those will look FAR more dated in 40 years than a 5000 series.

Don't forget the issue of climate and operating environment in vehicle design. There's a good reason why Russian, American, and Canadian railcars have a much more... "robust" and utilitarian design aesthetic than the toys that operate in southern Europe, Australia, etc.

When your typical temperature range is a mediterranean 40F-75F (or even 50F-90F such as in subtropical regions) your design constraints are much different than when your temperature range is a midcontinental 0F-100F --- and all that time below 32F also means you're dealing with corrosive salt spray if your ROW is anywhere near a road.

I doubt it. In 40 years, the HK will look 40 years old and the 5000 series will look 80 years old - they already look like a 40-year-old design to me. I know there are "reasons" Chicago doesn't have cars you can move between, but honestly they've had the better part of 50 years to work out the complications and I don't see why it can't be done. Even if it added a few minutes per coupling, the safety and comfort factors seem like a no-brainer to me.

Then there's the new LED signage. The LEDs they chose are old tech. Sure simple is sometimes more reliable, but it just looks dated right out of the box. Honestly, I'm so disappointed in the LED signs I'd rather they'd stuck with the old ones which at least had the train color on obvious display and had more style.

Some of my favorite cars are the Stockholm ones, and while Stockholm doesn't have quite the temperature range Chicago does, it's a lot bigger than a Mediterranean or subtropical range. The cars in Germany or Austria or Moscow or pretty much anywhere in central Europe would certainly have to deal with temperature swings like Chicago, as does Beijing.

and that's precisely where we differ.

there's no accounting for taste.

Germany for the most part has an oceanic climate, much more similar to Seattle than Chicago. Winters in German cities are milder and a lot less snowy than Chicago.
Central Europe falls into the continental range, but even there the weather is generally more similar to places like Maryland or Virginia rather than the upper Midwest.

You have to travel very far east in Europe to experience temperature swings as in the Midwest. That would include Moscow, which isn't in central Europe by any stretch of the meaning.

CTA puts riders in a N.Y. seat of mind

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Ma...-Save-Chicago/


Chicago has several mottoes and names, like Horto in Urbs Urbs in Horto, the City that Works, and the Windy City. But more recently the unofficial motto has been "Chicago: We're not Detroit." It's fun to get urbanists and historians talking about why that's the case: why Chicago, though it has lost population over the last decade, has avoided the collapse its midwest/rust belt peers have faced. There are a lot of answers, like the fact that the city's base as a real hub for the products of the Upper Midwest allowed it to transition into a virtual one, laying the groundwork for its financial industry.

But Detroit could have done something similar, leveraged the power of automobile manufacturing to become the center for management, development, and finance for the world wide automobile industry even after manufacturing had declined. And to some degree they have done that. It is not like the auto industry worldwide has collapsed and foreign manufacturers have a strong presence in the Detroit area. What is different, is that there was no agglomeration forces keeping Detroit as the economic center of the region. Today most of the work is spread out over a vast stretch of land hobbled together in different political boundaries, i.e. Toyota in Ann Arbor.

Of course this was true from the very beginning and a natural effect of huge manufacturing plants but even the headquarters and research firms are spread to thin throughout the region. This dilutes the political and economic power of a city/region. One of the most important numbers for strong cities is revenue per area. The higher the ratio, the more businesses will come together and the higher the economies of scale. This is what keeps a city together.

Chicago followed the exact opposite path of Detroit and the reason why the city and region is much stronger than Detroit today. Great Lakes shipping concentrated along the river meaning shippers and financiers needed downtown offices and docks. Eventually railroad shipping over took the boats but maintained the central location theme. Meat packing was concentrated at the stock yards. Regional and local transit catered to this centralization and developed in the spoke pattern we see today. The l, trolleys, buses, street cars, and commuter railroads dumped vast quantities of people in an extremely small area which allowed businesses to make large profits per square footage and build up rather than out.

What this meant over time was that the city of Chicago was much more powerful in its region as compared to Detroit in Southeast Michigan. Just look at the number of people living in Detroit as a percent of those living in the entire region and compare it to Chicago. This suburbanization dilutes the political and economic power of not only the city but the region. The suburbs and the city are linked together and cannot grow without working together. In Chicago's case, the city has used sheer numbers to hold onto power but as the population on the periphery increases and the population in the city declines, there might be a shift of power to the suburbs that could undercut the viability of the entire region.

