Although I applaud the city's Dubai-esque ambition, they have a Sears level credit rating. Having a ton of fancy crap and no ability to afford to maintain it is far from optimal. Also, was the 'Long after the bills are paid' part a joke? You give this city $100, they'll find a way to leverage that into a $100,000 loan and then take the wrong end of a credit default swap just to enhance the loss further.

This station is funded with TIF... despite what you may feel about that tool, it is about as reliable a funding source as the city can have. Basically the land owners who will see their property values jump after this station opens, are the ones who will be paying for the station via their tax bills.

Yes, I agree. I will be waiting to see how this goes. If it works in Chicago, the potential for use in other cities where transit projects are very expensive, like NY, is huge. Frankly, those types of cities in the US need another solution because conventional rail is far too expensive, especially tunnels. Look how slow the 2nd avenue subway is going. It may never be completed at this rate. East Side Access in NY is also ridiculously expensive and slow. Look at how cities in Europe build, like London with Crossrail, etc.. They are able to do it, but we need something else.

Too bad Chicago isn't the capital of a centralized country like London or Paris, where all the funding for sexy transport projects is funneled. Same with NYC. -- that's RE: renovation of subway stations in London and Paris.

like so many of Elon’s projects, it’s a dumb idea that was thoroughly investigated in the ‘70s and found to be a flop that he’s just thought up again. like the way the urban hyperloop proposals work is pure PRT, the 60s-80s dream of a parallel infrastructure for individual pods that would take you where you wanted at the push of a button.

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even SpaceX isn’t doing anything new or weird. McDonnell Douglas tested a tail-sitting reuseable rocket 25 years ago! 45 years ago the shuttle boosters were reuseable tubes, they just didn’t waste fuel getting back to the ground and used parachutes instead. All the stuff about it being the first privately-funded company to do this or that is because of a massive post-Cold War/neoliberalization era change in how NASA requisitions worked, not because it wasn’t as though nobody could do that in the sixties. And this deregulation has also meant SpaceX is free to fuck up and have spectacular failures at a rate that was historically totally unacceptable, because the market provides a buffer

From Michelle Stenzel's twitter, The recommended alternative for the NLSD redesign going forward is a dedicated lane for transit in the middle. It also means expanding to 10 lanes wide…





Full presentation from last task force meeting.

To be clear, there are no new lanes for cars in this proposal. The road will remain as four car lanes + one bus lane south of Montrose, and north of Montrose they are proposing to convert an existing car lane for bus-only use and effectively narrow the number of lanes for cars.

With that being said... every new drawing for this project gets more and more unrealistic. Instead of a standardized underpass that can be repeated up and down the corridor (say, based on the spacious Museum Campus or 53rd St design) they keep showing elaborate landmark pedestrian bridges. When there is the slightest possibility of a conflict that might cause congestion, they show an expensive tunnel or flyover to remove the problem. They're trying to keep everyone happy and keep their traffic models all-green and there is literally zero fiscal restraint. I'm happy to see them making a firmer stand in favor of bus lanes, but when they need to cut the budget on this thing I fully expect many of the crazy bike-path flyovers and pedestrian bridges to go away. Hopefully they are streamlined and simplified instead of deleted altogether.

The bus lane alone is projected to cost $206M additional on top of everything else (although it's so integral to the project I'm not sure it can be split out like that)

Nice. What is the timeline and financing situation for this?

The bus lane needs to continue on Michigan... It's literally faster to get off a 146 and walk and catch another one in front of you sometimes.

I think it's interesting that some of the alternatives were turning LSD in a causeway out in the Lake! Or LSD as a tunnel under the park. A causeway out in the lake would be pretty wacky. But a tunnel might be better as it would create more parkland, and it would be alot niceer not having to cross a highway to get to the lake from every street, it would be a huge benefit. Although the cost would be alot more, it's too bad they dismissed it so early. They should consider burying LSD along Grant Park at least. Too bad Chicago isn't a capital city of a Midwestern country, where we could have stuff like that happen.

Seriously. I've been taking the 148 recently and practically need to do breathing exercises in order to not freak out over how slow it's going.

Thanks Via Chicago,
Seeing the PRT again took me back to my freshman year at WVU. It was a great time. I did not end up graduating from there however. I got my bachelors from Purdue. The PRT was old in 2004 when I was a freshman, I got a car out there for my sophomore year. After years that darned PRT broke down seemingly twice a week. The hills in morgantown did create an interesting dilemma that this tried to solve. It'll be interesting to see if this can work underground and faster in Musk's grand plan.

