New renderings for Lincoln Yards:

Latest plans for Lincoln Yards development on North Side include a dog park and sledding hill Chicago Tribune, Ryan Ori

^ Wow, talk about a skyscraper jungle. This development reminds me of other projects going on in Brooklyn and London

Edit: Looks like there are also plans for a 24-acre riverfront park (more renderings in the article)

http://www.trbimg.com/img-5aa9b104/t...n-ori-20180314
Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...314-story.html

Didn't Crain's report early today that some 1000 Reso units are slated for the site?

Sorry, that was Goose Island. Good God this area is gonna be transformed.

Smith and Gill are in on this? Daddy liiiiikes!

That's a separate project planned for Goose Island, so 2 miles south of here

http://www.trbimg.com/img-59f39361/t.../1100/1100x619



I see SOM's name... Where did you get Smith+Gill?

Three guys saying "it sure would be nice to have a big park here" is not a plan for making one happen. The North Branch plan has already been approved, and has virtually no publicly owned green space.

I saw the park plans about three months ago in Ald Smith's office. It is pretty much a "wouldn't this be cool" project.
They were well thought out though.

The scope of the area would give us an opportunity for a new river front park, but this is not provided for in the framework.

To make it work, the city would have to pony up and buy the land.

This is unlikely as they just sold the other suitable parcel they already owned on the other side of the river.

Grade separated rapid transit is definitely needed along the north branch corridor if this kind of intense development is to occur. There's Lincoln Yard, the redevelopment of the Tribune property into The River District, and the Goose Island residential overhaul. Planning should be occurring for each of these developments to reserve a corridor for a rapid transit line.

^ Agreed

I wonder how difficult it would be to add some kind of a CTA route on or along the UP tracks? It could run from the Clybourn station (with northern expansion at a later date of course), south towards Ogilvie. When it gets to Kinzie, it would turn east, crossing the river at the CNW bridge and use the Carrol Ave ROW all the way to Navy Pier.

This alignment would give this new line a decent amount of connections to the existing transit systems; Metra at Clybourn, and the inevitable new station that will open south of there, as well as the CTA Brown/Purple lines at the Merch Mart stop. Red (Grand) and Blue (also Grand) line stations would be several blocks walking distance, as will be the Clark/Lake mega station.

This also looks like new development in Copenhagen, Oslo and Malmo, Sweden. Hopefully it is this high quality when it's built.

What do they mean by relocated Metra station. Are they moving the tracks too? Or just a new station?

I was wondering the same thing. Based on the rendering and looking at a map, they may just be relocating the current Clybourn stations south to approximately match up with the new 606 alignment.

There is a general plan to relocate the station south of Cortland.
At the very least, that would require Metra to move the switching yard they have there and spread the tracks wide enough to allow platforms and back together before they cross Ashland.

This illustration, would also require them to do this on a new viacuct, so the 606 can pass at street level.

This is a project that would dwarf the Belmont flyover and presupposes that Metra has a couple of billion dollars lying around and that they would prefer to spend it on something that can have no effect capacity, reliability or ridership,

This is only slightly more likely than the park.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago...tzker-madigan/

Battle brewing over future of North Branch of the Chicago River

Stefano Esposito and Fran Spielman




I'll say that Smith was a total pain in the ass last year when the North Branch Plan was at Plan Commission, even though only a smidgen of her ward lies within the district. She was only of the only no votes at city council.

I hope it looks like this in the end, but some of these renderings remind me of late 2000's boom developments like Roosevelt Collection.

Big ideas executed poorly over a long period of time giving us basically a suburban mall.

I HOPE I'M WRONG!

Frankly, I think it’s irresponsible to allow highly dense development, particularly of office, in areas like this and Goose Island without at lease some plans for transit. Is everybody expected to drive here and park? Space for parking will eat up everything.

In addition to bus service, the city should at least be planning a transit extension. And no better time than now, when you can get the developers to help pay for it in return for zoning allowances.