To this extent, CTA and Metra did save Chicago. Today these transit options allow for huge numbers of workers to come together in a small area and make vast quantities of money. Relying solely on the car means firms have to spend large amounts of money on parking spaces or move towards cheaper land diluting the economies of scale. The resurgence of bike commuting and walking to work also allows for large numbers of commuters in a smaller area and why all forms of transit should be pursued. High speed rail should be pursued not because American's like big and fast things but because it gets large numbers of people to a small area quickly as opposed to airports that need huge quantities of land. That is why putting Detroit's rail station in New Center is a mistake. It should be Downtown.

Of course most people on this board already know this but it feels gratifying to say things sometimes. Democracy demands wisdom.

I noticed at the Chicago Brown Line stop last night that there were a few large piles of new planks - the creosote kind - that will presumably be installed to replace the quickly-failing planks people have been complaining about.

^ Cool. I thought creosote was prohibited, but apparently it's fine for certain uses.

I still maintain that CTA should be using artificial decking of some kind, but going back to tried-and-true creosote is an improvement. Of course, creosote is only a preservative. You still need a sealant and a fire retardant. Historically CTA has used coal tar sealant, which is gross and awful in hot weather. Hopefully there is a better alternative.

hmm, actually tonight I was on the far south end of the platform, and the new planks piled there look like ordinary pressure-treated boards. I have no idea what they're doing with the mix.

Crosswalks
 

Has anyone else noticed that, at least in the Central Area, Chicago seems to be switching from the two-parallel-line style crosswalk that's common in most of the U.S. to the multiple wide lines running perpendicular to pedestrian travel that's common in New York, Toronto and a few other places?

I notice that Boston, Atlanta and Washington also have a style in some places that mixes the two, and Seattle has its own take on crosswalks, too. I didn't realize there was so much variety in the way to mark crosswalks until I started looking at what other cities do. For example, San Francisco is mostly parallel lines, but then they do have some of the perpendicular style, and some of those are done in yellow paint instead of white.

Is there some sort of standards shift that Chicago is joining? Or maybe the film industry said we could stand in for New York more if we had New York-style crosswalks? ;)

By "perpendicular", I assume you mean zebra-stripe, Abbey Road style?

I really dunno, but my guess is that the zebra-stripe crosswalks are far more visible to drivers, which discourages them from blocking the crosswalk with their vehicles and encourages them to slow down as they approach. As pedestrian traffic has grown in downtown Chicago, so have the conflicts between drivers and pedestrians.

Good one.

I was entertaining a foreign visitor once who saw two different styles in the same intersection, and asked the obvious question of what the functional difference was. All I could think of was, different reigns, different eras at Streets & San. Though I always do end up also querying the roles of snowfall and snowplow scraping when it comes to trying to explain any street markings.

But that did lead to the discovery of all the crosswalk information your little heart could desire -- at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_crossing -- including this transit-nerd pocket-reference diagram-cum-eye-chart:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...8en%29.svg.png

Going by that, it appears we're aligning our crosswalk style with our climate - continental.

RTA asks transit users: How's the ride?


November 29, 2011

Read More: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...833,full.story




http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/...1/66380733.jpg

Noise of old train cars Vs the 5000 series cars
 

Having recently moved to a building right next to an elevated L station on the Green/pink line and finally ditching my car, I can hear the frequent rumblings of the trains passing by. And I can definitely say that the 5000 series cars are SO much quieter that any of the other models. It'll be interesting to walk on any of the loop streets after all train cars used in the loop are 5000s. Wabash will be so much quieter

I work on the 26th floor overlooking the Pink/Green lines at the corner of Lake and Wacker. I can slightly hear the rumblings of the trains when they go by, and definitely noticed right off the bat when the new ones started. Instead of the jerking and slamming of the trains starting and stopping, you hear that 'hiss' more as they slowly speed up and down. I always think of DC when I hear that whine, since I'm assuming they use alternating current as well.

I do agree though, just walking up and down Lake Street all day, the new trains are quieter. It's funny when one goes by, cause people that walk the street on a daily basis will all look up to see what the new noise is coming from the L tracks.

I filled out the survey a couple days ago. It was lengthy but it asked important questions.

In Michigan they sometimes recess the pavement a bit and then stripe within the recess for lane markings and crosswalks. This allows plows to pass over without lifting the paint. I haven't really seen this done anywhere in Chicagoland.