Or just about any wood other than pine. Pine is really inappropriate for any exterior flooring application. Especially modern pine, which is usually new growth and even softer than it used to be. 100 years ago, pine might be from an older tree and while still soft, more dense. Much of this new stuff is not fit for much of anything IMHO.

To me it was the Chicago way. Inferior so that in a few years the "buddies" get paid to replace the stuff they laid 5 years ago. The Chicago way. A stupid person like me was wondering when they finished the stations how long the almost raw wood would last what with the weather and all the salt.

I noticed that too as far as the rusting on the Brown Line. Especially at Fullerton and Belmont with the large white girders holding up the platforms, many of them already look disgusting. The railings are also looking pretty gross on a lot of stations.

They really are a sad sorry example of something built a few years ago!! I mean, with the corregated steel roofs on the platforms?? That's something cheap from the 40's. Look at the one at Sheridan, it's absolutely horrid - and I'm sure that's what the Brown Line will look like in 5 years since they never paint or do any sort of maint.

You still haven't addressed the question of whether or not you think freeways are necessary "to keep any industry" around, or if they do nothing but allow people to "leave the poor behind". You can't have both arguments and I can't respond to your comments until you choose one or the other. So is a robust freeway network necessary for industry or not?

Additionally this is not just "another ring road", this is another bypass for what you know very well is the biggest transportation and trade choke point in the country, perhaps the world (rivaling the world's legendary straits). There are very few ways for trucks to get in and out of Southern Chicago and NW Indiana that don't involve passing through extremely dense and built up areas that are subject to heavy traffic. Having a road that ties the 4 or 5 freeways that head into these areas together lets the trucks drive around that traffic and then head directly to the areas they need to access.

Also, the excitement over the freeway occurred during a conversation that was specifically about the "huge amount of available product" in the Gary/Lakeshore area. So no, they weren't excited about developing corn fields, though I'm sure they would love to do that as well.

Except that accommodating the squatters greatly adds to the cost of construction. Even one zig zag around a few hundred acre farm could add a mile or more to the length of the road. That's a huge increase in cost and, almost as importantly, in the travel time of the road. Don't act like it's no big deal to build around squatters.

Pine?!

Pine won't last more than 2-3 years! Any sort of wet environment should just cause it to rot away, and its so soft that foot traffic (let alone pull-along travel cases) will destroy it.

Historic preservation can be ridiculous sometimes. Although they could have used Ipe, but thats spendy.

Modern industry relies on having freeways near it. Not 20 miles south of it. A freeway that far south of the developed area is simply the dream of someone who wants to make a killing by turning the adjacent farmland into industrial or warehouse space. There are lots of corridors that could be chosen within 10 miles of the Gary lakefront if relieving traffic congestion around the tip of the lake were the real motivation. Hell, we just decided not to bother rebuilding the SH-912 bridge because there's so little traffic in that area.

Where exactly is this huge traffic jam? TravelMidwest statistics show that the worst travel time on I-65 between US 30 and I-80 is only two minutes longer than the average. On the Kingery between the state line and the Bishop Ford it's the difference between six minutes normal and 12 minutes worst-case. How will going 10 miles further south save a trucker coming from Michigan six minutes?

I notice the Illiana made The Infrastructurist's list of useless highway projects.

^ MR DT, Add to your argument that the Illiana is at the top of Indiana's project list, so much so that their INDOT is spearheading and funding the initial studies. Considering the palpable Hostile relationships the 2 states have with Gov. Mitch Daniels crowing about all of the businesses that are relocating to IN you can only conclude that IN sees this as a net gain for their state. The fact that the Illiana (and planned 355/I-57 connection) will give IN counties direct access to the massive new Joliet Intermodal, makes me believe IN will be using even more state subsidies to extract companies in the logistics business over to their state.

I dont see this as a win for IL at all. If one is against the SSA then how can one be for the Illiana, the 2 projects are joined at the hip. NO F%%N way are companies going to open shop in Gary when the green-fields of southern Lake County, Newton & Jasper County await replete with state incentives and property tax give backs and the same old business model that corporations have been using for decades that extracts legalized bribes and kickbacks from the public bank trust.

Even more troubling is the environmental cost of the project. The entire length of the proposed southern route is within the Kankakee River watershed. That river water is already used for the drinking water of most of Kankakee County, and far Southern Will county as well as the adjacent towns in the Indiana counties. If the expected commercial development follows the Illiana, then it is reasonable to assume that the river will be tapped to supply water. No studies are being done to anticipate this need. In the long run even more Great Lakes water may need to be diverted to support the development associated with expanding commercial development this far south.

