No, that's my point. The Blue Line doesn't even remotely serve the 355 corridor. Pace used to run an express bus, but they just canceled it a few weeks ago - not that it would have really assisted me. I'm not driving into the city, but I do drive down 355 quite a bit, to other suburban areas.

I am glad they're repaving 355... the pavement from the 290 interchange to Army Trail has gotten pretty bad lately. That doesn't mean I can't engage in Chicago's national pastime and complain about it, though.

i guess, im actually surprised the blue line doesn't go as far as Manheim.

In my long wish-list a few pages back, I suggested center, counter-flow lanes on Michigan for buses (I also suggested additional rail subways that would serve the north lakefront be built over the next 30 years, but center counterflow lanes could be done cheaper and with at least somewhat less controversy hence quicker).

Yikes! Can you imagine center contra-flow lanes on a two-way street with millions of clueless tourist pedestrians? Or did you mean a single reversible lane like we used to have on Ridge? Would you board from safety islands?

Yeah, safety islands. There are plenty of other streets in other cities that manage similar things. Some of San Francisco's streetcars have boarding islands. I actually do like a bus subway, it's just so expensive and disruptive to build one - even a shallow one.

In my long proposal, the reason I didn't go with a bus tunnel was that I combined additional rail subway downtown with deliberate density enhancements. I'm not anti-bus, but sometimes rail's worth the extra effort.

Also, if you did create a bus subway, a cross one should perhaps be added at Chicago Ave, extending from between Chicago/Lasalle to Chicago/Fairbanks, so that a Chicago Ave BRT line could navigate the Mag Mile area quickly. Of course that would conflict with the Chicago Ave subway station ...

^San Francisco doesn't have slush and salt spray. Chicago had safety islands in streetcar days (even used for buses on State Street), which prompted the old ditty about how "there's no geese on Goose Island and no safety on a safety island."

As long as we're fantasizing about bus subways, I don't think it would be too disruptive to actually build under Michigan. Chicago has the luxury of an existing lower level on Michigan all the way north to Grand, which takes care of about 1/3 of the route already. You could bore two tunnels from a launch pit on Lower Michigan, and then an incline in the park space near Oak Street Beach. Both excavation sites avoid disrupting traffic.

If you were to build stations, they would only need 150-foot platforms, long enough for two 60-foot articulated buses plus breathing room. Even for three stations, that's only two short Mag Mile blocks' worth of cut-and-cover construction. If the tunnels had a big enough radius, you could even squeeze platforms into them, and you wouldn't need to use cut-and-cover, except for the elevator/stair shafts. Extensive mezzanines are unnecessary, but you could put turnstiles and a fare machine at sidewalk level at the top of each escalator.

Not bad. But these things take vision on the part of CTA and of course funds to actually get built. In a perfect world where over-imaginative and under-applied forumers like ourselves are in charge—I'm with ya.

Or maybe only use a tunnel boring machine to get from Lake Shore Drive to Rush Street (at Chicago Ave) and then do the cheaper cut & cover the rest of the way along Rush Street to the river. If only there was room to get back to the surface to take the Wabash Street bridge across the river and then proceed either west toward State Street or east toward Michigan Ave.

how would you reroute Wacker Drive though? Severing the connection between 290 and LSD that Lower Wacker provides would lead to insane amounts of congestion on the surface

^Wacker wouldn't be affected. It's south of the river.

We can't use a TBM in Chicago unless your more than 150 feet below grade. TBMs are designed to bore through stone, not clay and the first 100 feet of depth is nothing but clay and hard pan. A bored tunnel has to be done with smaller machines and by hand as was done in the Depression with the Blue and Red Lines.

I was under the impression they used pressurized TBM to build the subway in Bangkok.

This seemed relevant to the train tracker discussion a few days ago:

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/cta-...val-signs.html

Read the article for more details...though the details that are there are light on specifics and come second hand. Not sure when we can reasonably expect train tracking for the CTA...

I'm pretty sure you can bore through mud if you use ground freezing.

Want High Speed Rail to Fail? Don't Fund Local Transit


04.08.10

Ted Rosenbaum

Read More: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/elev...l-transit.html

Theres also this:

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/cta-tattler/

Someone in the comments made a great point regarding the awful graphic design compared to Berlin's system (which this is supposedly modeled after). At the very least they should justify the columns/rows of data.

Look at the comparison:

Chicago
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/...7e5b7d0f_b.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/...7e5b7d0f_b.jpg

Berlin
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2687/...559aa921_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2687/...559aa921_b.jpg

Theres a big difference in readability and aesthetics. I dont understand why its so difficult for us to get these simple, but important, details right. It does make a difference.

Agreed that the test sign is awful. Thankfully, the sign appears to be a big, low-resolution screen. Reduce the number of trains displayed and redo the rendering and that would look a lot better.

That's assuming the software can be easily changed/upgraded...

I'll just say that the CTA guy now in charge of these things is pretty savvy about such design concepts. Look again at that Fullerton display, though. It looks like the idea is to show the inner track arrivals differently from the outer track arrivals. It didn't work out quite right, but it's not just some techie mindlessly centering the lines because that's the default.

^ Well, Mr Downtown, in light of the evidence I'd say he can't possibly be that savvy.