Soon to be not like either as the new Stadler electric multiple units come on line.

Electrification will only run to Tamien so Calltrain is going to keep the Bombardier bilevel cars for service down to Gilroy from San Jose IIRC.

I expect Metra to be highly interested in the gallery cars that will soon be surplus.

Preckwinkle moves to slash fares on Metra's Rock Island and Electric lines
A three-year pilot program will proceed, even though the CTA still is not aboard, the Cook County chief says.

Despite continuing concerns from the Chicago Transit Authority, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is plowing ahead with a pilot program under which fares will be slashed on Metra lines on the South Side and nearby suburbs.

Under the plan, which is expected to come before the Metra board in November and be implemented “in early January,” fares on Metra’s Electric and Rock Island lines will be cut in half, making them price competitive with CTA service. The pilot is set to run for three years, but according to the county will be periodically reviewed.

Metra will not be adding more trains, at least for now, but the plan also includes expanded service on Pace’s 352 Halsted line between the CTA’s Red Line station at 95th Street and Pace’s Chicago Heights terminal.

All of this will be funded by the county, with Preckwinkle including $30 million in the proposed fiscal 2021 budget she unveiled earlier in the week.

Preckwinkle has been pushing the concept of the pilot test for at least two years, arguing that South Siders are relatively underserved by public transit and spend more of their income on rides than North Siders. But the CTA has continued to balk, fearing the pilot could divert riders and millions of dollars in fares at a time when it’s trying to sustain its service.

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/greg...electric-lines

Definitely kudos for Preckwinkle on this move.

As a downtown to Hyde Park commuter (in normal times... sigh), this is welcome news!

Looks like there's a chance Rockford and Huntley may get Metra service instead of Amtrak service. If MD-W does get extended, it would travel the same distance as the South Shore Line does from South Bend to Millenium Station.

Huntley may get a Metra or Amtrak stop with new passenger rail project
https://www.dailyherald.com/news/202...r-rail-project

Likely an admission that IDOT has finally given up on negotiations to eventually extend the planned Blackhawk corridor service to Dubuque, IA. Canadian National's open hostility to passenger rail continues unabated.

Either way it happens, there's been a need for rail service between Rockford and Chicago since forever.

Is there any idea as to where the line would run in Rockford? It seems like it might be beneficial if there was a connection to the airport. They would likely be able to attract additional low cost carriers that might be looking to expand their presence in the area (post-COVID).

That’s a waste of money. Tens of millions for a marginal boost at best. It’s not like many airlines or people go that far out of their way for cheap flights at Gary, South Bend, or MidAmerica.

They’d be leasing the existing tracks along the old Chicago and Galena Division route with a station at the Southern edge of downtown, I presume.

https://chicagology.com/wp-content/t...enachicago.jpg

If it is Metra, I wonder how they will fund operations. Will the state make Boone and Winnebago counties join RTA and pay the sales tax? Or will they allow a direct purchase of service from the cities of Rockford and Belvedere, similar to how Kenosha gets Metra service? Huntley and Marengo are in McHenry Cty so they already pay the RTA tax and receive zero transit service currently.

A third option is that IDOT could fund the service directly, the way they do on the Amtrak corridor services.

Then there is the issue of turf - the new extension will be on UP’s tracks, which means it is subject to the ongoing dispute between Metra and UP, and will subject MD-W service to the various issues with the UP operations.

I kind of assume that these won't be normal MD-W pattern trains. Probably they'll be express to Elgin (maybe a stop at River Grove) or something, so MD-W commuters for the most part will be unaffected.

90 miles on a Metra coach is not ideal from a comfort perspective, though, although I guess Harvard is about the same distance. Maybe if it's Metra there can be a flag stop at the Illinois Railway Museum on weekends :).

Metra coaches are plenty comfortable, unless you're on the upper deck. Hopefully by the time this service starts, Metra will have different rolling stock... there's a great opportunity now for them to upgrade to a more modern design. The gallery car design hasn't been touched since 1955 except to put new finishes in.

Maybe you're right about these trains running express to Elgin, hopefully with at least a stop at Mannheim and an O'Hare shuttle. This line has lower freight volumes than the MD-N line to Milwaukee which supports a pretty decent Amtrak schedule.

I don't have any inside knowledge, but I imagine for it to be successful there'd have to be very few stops inside of Elgin to keep the runtime reasonable.

In my heart of hearts I think that somehow Metra will figure out how to buy hundreds more brand new gallery cars. I don't want that but I can't shake the feeling.

