I don't understand your hatred of LaSalle. It's nothing special but as a basic, clean, usable commuter station, perfectly fine. It's complete covered and only needs a small waiting room as most people walk directly onto scheduled trains. It can take Southwest and potential Southeast Metra service and do well, but shouldn't be used for much more than that. It can use some upgrades such as a direct connection to the LaSalle blue line station or more seating in the waiting room but other than that, serves its purpose effectively.

AFAIK, the only capital spending required for the NCS is a reconfiguration of platforms at certain stations, a purchase of new locomotives/cars, and possibly change to the signaling system.

Those three things could easily add up to $300 million (the majority is the new rolling stock) but not a whole lot of actual construction.

EDIT: apparently Metra only double-tracked up to Mundelein. Further up to Antioch there is only one track, and the CN freight will not be moving away from this segment.

It's embarrassing. The access is fairly awkward and has no major gateway feature - if you don't know where the two entrances are, you won't find them. They're hidden inside the Stock Exchange office building. Apart from the one small cramped room, there is no place to wait for trains, and the surrounding neighborhood is dead, so it's not like there are places nearby either. In a city with bitterly cold winters, the platform area is very open and windswept. Perhaps if I remembered the shithole that LaSalle was before the early 90s, I might feel differently, but that's not an excuse. (I do remember, but only very very vaguely - as a toddler taking the Rock in from Beverly)

The new bus terminal and south entrance are great, but it's sad that it took this long.

Too bad they demolished the train shed during the Depression.

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/94/lasalle6.jpg

Hey love this megabus. It is very useful for metro area.

If you take a look at the the lines where they pass over Polk, specifically the bridge abutments it looks like they envisioned more track space and there is is some leftover space between the station and LaSalle St.

But yea, the station facilities are basically non-existent. Hopefully if Metra moves more service over there they will improve that situation.

To get HSR into Union Station itself 222 S Riverside would have to go so they could build the long platforms needed and reposition the concourse above platform level.

I simply don't get the emotional response. This is not to say the critiques are wrong, but these are design standards that aren't necessary. LaSalle is designed for its use, a pass through terminal commuter station to the loop that serves a single line. It's not Union or Ogilvie, both deal with much higher passenger loads and multiple lines with different frequencies. A full train shed and large waiting room are irrelevant to 95% of users as nobody waits for trains in the station, most walk directly onto the next scheduled train and wait there. The waiting room is sized for the people using it, riders purchasing tickets and off-peak users (I've never seen it full outside of after the occasional weekend festival in the city). Southern access will be nice, but until recently most people would never actually go south of van buren. The station is boring, innocuous, and completely competent to its task.

Are we sure LaSalle station couldn't be expanded? It seems from looking at bing maps that there is room for another platform, perhaps two, if it expanded towards S.LaSalle St. Perhaps one more track could be built towards Finacial Place.

To bad that the old train shed was knocked down years ago, it looks like in its hayday it was pretty grand.

A bit OT....Why did the railroads have no issue having train shed even with diesel train exhaust? If we did it back then would it theoretically be any less doable to reconstruct them today to house over diesel trains or would it be deemed a health hazzard.

The old train sheds were built in the steam era, so they got pretty smoky. From what I understand, they worked great for diesel trains. The problem was that they were difficult to maintain, so they often sprung leaks. This is why Chicago stations tore down numerous train sheds and replaced them with lower canopies.

It's perfectly possible to build a modern train shed... I'm guessing the air quality would be better than it currently is at Ogilvie or Union, since the warm exhaust would rise to the top and exit through vents. If designed properly the shed uses natural convection to refresh the air.

They've built plenty of train sheds in Europe. My favorite is in Dresden, where Norman Foster's shed ties seamlessly into the Beaux-Arts station.. There are also lots of modernist sheds that aren't barrel-vaulted, like Lisbon's Gare do Oriente.

I could be wrong, but I actually have the impression that smoke exhaust worked better (in relative terms) with steam locomotives than with diesels because the steam locomotives had taller smokestacks that were just a few inches below the smoke slots. That's one of the reasons Union Station's trainsheds were so low, requiring a novel cross-section. That could also be one reason for the demise of the high balloon trainshed at LaSalle Street. The smoke was highly corrosive and the structural members would have significant deterioration after a few years.

For the Daily News building, extensive tests were done with a mockup structure in the CB&Q yards, and Holabird & Roche eventually developed a technique of using an expansion chamber directly above the slots where the smokestacks exhausted. The air from that expansion chamber could then be drawn up and out at the roof by mechanical fans and the stack effect.

Right, that's my point. The balloon trainshed was ill-suited to steam power and the low trainsheds were/still are ill-suited to diesel power. The Rock Island made a poor choice tearing down their balloon trainshed, because the implementation of diesel power only a few years later rendered the steam issue moot.

While we're on the subject of rail terminals, it's aggravating to me that Metra has not rebuilt the baggage platforms at Union Station for passenger use. They are wider than the passenger platforms, and more importantly, free of columns. Using both sets of platforms at the same time would greatly reduce congestion. Alternatively, the baggage platforms could be demolished and the tracks moved closer together, creating wider platforms spaced every two tracks.

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/8903/cdnk.jpg
Popular Mechanics, August 1928

Pretty off-topic, but I was walking from Wabash and Congress to Wabash and Washington this afternoon and never had to stop walking—every light was green as I crossed each street. I’ve read about the possibility of calibrating signals so as to match pedestrian flows rather than traffic flows in downtown areas, although typically in a speculative, just-throwing-it-out-there kind of way. I doubt that the lights on Wabash were timed to accommodate walking (and my typical pace is somewhat brisker than your average Chicagoan, anyway), but is there a reason for the timing on Wabash to be so favorable to a speed that wouldn’t be so quick for car traffic, or is it just a side effect of timing of the lights on the east-west streets?

^ I can actually almost always walk from Wacker to State Street along Randolph and hit only green lights. I have to walk at my fast speed though, if I get behind a bunch of slow moving cows it screws everything up. I think it's just the timing of lights. I randomly know when and where I'm going to hit red lights when I do my usual routine during the day.

Yeah, same. I need to be walking briskly but it is possible to go continuously down Randolph. It's weird, because running doesn't help; you'll just hit a red light and waste time waiting.

Walking at a slightly brisk and constant speed, you can get lights on Michigan Avenue to be all green when crossing from Wacker to Chicago. Chicago Avenue always ruins everything. And if you miss the signal, you wait for eternity.

For decades, CDOT has ensured that signals in the Loop were set to accommodate pedestrians.

Yeah, while the lights are synchronized for all E-W and N-S streets, I do believe the cycles are timed to basically be a multiple of average walking speeds. I forget the precise number, but if you set the right pace (somewhere around 3.5mph, I think) you should hit nothing but green.

Not sure of the date on this, but a pretty cool picture I found of the wacker drive project here http://wackerdrive.net/Photos/

http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...rogress-01.jpg

Holy crap! These are the first photos I've seen of the river tunnels since they closed in the 1950s! The tracks and cobbles are still intact! So cool...

I wonder if they'll get into the Van Buren tunnel when they get down to that section in 2012.

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/7...progress06.jpg
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/918...progress07.jpg

I'm not clear why the Wacker rebuild involves the streetcar tunnel at all. The roof of the tunnel should be at least 4-5 feet below the new Lower Wacker slab. I think the "Van Buren" tunnel is even deeper.

what are they doing to the Tunnels?