while that's true the kimball-midway wouldn't serve the whole loop its not as if you couldn't transfer at roosevelt to the red/green to get there.

Any word yet on when they'll begin construction this year on the Oakton station?

Also that Pink needs more frequency than one third of the Brown Line's frequency, and Orange probably needs more than two thirds. Especially during off-peak hours--you'd either be greatly increasing the frequency of Kimball trains or cutting Douglas trains to like every half hour or 40 minutes. That's not rapid transit.

I don't understand exactly what any of these realignments would accomplish. You could get a one-seat ride from Kimball to Midway or whatever instead of the trivial inconvenience of stepping off the train at Washington/Wells, but how much is that worth? If you were going to try to link up lines by ridership, wouldn't it possibly make more sense to have a Lake-Loop-Midway route and a 63rd-Loop-54th/Cermak route, and leave the Brown Line out of it? Even then, unless you increased frequencies on the Douglas-South Side route, you'd have ridiculously long headways on the two 63rd St. branches.

well the initial discussion was about how to ease congestion in the loop, this being, in my view the easiest way in that you'd reduce the number of trains in the loop and remove all but the purple line express from making a turn at the clark junction. I don't know if its realistic in terms of train frequency but I picked this idea up off of the final train routing schematics from the circle line proposals.

"Clark Junction" is at Roscoe and Clark, near Wrigley Field.

"Tower 18" is the crossing/junction at Wells and Lake.

they should re-build that station at clark/roscoe.

My plan to reduce congestion on the Loop L.

#1 - Build a flyover at Clark Jct (relieves northbound congestion, necessary to add more Brown/Purple runs).

#2 - Reallocate frequencies from trains with lower ridership to higher ridership. For example, replace a half empty six car Green Line train with another 8-car Brown Line that is jammed to the gills.

#3 - Spot construction to enable selected Brown Line trains to be routed through the State St. subway, which is under-utilized. I'm not sure how the trackage connects to the south, but it would be a great is if this could be through-routed with the Orange Line to take even more runs off the Loop. Otherwise, the backup is to investigate through-routing with the Green Line south branches.

#4 - Replace State/Lake and the three stations on the east side of the Loop with two superstations. Shift the platforms for Clark/Lake to the east to reduce queuing problems at Tower 18.

#5 - Signal upgrades and operations reviews at Tower 18 and Tower 12 to look for other possible improvements.

If all else fails, bring back spacer boards!

Interesting little article, but I like this segment:

Windy City White House
By: Paul Merrion January 19, 2009

Sources in Chicago Democratic circles say Robert Rivkin, former general counsel of the Chicago Transit Authority and now deputy general counsel of Chicago-based Aon Corp., could be named to a high-level position under Mr. LaHood. Mr. Rivkin's wife, Cindy Moelis, who worked with first lady Michelle Obama at City Hall in the 1990s, is said to be going to work in the White House.

^ We'll see if this translates into anything..

I don't think its physically possible to put more trains in the state st. subway at peak hours (3-7 minute headway), somebody with better knowledge can answer more completely.

Whether the CTA can pull it off or not is another question, but the physical capacity of the line would support greater frequencies. Heavy rail runs on greater frequencies in many other cities. The CTA's signals may require upgrading for this, however.

The Circle Line would be routed through the State St. subway, so presumably somebody had the idea that it would be doable. Unlike the Loop, there aren't any tricky junctions except at the north end. Routing something through State St. would also have the benefit of increasing off-peak frequency along what should be the most heavily trafficked section of the el system.

However, I'm pretty sure that there's no "exit" from the subway on the south, just a junction north of the Chinatown stop that allows trains coming from the south to switch onto the Loop tracks and vice versa. So the Red Line can run elevated, but the Brown Line can't run in the subway (unless it turns into a Dan Ryan train).

that's the thing, my understanding was that the dirty little secret of the circle line was that you couldn't put any more trains in the state street subway and the only way it could work was if you built the clinton-larabee subway to route the red line.

This is all just a big fantasy right now, of course...

But I think the State Street Subway could in fact handle more trains if the interference between Brown and Red at Clark Junction were alleviated with a flyover. This would allow CTA to better coordinate the trains on the North Main Line and allow for a more complex system of train movements. IIRC, the flyover was considered as part of the current Brown Line project, but it was found to be not cost-effective, and the demolition it would require would not be popular in the community. (It would also increase the amount of noise exponentially.)