I've shared a potential transit solution for the north branch a few times now. I admire SB's vision, but I don't see how it happens without a new L line. Bus service won't cut it IMO.

Here's the transportation plan.

https://www.cityofchicago.org/conten...sportation.pdf

Most of it involves an "intelligent transportation system".
They have a vague notion for a transitway that crosses the Cherry ave bridge, but it is still just lines on a page with a lot of unresolved obstacles.
The biggest obstacle is how to pay for it.
They have set the bonus price on the north district at 11 bucks a square foot, 70% of which is for local improvements.
If everyone in all three areas bought as much FAR as they are allowed, it might total $250 million for local improvements, I you think it's gonna pay for 3 miles of light rail, you're nuts.

Even using Amazon's 50000 workers (which is very modest considering the whole redevelopment area is 600 acres) and assuming they have a very high transit use of 40%, they will need to add transit capacity for at least 40000 rides a day .

The entire brown line only does 65000.

Yes, but that 65,000 doesn't include the return trips starting in the Loop.

So, for 2016, the last year there were full numbers for, the Brown Line had a weekday average ridership of 63,958 riders. Adding up all the lines that use the elevated Loop, those lines had a total weekday average ridership of 150,991. 63,958 is 42.36% of 150,991. Elevated Loop stations had average weekday ridership of 73,729, and 42.36% of that is 31,231. Adding that to the Brown Line stations brings the total up to 95,189. Which would still be missing Brown Line riders alighting at Fullerton and Belmont, which go full credit to the Red Line. The ratio of Brown Line ridership to North Main Red Line ridership is about one third. One third of total Fullerton and Belmont weekday ridership comes to 8,506. All of these calculations ignore the Purple Line because it has such small numbers and is harder to tease apart, and these estimates also make some assumptions about ridership patterns. But, with those caveats, total average weekday ridership attributable to the Brown Line is likely somewhere in the neighborhood of 63,958 + 31,231 + 8,506 = 103,695 riders.

I also think that 40% transit usage for a place like Goose Island is likely high. I'd be surprised if transit commuter share to Goose Island exceeded 30%. Still, 25-30,000 riders is still substantial. Some riders would use the Division bus, some could use the Chicago Ave bus, some the North Ave bus, some the Halsted bus.

The CTA could add one or more circulator routes, and the City could add a transit-pedestrian-bike-only bridge linking Ogden to Goose Island again, and build the Brown Division station. With those enhancements, these two circulators would add a lot of value.

1) Blue Division east on Division to the middle of Goose Island then north on Halsted to Red North/Clybourn then north on Halsted to Armitage and west to Brown Armitage and west to Cortland and the Clybourn Metra station then south on Ashland back to Blue Division. That route should have buses running both directions.

2) A second circulator could run beween Blue Chicago up Elston to North Ave east to the pedestrian bridge to Goose Island at the river crossing, east to the Red North/Clybourn station, east to the Brown Sedgewick station, south on Sedgewick to Division, west to Goose Island, meander to the Ogden bridge back to the Blue Chicago station.

Some portions of those routes could be made bus-only, or a bus-only lane added. Ideally they'd run express only making stops at the 'L' or on Goose Island, although you could add stops at any major intersections they cross or turn at to add value for local people who don't want to walk 1/2 mile for whatever reason. If ridership was high enough, dedicated ROW could be set up and the routes converted to rail - perhaps streetcars, maybe even partially running elevated or in cut-and-cover trenches to reduce traffic crossings. With lights that gave buses priority, and appropriate use of bus-only lanes, those routes could haul in quite a lot of transit users. They'd need to run at least 18 hours a day, since several thousand Amazon employees would be working very late on any given night. And these routes could even add value for people living near them.

^Draw it up and I'll present it at my next sit down with Sterling Bay.

The bottom line is that every trip that we cannot provide a transit alternative for, will probably be replaced by a vehicle.