I'd honestly be fine if Michigan was pedestrianized with room left just for bike/bus lanes. Sidewalk crowding gets pretty bad in the warmer months that I actively avoid it and use Rush instead.

I was more concerned that the overall road width needs to be increased, not sure if that was always the plan or not but it stood out to me here.

I can't find her tweet now, but Michelle said something to the effect of that the center aligned bus lanes are intended to be built in such a way that would allow for potentially converting to light rail in the future. I don't really know what that means in practical terms, but I assume it can only mean a higher initial cost.

Why is a bus lane so expensive?

Just paint regular ashpalt red, call it a "bus lane" and move on.

Well from the plan above I'm going say that the dedicated bus on/off ramp tunnels for Michigan for the left hand LSD bus lanes are probably kinda spendy...

Any new lane on an urban highway is expensive, it doesn't matter what color you paint it. Honestly, if the project was JUST widening LSD to add a bus lane, I'd be surprised if it only cost $206M.

But yes, you are asking why not just paint one of the existing lanes red. It sounds like IDOT will consider keeping the 4-lane width and making one of the lanes a HOT lane, where buses could share space with carpoolers and toll-paying single drivers. In theory the price would be adjusted in real time to keep the lane from getting congested. I feel such a thing may be needed to cover the sure-to-be insane cost of this proposal.

If I were king of Chicago, I'd just toll the entire highway during peak periods with modern I Pass systems like the Elgin-O'Hare. This would reduce demand, making room to set aside a bus lane in the center. Leave it free on weekends and off-peak so you don't penalize Joe Schmoe or Jose Salcedo taking the kids to the museum. Use the revenue to add crosstown bus service so you can go from Lakeview to Hyde Park down LSD, crosstown commuters being very poorly served by transit currently. Also camera enforcement of speed, if little neighborhood parks can get speed cameras then we should also have them in the mother of all Chicago city parks.

I assume this is one of those questions that professional transit engineers get routinely. Light rail is capable of traveling on city streets and making tight turns (in fact, that's the main advantage over subways) so there's really not a lot of advance planning that needs to be done.

seems kind of silly to put it running down the middle of LSD to begin with, where are people going to board? if you were to have them board in the middle of LSD you would need stations there and ways to get to them and there is no room. Just sounds like a dumb idea, just keep a bus lane and leave it at that.... keeps it cheaper that way too.

Which is why they needed to extend lower Michigan to LSD. Yes, it's expensive, but it would still have a huge bang for buck. The city should, at the very least, start saving for it and design it so that as Federal funds become available it can be implemented.

^Yep

Same place they do now: at stops all along Sheridan Rd. and Marine Drive. The new lanes are intended to prevent the current CTA express buses from getting stuck in traffic. It's not a new Ottawa-style busway with intermediate stops.

i was referencing the light rail, not the buses.

It's very cool & good idea!!

There's not a light rail line in this scheme.

Thank heavens. As we've discussed before, this corridor is just not a good place to substitute light rail for buses. It's a corridor with riders only on one side. Putting a rail line in LSD would force people to walk substantial distances to new stations, wait in unpleasant environments, and take a slower ride downtown because they'd have to stop every half-mile. The current zone-loading series of bus routes might be more difficult for the newcomer or tourist to grok, but it serves the daily riders very well.

I was just going off what JC said, that they said something about making the lanes compatible for future light rail...i think its a stupid idea and waste of money....which means it will probably get done! ;) I am all for the bus lanes though. THAT makes sense.

^ Leaving space for light rail isn't the same as building it. Buses and trams take up the same space... A bus is roughly the same width as a light rail tram, so a 2-lane busway can be converted to a 2-track LRT line. It looks like the buses have left-side ramps at certain streets, the offramp area could be converted for a 20' station platform easily.

Just to comment on the previous post, buses and trams don't necessarily require the same space. Buses aren't on a fixed guideway meaning a driver cannot keep it perfectly in as narrow a space and therefore they cannot safely operate at normal speed in as narrow a lane as a streetcar of the same width (unless perhaps it was automated). So a streetcar can operate in a lane that is the minimum width needed for a bus, but the reverse is not true. Also, it's possible to get trams that are narrower than the 2.65m buses that operate in NA. For instance, Toronto streetcars are 2.54m while some in Europe (like Leipzig Germany) are as narrow as 2.3m.

