CN's purchase of EJE resulted in deletions from CREATE rather than added projects. If the same is true for CP+KCS then we could end up spending billions adding capacity where we don't need it.

Yes because the EJ&E let CN circumvent a lot of Chicago area congestion. I don't think CP buying the KCS solves a similar Chicago problem that would negate the need for the planned improvements.

Huh? 42 elevators cost $2.1 billion?

I didn't see extending the brown line to connect to the O'Hare blue line on the list. That seems like a no brainer. :shrug:

The infrastructure bill is intended for shovel-ready projects. Hopefully the CTA will start studying a Brown Line extension once other projects are finished

What to make of this?

This isn't the first time CP has considered bypassing Chicago. In 2016, when CP attempted to acquire Norfolk Southern, the railroad wrote this about CREATE-

The passage above is from a white paper written by CP entitled The Opportunity to Alleviate Congestion in Chicago, in which CP argued that combining CP's and NS's assets would allow significant freight traffic to bypass the city.

I agree with you about South of the Lake. When the Amtrak 2035 map came out a few days ago, and it referred to "enhanced" routes, my first thought was South of the Lake would enhance so many routes that reviving it seems like a no-brainer.

Of course, even if there was money to expand the system, money is needed to then operate that system.

---

I don't know if anything can be done to speed up the Metra coaches. But that is a win in terms of maintenance cost, efficiency and experience that arguably shouldn't take so many years.

I also don't know if we are doing enough to get people to job centers like Bedford Park. It isn't flashy, but even just some kind of improved bus service and coverage for overnight shifts

From the HSR thread, the funding breakdown for rapid transit will be:
-$55b state of good repair
-$25b expansion
-$5b for ADA accessibility

with an additional:
-$25b electric transit
-$20b electric school buses
-$44b transformative projects (rail, highway, airports, etc.)

Metra issues challenge to create battery-powered, zero-emission locomotive
 

From Progressive Railroading -

https://i.imgur.com/MvuWqop.jpg

This is a sick joke and the worst kind of greenwashing. Batteries are many times less energy dense than diesel fuel (i.e. much more mass for the same energy output) so it will actually take more energy to move the train due to the mass of batteries. And it locks Metra into the push/pull locomotive model which is also more inefficient than multiple-unit.

Metra keeps asking "the industry" to build things that don't make sense. Hopefully this turns out like the gallery car RFP and they get no responses because this is so boneheaded.

I don't know the details. Obviously at some point battery powered everything is going to beat liquid fuel on fixed, limited range routes. Not today, but if you also consider maintenance costs and the benefits of regenerative braking, that could be significant on a route with numerous stops.

In 10 years, it's going to be cheaper to own and operate any electric car than an ICE car even if gas was free. That is going to happen much faster if it's a car that only does stop-and-go driving on a limited route. Regional rail is probably somewhere on that path too. For example, if we could charge batteries with less voltage than was required to operate them in real time during acceleration, it's possible that electrifying old diesel lines would be simpler and cheaper than going full electric.

I have to imagine that if you replaced a diesel engine with a battery, it's a pretty short hop to have drive systems in every car rather than one big turbine up front.

However, the fact that this doesn't exist already in some other forward-thinking regional rail system leads me to believe that you're right and that it won't pencil out in the near term.

It's just attacking the wrong end of the problem. The energy source isn't the problem, it's the (in)efficiency of how the energy is used.

Metra's trains right now are moving bank vaults. Rather than admitting that maybe they shouldn't be moving 692 bank vaults per day in and out of downtown Chicago, they're trying to claim green cred by saying "what if we moved the bank vaults with batteries"? Of course, the batteries themselves are one more bank vault to strap onto each train!

I'm not even against batteries per se, although pretty much every other developed country continues to conclude that electrification via overhead wire or third rail is superior. If you're going to deploy batteries, you should A) switch to a lightweight train design so much less energy is needed/smaller batteries, and B) use multiple-unit technology so the energy and mass is distributed more efficiently across the length of the train instead of just at the front. Both of these changes also have positive ripple effects in the form of faster travel times for riders due to better performance/acceleration.

Looking forward to 2050 when Metra issues an RFP to retrofit fusion reactors into F40s which are somehow still the bulk of their locomotive fleet.

JFC people if you really want battery trains this bad just buy from the Europeans even though yes they'll look and function like a product actually designed within some of our lifetimes.

Metra Electric at 17% of pre-pandemic levels (seems about right... it's been getting more and more crowded over the last two months, though I also take it in the reverse commute direction which may have different behavior) and adding additional reverse commute options:
https://www.hpherald.com/evening_dig...c4c428fe6.html

I did not realize the extent of the warehouses near the University Park station, and I guess this is before the new Amazon facility
https://i.imgur.com/YKT4IE4.png

(I've taken the ME down there to see the sculpture garden at Gov State, but it's not at all apparent on the ground)

Yeah they added that new interchange at Stuenkel Rd that kickstarted all of the growth. Virtually no friction for trucks getting from highway to dock door.

Of course there is no way to get from Metra station to the jobs, unless the warehouses run shuttles (doubt it).

I know these are enormous buildings but the employee parking areas don't look that big compared to a manufacturing facility. There may not be that many jobs here actually, I know many of these facilities are increasingly automated. The biggest warehouse in that shot is Solo Cup, they only have 60 parking spaces for an almost 3million sf building.

Amazon's new fullfllment center is planning shuttles, apparently!

Construction delayed once again.

Metra’s New Edgewater Station Delayed Yet Again As City Nixes Transit Agency’s Green Groundwater Plan

And during that delay China would have built another metro line.

Lol. Unbelievable.

Wonder what the infrastructure bill would bring home transit-wise if passed.

It's unlikely we would see anything new or surprising - the region has a long to-do list and Congressmen have been required to select projects from this list for earmarks, they can't just pick any pet project.

I outlined some of the likely candidates here:
https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...ostcount=15231

That post was the "big fish" but there are countless small or medium sized projects across the region that have been sitting on to-do lists for years without funding. In Chicago for example there are a lot of bridge replacements.