Just as a curiosity... I wonder how much it would cost to build the LSD extension underground? The park extension would require some serious lakefill and lots of earthmoving, so constructing a trench for LSD wouldn't add very much extra cost. The earthmoving business in particular is very hard to estimate costs... the added cost of a trench is so minor/negligible compared to the total that the contractor might just throw it in.

Waterproofing the trench and decking it over in portions would be the main cost. If you wanted to deck it over completely, then that would require a ventilation system.

I don't really see what Loyola's worried about... they already have the LSD traffic running through their campus on Sheridan and the weird dog-leg at Devon. Converting this to a simple mainline exit along LSD would improve access to their campus while reducing surface through traffic, which would continue north on LSD to the end. Touhy is a 1/2 mile street but is residential in nature; not appropriate for heavy traffic. Same goes for South Blvd/Oakton, and Granville. Howard and Devon are much better.

While they're at it, the Hollywood exit could be seriously improved. Turn Hollywood/Bryn Mawr into a one-way couplet and simplify the Clark/Peterson/Ridge/Ravenswood mess.

Way too much. You'd have to put it above lake level unless you have gobs and gobs of money. Better, I think, to landscape the new park so it has frequent crossings of a narrow right-of-way, much like the Transverse Drives through Central Park. Another more modern example is I-35 along Duluth's North Shore:

http://i54.tinypic.com/2cgxxkz.jpg
Bing Maps

No reason other than the NIMBYs. Unfortunately, they vote there and you and I don't. Has this come up in the local City Council races?

Building a subway and all new stations would also moot all the sky-is-falling hue and cry over station consolidation, since in effect, everyone's station will be closed; new stations could be placed at better locations.

That said, someone at Infrastructurist noted that it may be impossible, given railroad grades, to drop the L into a subway north of Belmont without closing off Clark Street.

I think in the long run a subway would definitely be the best way to go. Makes it more urban and a more inviting and people friendly area! Nobody really wants to live all that close to the noisy "L".

As for new highrise development on the northside in the Edgewater area, I definitely think that it will come! The Admiral on The Lake is only a few blocks away on Foster, and the Lakeview Station development is proposed as well in Uptown. And even though its ugly Catalpa Gardens was a pretty big project. If we could just get a few more the same size but with better architecture I would be so happy!

Sb 3965
 

http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/bill...1&SessionID=76

It would seem that on February 14th, Gov. Quinn signed Senate Bill 3965, which if I am interpreting what I read correctly, gives the Executive IG jurisdiction over all Transit employees and Board members to find and eliminate among many other things - WASTE.

Could this be used as a tool to elicit more cooperation/coordination in Operations and Planning amongst the Transit Operators??

I have converted to the other side of high rise development. I prefer the idea of a street of three or four story buildings along Broadway or any area as Chicago builds it's highrises with cold, impersonal multi-story parking podiums. They are so bland, dull and uninviting to walk by.

I think Clark would need to be shut down temporarily for part of the construction, however the distance is very similar (slightly more than, actually) to the same as the distance the State Street Subway goes to the "L" south of Roosevelt (the Green Line tracks). At 14th Place, the tracks are still inclining, but they are high enough that 14th Place does go through.

I believe the design is for it to go under Sheffield, so it would essentially have a full 1/4 mile to make the transition. I think both School and Roscoe would be unavoidably cut off, though.

All this talk of extendign LSD to Evanston is a tempest in a teapot. It is fine as it is. The beaches of Rogers Park are some of the gems of the city without the ugly acres of parking further south

I agree. If Evanston wants better highway access, let them build an spur to the Edens through Skokie.

It will happen!!!!!!!!!!
 

Some of the beaches in Rogers park might be "gems" but the simple fact that Edgewater is over run with traffic because LSD dumps off in the middle of the neighborhood is just ONE reason LSD should be extended, spreading out the traffic to a larger area.

Just think if everyone in the city thought like lawfin we would not have the parks, famed Lake Shore Drive our city's identity. The people of Rodgers Park need to realize they are not special and should not be treated any different that the rest of the city that has the drive and park.

Its only time before one day it happens, its called progress! Say what you want its only a mater of time!

and to emathias
 

should we stop all major roads a couple miles before they leave the city limits, and make all the surrounding communities pay for that construction as well.

Maybe the skyway should have stopped one mile before it hits Indiana, they can pay for the rest of it?