I couldn't agree with you more

Random question: was there once an overpass of the railroad tracks on Sangamon between Kinzie and Fulton?

Yes there was, this Google Satellite link shows the intersection of Sangamon and Kinzie, you can rotate the image and see how the street grades rise up for clearance over the Metra/Milwaukee Road tracks: http://g.co/maps/fc59a and the new concrete covering where the demolished overpass began.

Additionally, there were Trolley lines on both Sangamon St., and Morgan St. one block West.

South Lakefront Corridor Transit Study Meeting Tomorrow
 

Please attend the South Lakefront Corridor Transit Study Meeting tomorrow at the Apostolic Church of God, 5 pm at E. 63rd St. & S. Kenwood Ave.: http://campaign.r20.constantcontact....ONEud7EriGY%3D

The Church is directly across the street from the 63rd St./Woodlawn Metra Electric District Station: http://g.co/maps/gfntp

As the Station is available to the Public at all times I plan to escort small groups to examine the MED infrastructure for conversion to an 'L' operation (I have notified Metra of this, and as long as no one enters areas "Not Open to the Public" there is no problem).


I also have a Meeting with Re. Cynthia Soto (D-Chicago) Monday morning to discuss the Gray Line, and the necessity of Metra and CTA Fare Increases and Service Cuts.

Hope to see you at the Corridor Study Meeting,

Mike Payne

Has anybody been by the Halsted bridge lately? Just wondering if they finished the abutments and started the steelwork yet. CDOT's flier has a completion date of November 2011.

Group Wants CTA ‘Gray Line’ on Metra Electric Line
 

FOX Chicago News - Published: Tuesday, 13 Sep 2011, 7:43 AM CDT:

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news...aring-20110913


Chicago - Some South Side residents want to convert Metra's Electric Lines to a new CTA line. They call it the Gray Line.

There was a public hearing about the idea on the South Side Monday night.

The Gray Line would run from downtown through Grant Park, along the lakefront to the far South Side.

Supporters said the Gray Line would provide easy access to the Museum of Science and Industry, Ford's Torrence Avenue Plant and Chicago State University.

I hope it happens' that part of the southside is fairly dense for the southside and would serve and underserved part of the city.

Would they intend on increasing frequency of service if it is turned over to CTA or would it run as a commuter schedule only

One of the main points of the whole proposal is for Gray Line trains to run no less than every 10 minutes all day long (like the 'L') - except for the Blue Island and Hegewisch Shuttles (20 min. off peak).

By Jonathan Bullington Tribune reporter
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,6390950.story

9:16 p.m. CDT, September 15, 2011
An ongoing study of where to build a new CTA Yellow Line station in Evanston has identified Dodge or Asbury avenues as the preferred locations.

At the second in a series of public meetings on the topic, city officials on Thursday night said these spots might be good for a station because they are near current or potential businesses and residential developments.

Topics
Commuting
Transportation
Chicago Transit Authority
Maps
Evanston, IL, USA

The officials stressed that the study of where to put a station is still in its infancy.

A third potential station location at Ridge Avenue, while not ruled out, has fallen out of favor with the city’s advisory and technical advisory committees because the surrounding neighborhood is already highly developed, officials said.

The article mentions direct downtown service, hopefully this is something that is seriously being considered.

It shouldn't be to terribly hard to run it over the Purple line routing any maybe switch it over to the Red after Addison to avoid it going over the loop elevated. Run it up the 13th street incline, switch tracks, and head back up north.

If only they could get ridership up enough on the Yellow line to justify running full-sized Red Line trains up there. Then every second or third Red Line train could just keep going up to Skokie. Too bad the platforms can't handle that...

Yea, I doubt the platforms will be built out to 10 car lengths. I would think that a more frequent express service from Skokie to the Loop would be a fairly popular alternative to Metra and there is room for a considerable garage just south of Dempster to do a park and ride.

Back in the 70s through 80s, the Skokie Swift ran at a 4-5 minute headway in the peak, which would provide pretty painless 2-seat service via a cross-platform transfer at Howard to Red Line trains running every 3-4 minutes. However, that also implies nearly doubling the current peak period demand on the branch to justify increasing the frequency to those levels.

I think it would make more sense to add an express Skokie service every 8-10 a minutes during rush that bypasses all the local Yellow/Red Line stops except the transfer at Howard until Belmont. Provided the line is rebuilt from Addison to Howard in the coming years the time savings should be substantial at higher speeds.