As a daily rider of the 135, I agree with this. The current function of the buses going down Inner LSD/Sheridan works well, the big hurdles are getting on LSD, and being stuck in traffic on LSD. This seems to address those problems. I can mostly speak to the Belmont interchange, the big thing slowing down buses there is the turn from inner LSD to the Belmont bus stop going south, and the on ramp to LSD. Making traffic get on at Aldine should alleviate some of this, but their fix for northbound buses isn't that great. The buses get their own lane up to the light, but then have to merge into the (always backed up) traffic on Belmont before resuming the bus lane on inner LSD. I would think a bus lane under the overpass on Belmont and moving the stop from on inner LSD to the new bus only southbound area would help a lot.

Yes, am wondering about the mechanics of buses that normally stay in the right lanes needing to navigate through traffic. And some routes are fairly short - like from Michigan to Fullerton. Bus drivers today can choose lanes based on their route (how far they will drive) and thus which exit they plan to take. How is traffic or timing impacted with buses making those moves or possibly slowing to merge to make their exit and thus slowing the buses behind? Also not clear if entrances for buses are addressed from both Michigan and Wacker.
One benefit I can see is in buses making the return trip. I believe some rush hr express buses turn around and run empty for a return to the Loop. In that case, dedicated lanes might make for more reliable service and schedules.

Of course, doing that could also result in pushing traffic onto city streets.

It could. Chicago really needs to increase both grade separated and dedicated ROW transit options before charging more for expressways so that those who are able can move to transit to save time as auto transit either costs more in money or time.

Dedicated lanes on LSD, longer trains on the Red and Blue Lines, even new lines in and nearby the Central Area, possibly additional express service on the Purple Line and new express service on the Forest Park branch of the Blue Line, Cicero Ave rail service, link Brown and Blue, Lower Michigan - we're talking perhaps $15-20 billion dollars in transit infrastructure expansion built out over 15-25 years, which is a lot on top of everything else, but would do a lot to enable transit competitiveness.

I have little sympathy for Lake Shore Drive users precisely because it is almost entirely single-occupant commuters and it’s paralleled by a four-track CTA line, a Metra line and an extensive series of express buses. The north LSD corridor already has a number of carrots (good transit options) in place, but no sticks to push reluctant commuters onto transit.

Also, unlike the inland expressway corridors, important services like freight trucks, contractors/tradesmen, delivery vehicles are already banned from the corridor. They can’t easily switch to transit, so usually that complicates discussions of tolling schemes... but in this case, they’re not part of the picture.

Since that worked out so well for State Street?

^Honestly State St wasn't going to rejuvenate until the late 90's anyway along with much re-investment in urban cores around the nation and the generational shift towards city living. I have a theory that if the "mall" had just been cosmetically renovated it would have been just as successful. The 90's were probably the apex of the belief that ped malls were an unmitigated disaster and should be returned to auto traffic whenever and wherever possible. As with much of the planning community, I have serious doubts whether the ped mall was the cause or the correlation of CBD decline. Don't get me wrong I think the restoration turned out fine and I don't think it was a negative thing, I just think maybe the ped mall was killed off maybe 10 years too early... imagine the Snohetta Times Square treatment applied to State Street...

Vastly different circumstances.

exactly

the 146, 147, 136, 135 really are great lines

I'd like to see the Cta do a trial with some extra long articulated buses on the LSD express routes:

http://www.busspojken.com/stad/goteborg/677-37.JPG
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http://busgaleriemk.startbilder.de/1...-am-456591.jpg
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Since I am not from your area take this idea with a grain of salt:

While looking at Google Maps I noticed that the UP North line from around Clybourn up to Evanston runs on an embankment which is wider than the current number of tracks in place. The only major obstacles are the existing Metra stations that would need to be reconstructed.

Would this be a cheap way to implement another rapid transit or light rail line? It is an interesting route because it runs through a dense part of the north side and then ends around the West Loop, where a lot of jobs are moving to. Someone along that route would gain a quick one-seat ride to the West Loop, as opposed to boarding the Brown Lin and transferring to a bus or transferring to the Green Line in the Loop.

