Right - the use of ALL CAPS is like shouting in a library.

If the red and purple lines are to be buried, it would be possible to use rolling stock that is both longer and with a wider loading gauge than the El trains.

Longer, maybe. Wider is tricker. The State Street Subway, according to Mr. Downtown, was designed to accommodate BMT/IND-sized cars, but I don't know if the North Side Main Line has track spacing wide enough for these, and the platforms at all Red Line stations would need to pull back a few inches.

In a similar vein, though, I was wondering today about the possibility for automating the Blue Line, like Paris' Line 14. It would save a ton of money by cutting out the operators, potentially allowing for higher service frequencies. The Blue Line is isolated from the rest of the network, so it would be easy to change the technology.

The precision of the automated computer would allow the train to berth at exactly the same place every time, so CTA could install platform doors in the Kennedy-median stations and make them much more pleasant for riders.

Yes, but the entire reason cities exist in the first place is that people prefer to live as close to their jobs, entertainment, and other services as possible. So living on the far side of a massive city from your job is a terrible idea.

Besides there are really only two directions in Chicago, towards downtown and away from downtown. The N-S commute through downtown is better than most, but its still an incredibly inefficient route.

When one has been UNemployed for 3 months - one takes what ever effin' job one gets offered - no matter how far away it is!!

"The hypothetical person can still get to his job at Loyola with only one transfer - this time at the 79th St Station on the Red Line. Other good options exist as well".

To lawfin, wrab, sammyg, etc., etc.... The above statement demonstrates exactly why I am SHRILL & STRIDENT (and use CAPS - like shouting in a Library).


When somebody tells me that it's "OK", and a "good option" for ME (and others like me in the same South Shore neighborhood) to spend an Hour And A Half of time - and still be stuck somewhere on 79th St. - I want to set off a _ P I P E _ B O M B _ in the Library, so shouting isn't too bad by comparison (and yes, you are correct - I am C R A Z Y).


It's like while the rest of the City of Chicago has fine Dom Perignon Champaign in a Waterford Crystal Flute; the Southeast Side has mud in a broken tin cup - but that's "OK", and a "good option" for us because........???


AND if you think MY solution (purchase-of-service) stinks, Rep. Jack Franks has a M U C H better idea; DISSOLVE all the separate Transit Boards, and have just ONE Transit Board presiding over 3 Operating Divisions.

This would also end up with the South Chicago Branch operating as an integrated part of the City Transit System, but it seems much more Draconian to me.

You want the CTA to spend millions of dollars because you don't want to spend 2 extra dollars for an 18 mile commute? How many people actually take that commute?

Trying to get some kind of common ticketing system between the CTA and all Metra lines could be something useful, converting one line to save a very small portion of the population a very small amount of money (even working 365 days a year would save you $730) is ridiculous.

I don't see how. The trains through a new subway would both start and end on the existing L.

This is why we are rapidly approaching second rate status as a nation, nobody can see anything past 2 year political cycles.

In the Republicans’ defense, they’re working from a complete ignorance of macroeconomics (or hell, even microeconomics), having all paid for their houses in cash or something. Anytime I see a politician talking about the deficit or debt (which are constantly conflated) I have to stifle an angry rant that invariably ends with me denouncing anyone with a law degree, which isn’t fare, but as someone with some experience in both economics and geophysical modeling my tolerance for conservative think tanks and Republican lawmakers is constantly hitting rock-bottom, and then dropping though another layer of the Earth’s mantle.

Although I know CREATE is a pretty forward-thinking program, there have to be other public-private freight railway investments earmarked around the country. I wonder if they’ve been affected in the same way or if there’s any correlation between the partisan makeup of the region and how much was cut. If there were a stronger Republican Party presence in northern Illinois, this might not have happened. And of course, all this comes with the caveat that this was by the House in the hope of forcing a government shutdown, so at this point no one knows how everything will pan out. I cant help but agree with Robert Longworth here: “whatever our representatives in Congress are doing, they aren't earning their pay.”

Still, this has a sick irony for anyone who knows American history. Although I couldn’t find it online, I’ve seen versions of the map below that were used as nineteenth-century Democratic political propaganda about how the Republicans sold our country’s bounteous agrarian future to the greedy railroad industrialists:

http://railroads.unl.edu/documents/j...tr.0239.01.jpg

Have you ever lived in South Shore or South Chicago?

You have a point, but I think the problem is simply that the Southeast Side doesn't have the clout to demand increased Metra service. If South Works, Lake Meadows, and the various Hyde Park projects all go through as planned, I think Metra will magically have a change of heart.