Looks like the Englewood Flyover isn't the only major rail project on the mid-south side.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...994,full.story

End of the line for a pocket of Englewood?
Survivors in a long-struggling community fight displacement by proposed railroad site expansion

By Antonio Olivo and Dahleen Glanton
September 18, 2011

In a corner of Englewood so torn apart by foreclosures that it's easy to wave to friends across vast stretches of vacant land, residents are mounting a stand against a massive construction project that could wipe out what's left of their long-struggling community.

The Norfolk Southern railroad has been buying houses and tearing them down to make room for an 84-acre freight yard that would extend a 140-acre yard just north of Garfield Boulevard. The company says the new yard is needed to meet increasing national demands for freight cargo.

...

@ctaGrayLine

You should try to write letters to congress persons (even those outside your district) in order to fund the potential Gray Line. This could be included in Stimulus 2.0. Given that the resources are already there, the only thing needed is the additional funding.

Do you know what agency would be handling this, including the logistics of having more trains used on that route?

That is one huge chunk of land.

^ Looks like equivalent to at least 2 blocks x 6 blocks. Since the entire new facility would be bisected (existing northern yard and new southern yard) by Garfield, I wonder if they would deck over that entire 2-block long stretch of Garfield, rather than relying on 2 slender viaducts at the opposite edges of that 2-block stretch. That way the yard could handle many much-longer trainsets. But interrupting Garfield, a boulevard, with a 2-block tunnel would probably be a non-starter to the city, right?

Maybe they'd reconfigure the yard so it has a single center hump at Garfield & Normal, and get rid of the other 2 viaducts.

Regardless, there's at least something positive about utilizing and revitalizing inner-city infrastructure, rather than seeing railroads just push their operations out to the 'burbs, like happened with trucking etc.

Huh? I don't think the city really cares.

A major corporation wants to build a vast new facility in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods and create hundreds of new jobs. The corporation is willing to pay fair market value for the land it requires and it is also purchasing land owned by the city.

Sounds like a good deal to me, even if the boulevard gets a little uglier. I'm more concerned about the residents being kicked out. This area is nowhere near as bombed-out as Washington Park or parts of North Lawndale.

Norfolk Southern will likely push to have to build as few through streets through this facility as possible. Garfield and probably 59th will be the only east-west streets left (they'll probably close 57th.) Not sure if that's a big problem, though.

I wonder if, along with this new yard they might leave space for a passenger bypass. Currently all the Amtrak services bound for Michigan and the east coast go through here; once the Grand Crossing CREATE project (P4) is complete, trains to St Louis, Quincy, Carbondale, and New Orleans will pass through here as well. As I recall, passenger trains frequently encounter delays due to freight congestion, and I'm sure that Norfolk Southern doesn't like holding up their freight trains on account of passenger trains either.

'SWAT team’ to give facelifts to one hundred CTA rail stations
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter September 20, 2011 10:38AM

One hundred CTA rail stations are in line for a facelift — everything from painting, new lighting and power washing to new signs and landscaping — under an overhaul unveiled Tuesday by Mayor Rahm Emanuel...

...The $25 million program is to be funded, in part, through savings realized in earlier cuts to CTA bureaucracy.

http://www.suntimes.com/7766879-417/...-stations.html

^^^Also from the article:

"As he often does, the mayor said public transportation investments are key to luring businesses to Chicago."

-------------------------------------
I think is a critical distinction between Rahm and Daley. Daley lured via aesthetics and amenity "gimmicks". I never recall him claiming that PT infrastructure is critical to luring businesses.

This falls in line with recent studies that indicate that such infrastructure and things such as human capital are far more critical in luring the type of businesses Chicago should be playing for as opposed to bromide knuckle dragging "cut taxes", "cut taxes".

This strikes me as a very smart move.

I also like that Rahm is thinking small picture, quick fixes. Obviously the $8 billion to bring the system to a state of good order will never actually materialize, so it's good that CTA is finding ways to be smart.

This is part of the city's vaunted classical "emerald necklace". It's a quarter-block or half-block wide boulevard, with a massive wooded, green center median. I don't get why you think chopping out a part of that, even if for some economic benefit, would be a no-brainer. And this is not like hundreds of jobs from a factory or HQ relocation; the railyard will be 95% metal and only like 5% flesh.

