It should have included a matching stairway/elevator on the east side of the station. The Feds have closed off LaSalle for Homeland Security purposes, so you could just use some of the street ROW. If you were smart, you could extend a short underground passage to allow for a direct elevator/stair connection between Metra and the Blue Line.

Helmut Jahn sketches for HSR station near old Post Office
 

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune....+Cityscapes%29

From: BLAIR KAMINS Blog


February 25, 2010
A high-speed rail station proposal from Helmut Jahn: Not perfect, but it gets the civic debate on the right track
Share |

Chicago architect Helmut Jahn has a promising but imperfect plan for a high-speed rail station in Chicago. It’s not much more than a sketch, certainly not a finished blueprint. Yet it deserves to be taken seriously, if only because it should kick-start a much-needed debate over the right place for the hub of the Midwest’s just-funded high-speed rail network.

Jahn, who has long excelled at transportation facilities, has prepared the plan for Reuben Hedlund, a civic-minded zoning lawyer who headed the Chicago Plan Commission from 1991 to 1997. Hedlund does not appear to be in a position to profit from the project, which he calls the Daniel Burnham Central Station in honor of the great turn-of-the-century Chicago planner. So the proposal can be considered clean, even if it would likely send the values of nearby properties skyrocketing.

The plan calls for the demolition of a brick U.S. Postal Service building in the 300 block of West Harrison Street, which stands just southeast of the old Chicago Main Post Office astride the Congress Expressway, and is mainly used by carriers who deliver mail to the South and West Loop (below). In its place would rise a riverfront office or condo tower and a low-slung train concourse with a swooping roof that would reach out like a tail, sheltering tracks and train platforms below street-level (above).

Let’s set aside the biggest practical hurdle to this vision—whether the Postal Service would sell the building or join private developers in a partnership to rebuild the site.

Advocates expect high-speed rail to make its debut in Chicago by 2014, in the wake of President Barack Obama’s decision to award $8 billion to the concept nationwide. That means Chicago and Mayor Richard Daley have a choice: Are they going to get on board and create a railroad gateway worthy of the city--or are they going to let a golden opportunity pass, cramming new passengers into an already-jammed Union Station?

The stakes are enormous, and not just because high-speed rail is the signature public works initiative of Obama’s controversial economic stimulus package. The location and architectural character of the station will invariably influence whether people switch from planes, as well as energy-hogging vehicles, to this greener form of getting around. The station also could propel a new wave of downtown development once the recession ends. Yet there has been precious little leadership on this issue from City Hall.

Whatever explains the city’s recalcitrance, this much is clear: Union Station is a poor candidate to serve as a high-speed rail hub.

Despite the soaring image of its barrel-vaulted Great Hall, the passenger concourse east of the hall is confusing and confining, a warren trapped within the structural columns that hold up the office building above it. Going forward, Union Station lacks adequate space to marshal more passengers and handle more trains. Nor does it connect to the Chicago Transit Authority’s express service to O’Hare. Its fundamental problem, though, is that it isn’t really a station. It’s a terminal.

Almost all of Union Station’s tracks, whether northbound or southbound, stop at the station instead of running straight through. That’s no good if you’re a high-speed rail passenger traveling, say, from Milwaukee to Cincinnati. You’d have to change trains in Chicago. Who has time for that? You’d fly instead.

In contrast, Hedlund is touting his site as the best of both worlds: It offers access to the train tracks that emerge from Union Station’s south end without the station’s claustrophobic structural web...............................more sketches in link

http://i581.photobucket.com/albums/s...c1914970c-.jpg

http://i581.photobucket.com/albums/s...c1b84970c-.jpg

We don't need yet another station that offers no CTA integration or easy transfers to Metra that will only add to the auto traffic snarl around the west loop stations.

Build the WLTC, if needed bore additional HSR tracks under Canal.

VERY interesting.

Carroll Ave Light Rail.

Carroll St. Light Rail? How does an isolated route with no possible connection to any CTA train lines aid connectivity?

As for this proposal, what possible use is an HSR station with platforms only 600 feet long?

Which doesn't go into the loop and would have to be extended further south than anticipated then cut over on Harrison to even get close to the station.

I'd even rather they demolish 222 S Riverside and entirely redo the concourse, platforms, and track configuration than see the Jahn proposal built.

