have the attention span for a full ad without seeing the product until the end. Americans are not smart enough as a whole to make this work on a national level. This can work in markets like Chicago and college towns but red state peps would just drool and say wtf?

Cool ad!! :tup:

Yes, those red states are neanderthals... Thank God we have the educated blue states out there to keep us from drowning in a pool of our own drool. And yes, you are correct, it's because Americans aren't smart enough that they wouldn't appreciate the ad...

Care to insult anyone else?

Religous teetotalers also wouldn't like it. Stupid American religous teetotalers! ;)

I thought a religious teetotaler would be someone who refuses to partake of religion. ;-)

While watching TV the other night, a CTA ad came on. It showed a gas pump ticking higher with a man crying in the background and then suggested people spend $86 for a 30-day pass instead.

It was possibly the stupidest commercial I've ever seen. Who on earth things it's a good idea to advertise your product with a crying man? That's just grade A stupid.

Religious would be an adjective in this case.

Don't insult neanderthals.....homo hablis maybe....

then again that would entail evolution...woops

ok...red state men : blown clay; red state women: ribs

It says so in the Bible.....its gotta be true