On top of that, one thing that seems inconsistent is that you are worried about several dozen families being kicked out of their houses (which is a one-time change), but you don't mind thousands of neighborhood residents losing 2 blocks of greenway to a barrier at the formal entranceway to their neighborhood, which also interrupts their connection to the Washington Park/Jackson Park/Hyde Park part of the city, and which would introduce a lot of potential for crime and certainly lots of additional policing and graffiti removal (which is a permanent change). People being forced to relocate is a frequent thing in the city; paving over marquee parkland and disjointing urban fabric is not. I certainly hope that the people there receive fair value (or wishfully a small premium), though.

I think if, maybe per city pressure, disruption to Garfield can be limited to a couple narrower viaducts (splitting the railyard into northern and southern halves), then it does become more of a no-brainer.

I don't think cutting the boulevard is a no-brainer; I think it's a terrible idea.

I just don't think the city actually cares. The boulevard medians are not exactly well-used, and there's no well-formed advocacy group to help protect the parks in that area of the city. The community groups that do exist are already overburdened with massive issues of crime, poor schools, poverty, lack of retail options, transit issues, etc. If they do tackle the parks issue, it's only through the lens of health and recreation. Remember when they protested the loss of the baseball fields in Washington Park during Olympics planning? The boulevard medians are simply not a priority.

Conversely, stemming the flow of people out of the neighborhood is a HUGE issue that is front and center to the neighborhood groups. So is bringing jobs and investment to the neighborhood.

At any rate, my guess is that the Garfield Blvd crossing will be more like the 51st crossing... a series of one and two-track bridges. It certainly won't be a three-block-long tunnel like Damen at the BNSF.

They just completely cleaned up the Logan Square Blue Line and it is actually really good looking. All they did was scrape the pealing paint and rust off and then repaint everything along with a good powerwashing of every surface in the station. This revealed that the drab grey color of the brick was actually a bright cream color like cream city brick is. They also cleaned out each and every one of the lighting "nooks" in the ceilings and gave them new fixtures.

Other than a few hack-job repairs obviously from the 80's or 90's which were revealed by the power washing that ruin the aesthetic in a few places, it seems as if you are in a brand new station that could have been built yesterday. It probably cost what? A few hundred thousand most of which was labor? Totally what the city needs to be doing to each and every station.

The Division Blue line and Clark/Division Red line should be next in line! They have to be some of the dirtiest stations around. Being underground amplifies the feeling.

The boulevards always seem too suburban to me. It looks like an arterial road in any suburb. I've never seen anyone use them for anything either. Who wants to hang out in a road median? It might have been nicer back in the horse and buggy days but that's long past. I don't see their point in a car environment. Every suburb has these so called "Emerald Necklaces" it's called an arterial road. I rather they be built up more to increase density in these areas or perhaps one side could be turned into a larger park and the other side be the road. The medians are too small, noisy, and dusty to want to hang out there.

The new train yard will be built south of Garfield per the article. So I don't think it should affect it much. There is already a train over pass there.

There are basically three types of streets in the Boulevard system as far as I've seen.

1) A regular street that is just called a "Boulevard" because it connects with the system.

2) The wide, grassy median type, like Garfield is, like South Western is.

3) Real boulevards, with local lanes separated from the center lanes by a relatively narrow grassy parkway, like Randolph in the West Loop, or West Franklin Boulevard (one of the few streets names in Chicago where "Street" vs "Boulevard" and N/S vs E/W actually makes a difference), or Humbolt Blvd, Kedzie Blvd, MLK, Jr. Blvd and Logan Blvd. The most structured of these also have limited cross-streets.

4) Only center lanes, with extremely wide parkways on the side, like Marshal Blvd.

Type number 3) is, to me, the most interesting set of boulevards.

For type number 2), I've always thought it'd be a perfect place to run trolleys in the same manner as St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans. For that to work, though, there'd have to be a pretty sustained effort to increase development along the routes, otherwise there wouldn't be enough density and destination spots for ridership to rise past a point where bus service is adequate.

Regardless, I do think the city should actively encourage intensification of use along the boulevards. Sections of them are beautiful, and allowing more people to benefit from and appreciate them should be a real goal.

http://i56.tinypic.com/2dam4xg.jpg

City of Chicago Dept. of Planning Life Along the Boulevards

Here's a chart I did in the late 80s of the different boulevard cross-sections. Only a small part of the circuit (please don't call it the Emerald Necklace) has a St. Charles–type neutral ground suitable for light rail. Even more problematic is that the boulevards always forbade streetcars, so—by design—none of them are commercial strips that would be transit destinations.

Ok, that's all I was worried about.