I don't think you make a lot of friends by discussing the equity issue rather than the transportation value of the Gray Line. Anecdotal arguments about the horror of someone having to spend a little extra time or pay two (already heavily discounted) fares to travel from one obscure location to another obscure location 20 miles away aren't very convincing. Yes, as a matter of policy, we should have fare integration between all parts of the RTA system, but so long as Metra is paid for entirely by suburbanites, their interest in in-city service will be limited.

Journeys-to-work from South Shore and South Chicago are served pretty well by express buses, which have the advantage of door-to-door service for many. I don't think it's at all obvious that those patrons, particularly women, would prefer to walk to a rail station and end up east of Michigan Avenue, far from most downtown jobs, just to have a slightly faster ride along the lakefront.

There is an intrinsic appeal to the idea that the IC, which once functioned as the south lakefront's rapid transit line, should again serve that function. So let's study the Gray Line idea as part of the South Lakefront study—but I don't think the result is a foregone conclusion.

Living in this corridor and working northwest of downtown via the Blue Line, I could see a lot of the issues I see solved by just better bus management and some signal priority to help schedule adherence. In Hyde Park at least, bunching’s a major problem at rush hour. The afternoon commute also has major capacity problems, with a lot of buses between 4:00 and 6:30 being crush-loaded and coming at irregular intervals. Although rail would be nice due to increased capacity and better reliability from having an exclusive ROW (if I worked in the main office five days a week I’d definitely get a link-up pass and walk a couple of extra blocks to Millennium Station), I agree—a Gold/Gray Line-style solution isn’t the only option available.

South of 47th Street on the South Shore branch, most stations have multiple entrances, so you don’t lose that much accessibility by going to rail. This is purely anecdotal, but from what I’ve seen a lot of downtown trips in this corridor are skewed towards the east. Whenever I take the X28 to Union Station the vast majority of people are gone by the Dearborn stop. And while I find having a direct link to Union Station nice, I only see it really utilized is around holidays.

CTA traffic simulated on an animated map
 

Fare integration seems like a logical first step to check the relative demand for services, since right now the lack of integration provides a relatively arbitrary impediment to a certain level of use on the ME for those making multi-link trips. With integrated fares, the magnitude of this could be assessed, and a better transit operating plan for the entire corridor could be evaluated. At this point, the ME most closely approximates the #6, with the #14 and #X28 serving more distinct markets.

Part of the challenge is the inherently "commuter" nature of the route --- from 23rd to 47th, nearly 3 miles, there is basically nothing generating any transit trips. Rapid transit routes are at their most effective serving a corridor with lots of short trips interspersed among downtown commute trips, and the ME route doesn't have that. A route dominated by long trips is generally less suitable for a flat fare rapid transit fare structure, and better suited for a commuter-style distance based fare (which can be still be applied at improved headways of course: see WMATA and BART). Regardless, regional fare integration seems to be the most logical and crucial first step before any discussions of new intergovernmental agreements, major union labor rule changes, and so on. There are also some low hanging fruit like rescheduling the route** to improve the perceived level of service, which shouldn't be such a challenge since the ME and SS operate exclusively on the Main Line tracks in this area.

**An obvious pet peeve born of living in Hyde Park for ~17 years is that despite having 2 off-peak trains per hour, they are scheduled within 10 minutes of each other and thus basically provide a 50-minute headway, rather than 30-minutes. This made sense when the focus was on timed transfers between branches, but I'm not convinced there's any sizable demand for these transfers that couldn't be much more effectively met by the CTA bus network.

I agree 10,000% - Fare integration would be a very appropriate first step; BUT THAT IS _ N O T _ E V E R _ GOING TO HAPPEN (There will be a Star Trek [TransPorteR] available to everybody right there in your own Living Room - L O N G before there is any kind of UFC).

Since there is N E V E R going to be a UFC (due to Extremely Childish 3rd Grade Inter-Agency C R A P) - I came up with another viable way to utilize the MED as part of CTA.

Chicago to build electric car charging network


25 Feb 2011

By Todd Woody

http://www.grist.org/i/screen/new/grist_logo.gif

Read More: http://www.grist.org/article/chicago...arging-network




An electric car charging station next to a gas station in Lake Oswego, Ore.

http://www.grist.org/phpThumb/phpThu...klem.jpg&w=307

Maybe I am missing something here, but I don't get how it is practical to charge the vehicle at a gas station. Will you just sit at the gas station for a few hours while it charges? Ok, in Chicago or certain other places you could walk somewhere while it charges, but in many areas that isn't a reality.

You obviously can't do that. I think there is something called "quick charge", or something to that effect.