Valerie Jarrett was CTA President for quite awhile, and now she is Obama's Senior Adviser (this is the position that Karl Rove held under Bush, if that gives you an idea of the significance).

There's definitely plenty of Chicago in Obama's administration, and there's even a handful of ex-CTA personnel within the administration. I really hope this will translate into funding for the CTA, and with the prospect of a new, more level-headed governor down in Springfield, the future looks sunny.

I don't know the exact state of the tracks there myself. But as with the flyover at Clark Jct, some track construction might be required to link the subway with the elevated, or to build a turnback track.

The busiest the State Street subway currently gets is 3 minute headways. I think modern signals could get that number quite a lot lower, which is probably why they're updating the signally throughout the subways.

That said, I think the Clinton Street subway should be built regardless.

They would enable through-routing, which is more efficient than round-the-loop routing.

Current Brown Line operations run about 192 trains a day. Combined Orange and Pink line operations run about 266 trains a day, which are surprisingly balanced across the two.

So, running both to Kimball would probably work. If you maintained all pink and orange trains, cross-the-day average frequency for the Kimball route would rise from about 9 trains per hour to 12 an hour. Y
ou could probably trim a few Pink and Orange trains during rush hour, when the numbers add up the fastest, but you would probably be making a high off-hours frequency for the Brown Line. Your other option would be to only route the Pink Line through at rush hours and circle the Loop the rest of the time.

There are two south portals from the State Street subway to the non-subway routes. There is the one just before Chinatown/Cermak that it normally uses now to connect to the Dan Ryan, and there is one just after Roosevelt that was the original portal which connects to what is now the Green Line. That second portal is what could be used to route the Brown Line through the State Street subway to the Orange Line (or the Green Line).

Another, unrelated, routing - if you're building things - would be to complete the west-bound portal from the Dearborn Street subway and run the Green Line through the Lake Street subway, turning onto Dearborn subway and then using the new Block 37 connector to connect to the State Street subway and up the Roosevelt portal to the Green Line tracks. It would put into use the "airport connector" under Block 37. Then the City could focus on an airport express as part of a West Loop Transportation system under Clinton utilizing mostly Metra routes, which would be faster and put people closer to the Metra stops. Part of that, too, could be to through-route more Metra routes, which would enhance the efficiency of Metra routing. Coupled with a subway loop created with a Clinton Street subway and the extra routing possible with a Clinton Street subway, and a Circle Line, the central area would be set for decades of growth. Bloomingdale Trail's ROW could also be dug under the river and routed into either the State Street or new Clinton subways, adding central area train frequency while drawing in more west neighborhoods, and the Pink Line routing could be changed to go west through the South Loop connecting with the N/S routes there.

These are big ideas with big price tags, but coupled with appropriate TOD zoning they would set up the Central area and surrounding neighborhoods for decades of a type of growth making cars a luxury and not a necessity, putting Chicago into the same league as any international city for transit purposes.

The Green Line is already through routed. However, my experience is that it is rarely filling cars to capacity. I usually board at Clark/Lake outbound in the afternoons. A lot of times, Green Lines that go by have actual seats available and I don't recall ever seeing a time you couldn't get on. Contrast with the over-jammed Ravenswood. I think there's actually room to reduce headways on the Green Line if necessary at peak of the peak. Those precious slots need to go to full trains.

The beauty of my Brown Line-Orange Line through routing is that it uses the State St. subway, thus taking runs off the Loop completely so that you can still run decent headways there on all lines.

I suppose the question would be whether the benefits (higher frequency on the Kimball line, more efficient routing through the Loop) would be worth the cost of the extra service on the Kimball line. I don't ride the Brown Line that much so I'm agnostic on that question. I can see how through-routing the Orange Line would be more efficient, but is it that big a deal for Pink? You'd still go all the way around the Loop, it would just mean replacing one turn (at Tower 18) with a straight line.

Just because this one hasn't been mentioned yet and we may as well throw around all the possibilities, has anyone thought about using the Block 37 connection to split Red and Blue into a Howard-O'Hare line and a Forest Park-95th line? These lines would be a little more balanced in their ridership patterns. Admittedly this is almost certainly a crappy idea.