What, too Wizard of Oz-y for you? So the unofficial name is boulevard "circuit" or something?

The Emerald Necklace refers to Olmsted's work around Boston. It's like people calling Michigan Avenue the "Miracle Mile."

Ever since I saw the Tribune story I've been thinking about innovative ways to handle the problem of having a big classification yard crossing Garfield. I think it's realistic to expect NS to want at least 20 tracks across the boulevard. Is there an innovative way we could handle that today as compared to the dark heavy concrete viaducts of the 1910s? The IC tracks through Hyde Park (12 tracks wide) had a couple of skylights but they were never really enough. Could railroad tracks be supported on a space frame? Break the crossing into three 40-foot spans and just put 12-inch I-beams directly under the rails with no ties or ballast?

That would leave no protection from debris falling to the roadway.

^^^ Sounds like a job for Studio Gang. I've seen then use plexiglass in innovative ways in many concept projects. Perhaps, if angled properly, some kind of transparent barrier could be made to be relatively self-cleaning and provide the necessary debris/oil drop protection over walk ways.

The flap over the UP reconstruction project revealed pretty clearly that the modern standard is a ballasted bridge rather than a direct fixation, since a ballasted bridge allows the continuously-welded rail to continue without a break, whereas the direct-fixation bridge requires an expansion joint at each end.

Maybe that doesn't matter in a railyard setting, where there will be plenty of jointed track anyway.

There are plenty of European examples of innovative rail viaducts, but only in an American (or possibly Chinese) city would a massive railyard get built in a residential neighborhood, so this is a pretty unique design problem.

Your proposal for I-beams beneath each rail creates a big clearance problem. The clearance between rail and road is already so low that they had to use a through truss on the existing overpasses. I wouldn't be surprised if the construction depth already is less than 12 inches. Plus, a 12-inch depth wouldn't be able to span very far, so you'd need frequent supports - possibly even narrowing the roadway.

^ From aerial photos the current Garfield viaducts don't look like through trusses (assuming what Google Images displays as through trusses is correct).

There would be so much steel in building 20 +/- such through trusses that you'd think the money could be better spent on depressing Garfield slightly. Or, maybe instead elevating this (soon-to-be center) part of the yard could be compatible with a hump or gravity yard scheme (which needs only like 1 track at the center), where the center point is at a higher elevation (based on my very slight understanding of such things).

http://i51.tinypic.com/14ax2qf.png
Bing Maps

See the steel members sticking up on both sides of the tracks above the rail height? That makes them through-trusses, though they're quite shallow compared to what you might be picturing crossing a river.

I guess my thought was that if you were building a big new yard and crossing, it would be easy to elevate it an additional foot, or to depress the boulevard that much. By dividing it into three short segments, the girders could be under 40 feet, with less depth and less concern about torsion. Some combination of glass or polycarbonate just underneath could take care of dripping oil or debris. But I'd love to hear other ideas that don't rely on wishful thinking (this won't be a hump yard).

There was a time when the various park districts demanded "decorative" overpasses from railroad (and L) companies. That usually meant a little wrought iron or decorative concrete work. Here's the UP-N at Pratt:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5061/...96780e9c8a.jpg

Photo by Robert Powers from his blog A Chicago Sojourn

I've always thought the various under-bridge shield structures along the Riverwalk were excellently done. There isn't as much clearance here, of course, but you could look to those as a starting point.

You really only need protection for the sidewalks and maybe the boulevard median, although I'd love to see the median under the overpass planted up with shade-tolerant plants. You could also do what the IC did at the Midway, namely to put solid infill under the median span and create a terminus/focal point for the greenspace. On the Midway, the focal point is the Masaryk Monument.

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/2964/masaryk.jpg

I can't wait for Clark and division to be cleaned. I can't imagine what a good cleaning will do for it's appearance.
9-25
http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...N/789a1db5.jpg

I for one quite enjoy the post-apocalyptic condition of Clark/Divison. It has a certain charm.

Supposedly it was to be rebuilt by CDOT after Grand/State was finished. I think they may have raided those funds though to actually finish Grand/State...

As far as I know, most of the money for the subway-station renovations has come from CMAQ grants, so they can't "raid" the funds.

My guess is that the constant bickering in Washington has prevented the creation of a new transportation funding bill, and the stopgap funding put in place hasn't included any money for CMAQ.

Poking around a bit it seems CDOT paid for it by borrowing against a number of other projects that were given federal funds, including the Clark/Division rebuild.

Ha, Post apocalypse definitely fits Clark/division