Think before you post!

Your thinking is no way to connect Chicago to the grater Chicagoland - we need
Evanston and every other community that surrounds Chicago as much as they need us!

Are you really so dense that you're oblivious to the fact that Evanston already has better access to Chicago than certain parts of the City itself has to other parts of the City? They have buses into the city, they have an "L" express into the City. They have access to a non-express local train. They have access to a Metra commuter rail line with some of the most frequent service of any line in the system.

On top of all that infrastructure investment, you want the city to also spend hundreds of millions - billions of dollars, even, to enable them to dump thousands of additional car trips into an already car-congested city?

You're insane. And myopic.

If anyone needs to THINK before they post, it's you.

As far as I know, there is no "design". The engineering consequences of a potential subway have yet to be fleshed out.

Hypothetically, though, there's not enough distance between the Belmont platforms and Clark, judging from other similar inclines on the CTA system. Assuming that a low-clearance viaduct at Clark is not an option, the incline would have to begin north of Clark, closing off Cornelia and possibly Newport.

The Addison station would probably remain in its current location in the alley - just underground, possibly in an open cut. It would swerve over to Sheffield further north.

A rather ironic comment. It was Indiana's last-minute decision to have the Indiana Toll Road veer north into Hammond (hometown of the governor) and abruptly end at 106th & Indianapolis Blvd. that required the city of Chicago to hurriedly plan and build the Skyway.

As for Lake Shore Drive, I think it would make perfect sense to continue it as a four-lane boulevard, mostly below ground level, to join Sheridan Road at the Evanston city line. North Lake Shore Drive should taper off the same way South Lake Shore Drive does, dropping lanes and becoming narrower, slower, and less freeway-like until it becomes just another street.

While (as far as I know) neither of us are CTA transit engineers, I actually measured the distances on a map for the inclines at Logan Square, Roosevelt and North Ave. Based on those, although it would be close, there is enough distance to get below Clark at Sheffield. There is slightly more distance there than there is for the include going from State Street to the Green Line elevated in the South Loop.

I also think it would be bad design to move from the current alignment to a different alignment anywhere else, as that would just add an additional curve to the system. Having it move to under Sheffield immediately after Belmont does four things:

1) It increases the distance they have to get under Clark by what could be a important number of feet

2) It puts the curve to go from the current alignment to under Sheffield near a station, so that the slowness necessary for that curve (and incline) is incurred as part of a normal station stop. Not coordinating that with a station means that there would be net added speed reductions to teh line. Coordinating it with a station prevents that. The only other place you'd have that opportunity without serious property acquisition and destruction is at Irving Park, where you need a station to be. Curve+station is unnecessary complexity.

3) If you don't go below grade immediately after Belmont, you lose a SIGNIFICANT advantage of the subway option, because you don't eliminate the Clark junction where the Brown Line must intersect with the Red LIne tracks. At least part of the benefit of doing the subway option is the opportunity to eliminate that junction. That's not a small advantage at rush hour, as it would significantly improve the reliability and speed of operations in that area.

4) Keeping the Addison station where it's at would mean closing the station (and potentially the entire line) during construction of that phase. A big advantage to the subway line is the ability to construct it while operating the existing infrastructure. Needing to put it in place along even a short portion of the existing alignment means a lenthy period of time with no through-service on the Red Line.

:previous: Seconded, especially the part about the location of the Addison station. From what I’ve read there wouldn’t be much of a difference between the current Evanston Express and the all-stops tunneled alternative largely because of platform consolidation and strategic station placement. That, combined with higher potential ridership (from shorter headways—wait times add significantly to perceived travel time—and faster urban service), an increased number of entrances, lower long-term maintenance costs (shielded from the whether, fewer tracks), and getting rid of the flat junction at Clark have made me a convert to the the two-track underground option. The only things I’d change would be moving the second Wilson entrance north with portals closer to the Broadway/Racine/Lawrence intersection, keeping South Boulevard to retain access to the medical complex on Ridge and dense southeastern Evanston, changing Noyes-Gaffield into Foster-Simpson, maybe keeping the four-track embankment with a minimally-updated Jarvis north of Lunt for Howard trains to stop and Linden trains to skip.

Anyway, I’m going to be sending off my comments to the CTA at RPM@transitchicago.com, and I hope everyone here does the same—the deadline’s February 18th.