Well, as people have noted in other forums Metra did not receive any bids for gallery cars the last time they requested them, so they were forced to consider other designs. Sumitomo/Nippon Sharyo was willing to build them in the past, but that was before their American operation crashed and burned spectacularly.

There are certainly other manufacturers making heavy-ass North American bilevels (Bombardier, Kawasaki, Hyundai Rotem) but they are a different design and they've shown no desire to retool.

Seems within the realm of possibility that we could end up with a Bombardier bilevel like GO Transit, or a Hyundai bilevel like Metrolink's Guardian fleet. The Hyundai ones even look like Metra gallery cars if you squint, and I'm sure Hyundai would build them in fluted stainless steel for an upcharge.

I suppose if Metra is dead-set on gallery cars, *anything* can be built as a custom order if you throw enough money at it... but an unproven or re-engineered design adds months or years in testing as well as the costs of re-tooling.

does anyone know why metra is so myopically married to gallery cars that they won't even consider other options?

i mean, if other commuter rail operators in NA are doing just fine with bombardier bi-levels, then why can't metra?

^ It's just the culture of the US railroad industry. They do what they've always done. It's a weird wounded pride, in the 20th century the railroads went from the mightiest corporations on Planet Earth, conquering the Rockies, tunneling under the Hudson, etc to being almost irrelevant by 1975. You'd think that would be a wake-up call to reform, but all it did was make the taxpayer responsible for funding all passenger ops while the railroads (including the new commuter railroads) continued their obsolete practices.

Metra is especially proud of the gallery cars because they were invented here (originally for the C&NW) and because they simplified the conductor's job in an era of selling and punching paper tickets. They're also fairly consistent, so mechanics don't have to understand multiple car types.

Problem is, they're terrible for riders. The lower deck is comfortable enough but the upper deck is worse than sitting on an airplane. Getting in/out of the car means ascending steep steps, which are often slippery in the winter - and there's only one door per car so boarding is painfully slow. The advantages to the conductor don't really matter if most riders are using the Ventra mobile app. They are poorly designed for bicycles, leading to Metra's awful retrograde bike policies. Any commuter who wants to bike the last mile to their destination is out of luck. This is actually surprisingly common in SF, tons of people bike from Caltrain to sprawly office parks in Silicon Valley that are difficult for buses/trains to serve efficiently. Chicagoland could see similar patterns if Metra allowed it, at least in the warmer months.

If Metra service is extended all the way to Rockford, I assume any extension past the current terminus in Elgin could/would function similar to Metra service on the UP North line, where most service ends at Waukegan, but several trains/day continue to Kenosha.

In other news...

South Shore line expansion work begins in Lake County, Indiana; project estimated to cost $945M

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Elf_FfzW...g&name=900x900
img link

Interestingly nearly half the catchment area is in Illinois...

^ Exactly! Indiana spends money that benefits Illinois' south suburbs!

This covers the same territory as Metra's old SouthEast Service proposal, except it doesn't have to negotiate a bunch of freight-choked junctions. And it's fully electrified instead of being diesel-powered.

NICTD west lake
 

I am having difficulty finding any mentions of MED capacity to add trains on the Metra ROW into Millennium station and for that matter WITHIN Millennium station. Are the West Lake trains going to require riders transfer to the South Shore at the new Hammond station? Has Metra signed off on added trains on the MED line? Does Millennium station have capacity to hold additional trains for afternoon departure?

All the West Lake line information is specific to the construction of the physical plant of the West Lake.

In particular, Lansing's downtown and its airport are within a 15-minute walking distance to the new stops. Now if there was Pace service to the new stops, that could really encourage more ridership from IL residents

Also something that hadn't been discussed much is that Hegewisch-to-downtown frequencies will increase with the new branch, so ridership could potentially increase there

About time Indiana contributed something instead of taking!

No forced transfers. The information you're looking for is here:

http://www.nictdwestlake.com/assets/..._ROD_AppG1.pdf

Apparently there is space to add 3 more platforms at Millennium Station? I'm not too familiar with the underground layout there but it make sense that they would try to future-proof it when they decked it over.

This is very good news. Do any of the new stops occur around walkable downtowns or have the potential for walkable TOD like you see in a lot of other Chicago commuter suburbs?

from what i can tell from google maps, no.

these will primarily be park n' ride stops.