Its an interesting spot for a station. the clinton street subway would provide the necessary cta connection. as for the clinton-carroll street line, that will be integrated with the monroe st busway so you could theoretically build a station at congress with an underground pedway under congress to the HSR station (1 block) and have direct connections to the loop (via clinton - monroe st busway, and McCormick continuing on the lakefront line) and the major N-S CTA route (red line through clinton subway). that's a long way off but realistically, so is any HSR station.

On the sketch I see 240M penciled in...
240 meters=787 feet according to my metric conversion table.

On the Talgo website they state that the 250 trainset series maximum length is 183meters with 11 cars.

Not that I am advocating this station, but it looks like the platform length is adequate.

I wish they would demolish 222. Its really the only way to truly fix Union once and for all. Of course, if they had simply kept the concourse building in the first place we wouldnt have to have this discussion. What an incredibly shortsighted decision.

Yes, Helmut has written in "700 feet/240 m." But that's for the longest platform; the other three are substantially shorter. Why would you build a station for the future where only one platform can even accommodate a single Talgo trainset, when you're hoping that 20 years from now you'll need a double set every semester break or holiday weekend?

I think a lot could be done at the current location, as I've mentioned in the past. Four run-through tracks could be created, and you could push the food court and even some Amtrak services upward into the first two floors of the 222 building. You could then take in about half the riverside walkway and the current food court to be the commuter waiting room and circulation, and reopen the taxi drives and use the Great Hall for intercity travelers.

I don't think that's the only way to fix Union. 222 could easily be renovated into an awesome station if they just put the money into it. I believe 222 is a steel tube construction like the Hancock and many other buildings. This means that floor sections bear no weight and can be cut out at will. I vote that they completely gut the bottom five floors of or so and leave only the elevator cores and load bearing beams. Then just rearrange the platforms and station functions contained within to the most effective layout and encapsulating the whole thing in a glass atrium. How sweet would that be to see the whole first five floors of 222 without any floor plates or cladding, suspended over an active train station, protected from the elements only by a skin of glass in the shape of a bubble (maybe something similar to Jahn's U of C library, but with a 1970's tower poking out of the top).

I might do my own sketches of this concept and post them here!

222 is so utterly unremarkable that I highly doubt anyone would miss it, particularly millions of passengers who are stuffed through it's dank bowels annually.

Don't be fooled by the Mid-America Commodity Exchange, which does appear to have a steel exoskeleton like the Hancock. 222 S. Riverside is a composite steel frame and concrete tube structure. I'm no engineer, but I don't think you can remove too much of the lower floor slabs before you start having torsion concerns.

What about only removing one or two floor slabs to create something of an open atrium in the middle (albeit with all the structural columns still there)? If one could merely take out one floor, having stairs/escalators descend from street level into a concourse with high ceilings whose only obstructions are the columns, with easy visibility to the under-street passageway to the Great Hall which itself could take on some of the concourses current functions not to mention serve as the waiting area for eventual HSR intercity travel on the deep HSR tracks under Clinton...

I dunno, I'd be surprised if the station isn't somewhat salvageable, if it is considered carefully from a user experience standpoint rather than as an unfortunate burden on the highrise, which is what the current smoke-filled dingy labyrinth feels like.

^ Has Mr. Kamin never heard of the Central Area Action Plan and the West Loop Transportation Center? Pretty bold plans, if you ask me. I"m not sure in which way the city is being recalcitrant, just realistic perhaps..

Union Station is busy? Really?

This won't make it any less smoke-filled... the platforms need better ventilation.

Why not replace this:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3637/...91c271.jpg?v=0

with something more open? You could build a giant vault between Canal and the edge of Gateway Center or hell, just rip that triangular skylight in the middle off. It directly blocks the diesel exhaust from exiting.

Of course, the vast majority of the platforms are blocked by buildings. Using air rights to develop wasn't a bad idea, but they didn't plan for expansion or ventilation. Air rights may have worked at Grand Central, but Grand Central has been electrified for 100 years. Union Station in DC, the only similarly-sized terminal with buildings over the platforms, has the same problem.

Actually, the triangular skylight is over the baggage platform, not the tracks. It's the open slots on either side that were specifically engineered to draw the smoke from steam locomotives up and out of the trainshed. If you remove the skylight, the fumes would be pulled laterally onto the platforms.

Those who built over air rights were keenly aware of the ventilation problem—and imagine how pressing it was in the era of the steam locomotive. Holabird & Roche did extensive engineering and even a full-scale mockup to arrive at the proper chimney shape and ventilation system for the Daily News Building.

Wow, didn't know that. On the other hand, Union Station is noticeably smoggier than Ogilvie, which has no building obscuring the ventilation.