The long delay at desplaines yard totally caused interference between the running times of commute on either track. I don't know how the situation stands with the interlocking track. I know that they upgraded the system in the signal station to create more immediate communication of where the traffic is at specific moments to try to make the running times more harmonious. This was a little while ago.

Thanks for all the comment regarding the Paulina branch. I guess I didn't realize that the CTA wasn't really serious about the circular route. Sounds like the CTA could use a master plan. One thing that may be useful would be to buy the ROW of abandoned tracks. The CTA could always use the ROW for later purposes.

Emathius: I was doodling around, and created an outer downtown circulator similar to your diagram. There probably wouldn't be enough demand to justify its construction, but hey, its a good dream to have. Also, I think I heard that the CTA was considering a bus route that would do the same thing. Right now, the diagram is attempting to reuse the IC tracks, but would probably be better aligned next to Michigan instead. I'm not sure that such a route would alleviate any bus traffic along Michigan Ave.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5228/...efe79970b2.jpgClick here for Larger version This diagram shows a proposed "Gold" line outer circulator. This would give more transit options for west and south downtown. Having the access to the transit would probably make the property values skyrocket.

Great, I like it.

The Circle Line was the pet project of Frank Kruesi, the CTA's former chairman. There have been two new chairmen after him, and neither of them seem very dedicated to the Circle Line concept.

The recent mayoral election exposed the resentment that outlying areas have towards the constant re-investment in downtown. The near-downtown neighborhoods served by the Circle Line are targets of the same resentment. Because of this, I think neighborhood-focused transit projects will dominate the next decade.

Already on the table are the two Red Line projects and the Orange Line project, which I'm fairly confident will be started before the decade is out. Beyond that, there are the recurring efforts to start Rapid bus/BRT service on major corridors like Jeffrey, Western, and Ashland.

I think you need to add a "percieved" to that. Objectively, I don't think there is a case to be made that downtown has proportionally received too much funding. It's classwar-driven perception, continued by politically-motivated, intentional fostering of class divisions. Look at the Pink Line. Objectively the Douglas Branch could have been torn down and replaced with enhanced bus service just going off ridership numbers. But not only was it rebuilt, it was kept open (unlike the Green Line), and split into a separate line to enhance service flexibility and yet all of that was still attacked at various points by political figures in its service area. It's hard to take "neighborhood groups" seriously when stuff like that happens.

At the same time, the Loop itself has never been rebuilt, is the heaviest-used part of the system, and yet is still not fully ADA-compliant. Objectively, Downtown does NOT receive too much investment and I think that in a purely objective world where politics were not played for purely personal gain that it would be clear Downtown needs MORE, not LESS investment. It seriously does worry me that the neighborhoods are going to continue to be getting a lot more investment at the expense of downtown. Pink Line, Orange Line, Brown Line, even back to the Green Line, Blue Line O'Hare branch tie replacement, all these neighborhood lines have had significant investment in the past 20 years, while Downtown has gotten what? Tie replacement in the subways, some necessary rehabilitation of subway stations and ... what? Even for the first proposal for BRT, all the proposals were for BRT in neighborhoods. Now there's one in the Loop, but originally, they were ALL in the neighborhoods.

Downtown gets a lot of grand proposals, but what's actually happened downtown? Next to nothing, despite it being the clear leader in population and business growth over the past 20 years. That's not a sustainable trend - throwing investment in declining areas while ignoring the growing areas. Something will give - either Rahm or his successor will face down the partisan actors who are only interested in their own local rabble-rousing and not in the long-term health of the city, or downtown will choke and growth will stall due to a lack of infrastructure. We have maybe 20 years to work it out, which given the history of planning in Chicago really isn't very much time at all.

From the work I have observed them doing already, I am sure that by mid-2012 when Cambridge Systematics and O-H Community Partners complete the South Corridor Study; they will have identified a cost-efficent Eligible Project(s) to submit for New Start funding. And the Communities involved will really push for it.

^ How did you come to this conclusion? Rahm was endorsed by the business community and most of the big power brokers who also supported Daley. Rahm's constituents are essentially a coalition of the luxury class and the black community, not too dissimilar to Daley's. If anything, the vote for Rahm was a vote for the continued revitalization of downtown and the lakefront areas.

If people were resentful towards downtown, they would have put Del Valle into office, or perhaps even Chico, instead of Rahm.

^ Couldn't agree more. What downtown needs is to fix up the L. The Randolph/Wabash stop just looks horrible walking in from Millennium Park. That painting is nice but it looks so cheap. Something really attractive and modern could serve as much better gateway to the Theatre district/State St.

But fine, lets keep throwing money after dying neighborhoods. I'm sure they'll show their appreciation by approving suburban shopping centers with seas of parking right next to their newly minted rail stations...