^ Thanks for the link, but my lazy ass is unlikely to through it all in much detail so for anybody in the know, here are two basic questions:

1. Why is so much money being invested in the “Hammond Gateway” station when there is already a station literally right next to it?

2. I don’t know diddly squat about what Downtown Hammond is like, but it seems like a natural fit to put a station in a city’s downtown to help with revitalization efforts. I mean, this is not some risky new venture—Chicagoland has an abundance of examples that walkable downtowns near commuter rail are desirable and attract people and investment. Not sure why they didn’t go with a station there.

1. It’s to allow transfers from Dyer heading to South Bend. Apparently it might operate as a short train shuttle during off-peak?

2. ”This alternative includes the Downtown Hammond Station rather than the Hammond Gateway Station and a different siting for the maintenance and storage facility options. This alternative was not selected as preferred because of impacts to freight railroads, lower projected ridership, and the unfavorable maintenance facility site (i.e., the choices would be the South Hammond or Munster/Dyer Main Street, which were not preferred by the City of Hammond or the Town of Munster). In addition, the weekday off-peak and weekend proposed shuttle train service would not be feasible because this alternative does not include a transfer station in Hammond.”

^ Got it, much appreciated.

I’m not an Indiana taxpayer so let them throw away their money, I guess, but I’ve gotta say that creating a new transfer station at Hammond (when a station that serves Hammond already exists) just seems to make no sense.

I mean, I just don’t see a lot of people riding the train from Dyer to places further East. If this were Central London that would be a different story. But this is friggin Indiana—cornfields and all. People are just going to drive.

Seems like the top priority should be providing Chicago Loop service to communities that don’t yet have it.

But that is what's happening; Dyer, Munster and Hammond are essentially suburban Chicago, and have decent-sized suburban populations that are growing, so it makes sense to have transit access that brings people easily in and out of not just Chicago but the rest of the metro area too. Between those three towns, the population is over 100,000 people, not to mention other tens and hundreds of thousands in other surrounding towns, suburbs, villages, both in Indiana and Illinois too. 'Cornfields and all' is not accurate of that part of metropolitan Chicago, it is more similar to Greater London than you think. Look on google maps, the cornfields that surrounded that area are long gone, it's very much a highly developed suburban area (for better or worse).

The point wasn’t that these suburbs don’t need transit. It’s that they turned down a station in downtown Hammond, opting instead for a transfer station just down the road from an existing station to facilitate travel in the direction of South Bend.

Is there that much demand for a Dyer—>South Bend train trip involving transfers instead of just getting a cab to the existing Hammond station? The downtown Hammond station seems like a stronger option.

Unless. It’s possible South Shore is thinking longer term and hoping to keep intercity service to Indianapolis open as an option.

Exactly.

They are essentially removing one station (Hammond) and replacing with a new transfer station at Hammond.

Then, they are are creating 3 brand new stations.

Thus, with over $900 million in hard to get transit dollars, that region is only adding service to 3 new locations. All of this just in the hopes that people will ride the train from Dyer to places further East.

Just doesn’t seem like a great use of resources. But, whatever....

Yeah I think the station decisions were unfortunate. Hammond’s existing station was always poorly positioned to serve downtown Hammond. The transfer arrangement at Gateway is important for the operating plan so that can’t be cut, and it’s hard to justify spending money to build a second Hammond stop 1 mile from the first one, especially in a heavily conservative state that is already rail-hostile.

That said, there’s certainly the possibility they could add a downtown station as infill in the future. And the Gateway stop is planned for some kind of TOD. The concept renderings are suburban schlocky trash but whatever privathe developer they bring in might provide a more truly urban design.

The routing that South Shore chose, bypassing most of NWI’s historic town centers, was based on needing to avoid conflicts with freight trains and maintain reliability in their schedule. There are also compatibility issues where South Shore’s electric wires and high platforms do not jive easily with freight trains. Plus, the Monon corridor was already owned by the public. South Shore got burned 10 years ago when they tried to build a line to Valpo on CSX track and CSX just vetoed the whole thing after millions spent on planning.

On a different NWI CR note, I've always thought the South Chicago line should be extended over the Calumet River to Ewing Ave (East Side) and into Indiana, serving Robertsdale, Whiting, East Chicago, the industrial wasteland (surely people still work there?) and the three casinos.

.

Why would City/State spend spartan transit funds on an extension into Indiana let alone to Indiana casinos?? Resulting in exported $$ from the city and competition to the future city casino. There is no revenue sharing from those casino. This is not well thought out Sig and a surprise departure from your customary insightful posts.