Even just add one new track between Clybourn and Oglivie, electrify the in-city stretch for use by the FRA-compliant bilevels ME uses already, increase frequency, and add infill stations that trains from Kenosha can bypass. It would be sort of like the ME between Millenium and 67th(except you know, modern).

No real need for any new infrastructure. Metra could simply have UP-N run 10-minute-headway service between Ogilvie and Evanston. New S-bahn stations at Howard, Bryn Mawr, Irving Park, Armitage, and Chicago Ave. could assist regional mobility. But it still offers no easy link to any CTA line other than Brown, so does nothing much for Lincoln Yards. And the odds seem very long that Metra—which gets not one penny from city residents—would get excited about runniing a new service serving only the city. Politically (and logically) it would need to be part of a program doing a similar thing on Metra Electric South Chicago and Rock Island Suburban Branch, and maybe Milw-West (to O'Hare!) as well.

Crazy idea once Musk throws in the towel:

Dig a tunnel under Randolph, connecting the ME to the UP and MD lines with a stop at State.

Then Electrify MD-W/NCS to O'Hare and UP-N to Evanston and have through routed trains serving.

Evanston -> Kensington (10-15 minute headways, with in-fill stops every mile or so).
O'Hare -> South Chicago (15-20 minute headways, more stops near the city. Could also have an O'Hare -> Loop -> Convention Center express).

I guess it might would easier to run it via the St. Charles Air Line if Freight can be kicked off (it would only require a bridge instead of a tunnel) but then it would skip a lot of the loop (but maybe the connection at Clinton is enough... and a Red Line station might be built at 16th st in the future anyway allowing a connection there).

Here's an interesting tidbit:

Tesla has a lot at Elston and Belmont either under lease or contract. I heard a Tesla dealership is supposed to take up half the lot, but one wonders if that wouldn't be a convenient midpoint for Boring Co staging on the other half of the lot...

They are claiming they will have paperwork in 3 months almost a month ago, anyone hear any rumblings with permits or anything like that being applied for with the city?

Hmm. That's conveniently halfway between the Loop and O'Hare on their proposed alignment.

Couldn't a TIF district along the UP-N be created specifically to electrify, send some money to Metra and increase city service?

You'd need state legislation to authorize it but yea. Electrification Davis to Ogilvie maybe runs $350M-ish not including new stations.

Why is any electrification needed? Are we going underground for a lengthy stretch somewhere?

It's not needed per se but electric trains accelerate much faster

EMU's have superior acceleration and would be more suited to a line with a large number of stops. From what I can tell, the line doesn't have many bridges that go over the tracks since its an embankment itself, so catenary clearance and air gap for 25kv power could be unlimited.

The F40PHs seem to produce more diesel smoke and noise than Cousin Bubba's rolling coal F250 dually, and that might effect the ability for TOD to develop around these stations.

No, but neither is Toronto. Yet they have deemed electrification to be crucial for converting their commuter rail system into a Euro/Japanese-style regional rail system.

It's a complicated discussion and depends on the assumptions about service. Set the new 10-minute service aside for a second and think about how the existing service will be impacted by more city stations.

Are we assuming that many or most of Metra's existing trains will run express through the North Side, and bypass the new infill stops? If yes, then the schedule will need to somehow juggle fast-moving suburban trains with slow-moving Evanston trains, on two tracks. If the local Evanston trains run at a ten-minute headway in both directions, I'm not sure this is workable.

One way around this is to electrify the line (not to Evanston, but all the way up to Lake Bluff or something) and use the time savings to make all trains local. According to some unofficial simulations done for SF's Caltrain, an EMU is able to save 13 minutes on a 40-mile corridor vs. a push-pull diesel. That 13 minutes of time savings more than makes up for 3 or 4 additional stops added to the line. Of course, you could make all trains local without electrification, but then the North Shore folks get pissed at how much longer their commute takes.

The other option is to restore the third track up to Evanston without electrification and allow peak-period express trains to bypass the locals. This would be more in line with Metra's style of thinking and does not require any new rolling stock beyond what is required for the Evanston service. However, off-peak and reverse commute service would still face the same limitation of slotting into the Evanston service's ten-minute headway. Any increases to trip time for those trains would likely have the effect of dropping ridership and pushing more people into cars.

Yes, clean and quiet would be major political selling points for people living along the line. The existing Metra loco fleet is really neither of those things.