Randolph/Wabash and Madison/Wabash should be combined into a new station over Washington. There is no real reason to keep 3 stations on that side and it will speed up operations and reduce costs.

The city/CTA really needs to totally rebuild State/Lake first though. For the traffic it gets the station is a decrepit and unsafe embarrassment.

Currently the central area plan calls for State/Lake to be rebuilt and a new Washington/Wabash station to replace Randolph and Madison—don’t remember the timeline, but I think they’re slated for after 2015.

Personally, I like the old idea of combining all three into a “superstation” at Randolph/State which would connect to Millennium Station and the Randolph-Washington Red Line mezzanine via the pedway.

This could destroy the view corridor from the western Loop that is terminated by the Gehry pavilion.

Unless only the entrances/exits were at Washington, with the platforms and other station facilities shifted just north or south of that intersection. That would presumably cast a lot of darkness on the sidewalks below, but it's still preferable I think.

Why not just get rid of the Madison station and rebuild Randolph where it is? The businesses around the Randolph intersection are already geared toward transit service, and Randolph is still the closest L station to all of Lakeshore East and Illinois Center. CTA could lease some space in one of the neighboring buildings for a transfer from elevated-pedway, kinda like the one in 203 N LaSalle (they should do this at State/Lake, too, and at Van Buren/Jackson).

Alternatively, they could keep both the Randolph and Madison mezzanines and just link the two platforms and combine them into one stop with two sets of entrances. The west facade on Madison is beautiful if a bit decrepit (it's orange-rated). I'd love to see it restored and then cloned on the other side.

http://img861.imageshack.us/img861/9...onwabash01.jpg

How about they just restore the express service on Western, Ashland, Irving Park, Cicero, etc. that was taken off last year?

:previous: Someone from inside the CTA told me that restoration of express service is basically dependent on tax revenues going back up again—they aren’t going to sacrifice local service for express service.

I’m they’ll get around this issue on Jeffrey because the Jeffrey BRT is really just a series of improvements for the 14-Jeffrey Express, which is already a limited-stop (approximately every quarter-mile) service.

Although it would be difficult politically, I think the CTA should really look into stop consolidation—this would improve operating speeds (peak-period), resulting in lower operating costs, and attracting/retaining more riders, improving revenue.

^It's my understanding that the discontinued X routes—lacking signal priority—were not that much faster than the regular routes. By the time you figured in waiting time, they often saved less than a minute for the average rider.

Based on what I heard, the time differences were definitely appreciable at peak, but not so much off-peak, when the local buses would skip a number of flag stops anyway. (I didn’t have much experience with the west and north side lines, but the X55 was definitely quicker, even at odd hours.)

Well, I'd prefer to have express buses that only stop every half-mile, as well as rail stations and major employment hubs (factories, hospitals, etc). The quarter-mile stopping pattern of the X-series express buses wasn't limited enough to really save time. It might also help if the express buses were more frequent than the local ones. Able-bodied people would gladly walk an extra block or two in order to save time on a cramped, crowded bus, while older and disabled people would still have their local service on a lower frequency, and they would encounter less crowding on the bus as a result.

Personally, in the dead of winter, I'd much rather spend my time walking to an express bus stop with really frequent service, than standing still freezing my ass off at a local stop waiting for a less-frequent bus. Maybe this isn't a factor now that Bus Tracker exists, but I haven't had the chance to rely on Bus Tracker since my phone is pretty ancient.

CTA should also look into establishing transit zones at major intersections, with prepaid fare machines (2 for each intersection, catercorner from each other) and rear-door entry.

In the most congested corridors, a dedicated bus lane might be looked at as an option, but this needs to be balanced against the needs of retailers and local residents to have street parking. CTA's idea to restrict the bus lanes to rush hours only is a good one, but tricky for enforcement - and a decline in the availability of street parking might lead developers to build more strip malls, which should be avoided at all costs anywhere on the North Side or within the boulevard ring.

And on a related note, this CTA Press Release:

And of course today a NB Brown Line train derails over the triple crossover at Clark Junction during rush. :rolleyes:

Whatever the Red Line rebuild happens to turn out as it would be fantastic if they could build a flyover or anything really to eliminate this conflict.

Well, the CTA was just awarded the Best Transit System in North America, beating out NYC, Sao Paulo and Montreal. Huh.

http://www.terrapinn.com/awards/the-metros/winners.stm

Rahm Emanuel names DC's Gabe Klein to head Chicago DOT

This is really great news for Chicago. Klein was fired by DC's new mayor who is anti-reform, but under the previous mayor Klein did really fantastic things with the DC DOT. He's very much a "doer" and is totally on board with the progressive urbanist agenda for cities. He's responsible for most of the city's best bike infrastructure, especially.

Before working for DC, he was an executive with ZipCar.

Big win for Chicago.