A much much shorter and less expensive extension of the SoCHI branch to the SteelWorks area with or without a Chicago Casino/Hotel complex would deliver a FAR better ROI for the City/ST transit funds.

Illinois would pay for the extension to Ewing Ave, and Indiana/the casinos would have to pay to extend past the state line, but they probably wouldn't pony up. But by itself, an extension to Ewing Ave probably isn't worth it (even though it would give the East Side and its 24,000 residents much better access to downtown compared to taking the bus to the current South Chicago terminal) without also extending to Whiting (and possibly East Chicago).

That's true that it would add competition to a city casino though, so that is indeed a problem!

I actually like the idea of an extension to East Side and Indiana in the future, but the current Indiana population is too low to justify it and even the bus ridership there is pretty low. Maybe once the refineries start closing and the brownfields get turned into housing, there could be justification for a MED extension.

In the meantime, bus service needs to be greatly improved in the area. Hammond and East Chicago are right next to each other but have different bus systems, and Whiting has to rely on Hammond buses to get to East Side and the South Shore Line. It would be great if there was a unified Indiana bus system, similar to NJ Transit and CT Transit, or if they decided to join the Pace network.

Hammond etc. haven't had any bus service for several years. Gary runs a couple of routes that do get into Hammond and East Chicago, but transitwise, things are pretty bleak in The Region.

That is indeed bleak. A place that looks like https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6792...7i16384!8i8192 certainly seems like it should have some transit...

CSX Selects Construction Manager for the Forest Hill Flyover (P3) and 71st Street Gra
 

CREATE Home Link

December 4, 2020 - The CREATE partners are pleased to announce CSX has selected TranSystems
to provide construction management services for the CREATE Program’s Forest Hill Flyover (project
P3) and the 71st Street Grade Separation (project GS19), two parts of the 75th Street Corridor
Improvement Project (75th St. CIP). TranSystems has begun engineering and administrative
management services and is expected to continue until construction on the Forest Hill Flyover and
71st Street Grade Separation are completed. The construction manager will perform a variety of
inspection, management

https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/...sportation.pdf

Looks like CDOT is finally ready to bid out the Damen/Lake station on the Green Line. Construction should start in the spring, only *2 years* after the "groundbreaking".

Never mind, this means nothing... there's like 3 versions of this presentation on the City's website, they just keep shifting the dates back. It'll start when it starts, I guess... :shrug:

I guess NWI has been wasting its money on this instead of transit:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/subur...rxa-story.html

They claim that it is wholly privately funded but I always have my doubts about such things...

How exactly is leasing the Cline Avenue Bridge to a private company to build and operate "wasting its money?"

Most likely the taxpayers are on the hook if it doesn't work out, I would think. Maybe it's a good idea but I'm skeptical.

On the hook for what, exactly? Future maintenance?

The bridge is a private facility 100% owned and operated by United Bridge Partners, and uses no local, state or federal funds for its construction or operation.

Looks like UBP also gave INDOT $3 million for improvements to Route 912, the approach roadway.

https://www.clineave.com/

I am not familiar with any of the details of the deal, but many of these deals are structured in way that if revenue projections are not met for whatever reason, the public partner has to reimburse the private partner. That may not be the case here, I don't know any details, and I'm happy to be wrong!

It's a give and take usually. It's not always a raw deal for the public, unless you think paying tolls in general is a raw deal.

IIRC the Cline bridge proposal was unsolicited, so Figg and their investors saw strong potential in this project without needing to be persuaded. The state and local governments, for their part, did not saddle UBP with a ton of unrelated expenses, like rebuilding the approach roads, adding more local access ramps, or building a 4-lane bridge that would be oversized for the actual demand. As an outside observer, it seems they made sensible decisions to control costs, minimize risk and set up the bridge for fiscal sustainability so I'm not sure if they would demand a safety net from the public.

Most of Cline Ave is truck traffic heading to the steel mills, so it should be relatively steady, reliable traffic. The US steel industry isn't in freefall anymore.

https://www.nwitimes.com/business/lo...5d71508e9.html

This article seems to indicate that the fiscal risk is squarely on UBP, but in return they have restricted the ability of East Chicago to build any new free bridges that might compete.

An Indiana republican state senator introduced a bill to establish an Indiana passenger rail commission. If this is supported by other members in the state, then there's potential for new passenger rail to Chicago and the surrounding Midwest: http://iga.in.gov/legislative/2021/bills/senate/9