I already sent mine in. I advocated the subway option. I even attached an illustration of the Barcelona subway to help describe one of my points.

It's only possible to grade-separate Clark Junction if they drop the outer tracks between the junction and Addison (which is fine if Purple runs express in the center tracks to Belmont/Fullerton). Otherwise the viaduct would need to grow to a six-track width for several hundred feet, requiring additional property.

Not a bad point. However, there's most likely a massive rats-nest of utilities under Sheffield that would probably need to move to make way for the subway station. All that utility work is pretty expensive, so if the station can be built under the alley instead, it might save money overall. If the eventual plan is to replace the line with a 2-track subway, then it's pretty easy to rip down two of the elevated tracks and start building the underground tracks right there.



I'll leave it up to the engineers to figure something out... I'm sure whatever they choose will be some awful penny-wise pound-foolish plan, so there's really no point in us debating it.

If you have a chance, read Cecil Adams' recent post about the RPM project... apparently the consultants are operating in a complete vacuum with regards to the system-wide consequences of each alternative. I'm sure some consultant was sitting there figuring out the cost of a 4-track elevated and sarcastically remarked that the cost was approaching that of a new subway, and *tada* a new alternative was born.

I’m not sure if this is as big an issue as Cecil makes it seem. While I agree they should have thought more about service beyond the alternative (specifically with regards to where Evanston trains would go south of Addison—personally I think matching them with the Orange Line, which has similar peak and offpeak frequencies, would make some sense), it’s not like the study was completely devoid of service level assumptions—assumptions were made about frequency and speed to generate the ridership estimates. I think he just got a shock when he saw that the Purple Line Express would go away and didn’t get a satisfactory explanation about curves, station placement and estimated wait times. In my experience, the people involved in the nitty-gritty of any sort of technical analysis are often constrained on what they can say by the terms of the project or constrain themselves about what they’ll say because they don’t want to be giving someone the wrong impression about something and end up hampering communication. I also wonder whether the lack of specificity is a consequence of the hoops NEPA makes agencies jump through.

Also, some stuff really is beyond the purview of a study—all the Circle and Clinton subway investment would be happening around North/Clybourn or possibly Division, so while it might be appropriate to have eventual through-routings as an appendix I’m not sure how relevant it is overall.

If the subway is built, all of the elevated immediately north of Belmont would disappear except for the Brown Line tracks. The Purple Line express would essentially disappear.

Why would you spend $4 billion on a new subway and cripple it by saving, proportionally, nickels and dimes on a single station? There will be a lot of utilities under all the proposed stations - that's just part of the cost of building the subway, and doing it right, instead of nickel and diming away the key benefits of a subway would be not just silly but outright stupid.

It would not be "easy" to just rip down two tracks and start building a subway station. You also seem to be under the mistaken impression that there wouldn't be any utilities under Addison and the alleys around the existing Addison station. On that block, just about anywhere you build would have utilities under it. Again, why save pennies and reduce the quality of the end product?

It will definitely be penny-wise, pound foolish if they do any of the things you've suggested. :)

I like Cecil and all, but he's prone to his own mistakes in judgment and knowledge. He actually published a letter I wrote him where I corrected a significant flaw in one of his articles years ago.

For one thing, in his commentary on the LA's transit, he starts off citing the Texas Transportation Institute's studies, which are widely criticized for their inappropriate and often irrelevant methodology.

In his RPM commentary, he dismisses operational coordination concerns rather flippantly, with "In theory this shouldn't be difficult," when, in fact, theory would tell him that it IS difficult. You have trains that are reliant on people boarding quickly and efficiently, and it only takes a couple people holding the doors for their friends to screw up coordination. Or a slow zone, something that is impossible to completely prevent on 24-hour service lines like the Red Line.

If the CTA chooses to rebuild the existing elevated, the CTA has said they're likely to do something similar to what Cecil proposes. They have, in other plans, talked of routing the Purple Line through the subway - in fact, that was part of the Circle Line proposal.

Cecil doesn't directly address the subway alternative, or consider how it could be run. He chooses to ignore that the subway would result in faster service than current operations for nearly everyone due to a combination of more frequent trains, reduced number of stations, and higher speeds on tracks that will experience less-frequent slow zones because of their straightness and protection from the elements.

He comparing existing infrastructure to only one of the CTA's alternatives, not even considering all of the alternatives. That makes it a little hard to know how to apply his commentary to this discussion.