with the new tie plates and conc. ties, will these have any effect on the smoothness of the ride?

Isn't there something that can be done with these ties to soften the bumps or is it more a factor of the rolling stock?

I was just wondering what everyone else's "snapshot" opinion was of the CTA the past 4-6 months.

Personally, i have noticed the buses i take are more consistent than a year ago with less bunching. Also, i seem to be riding fewer older busses (where the windows fly open when it turns)

I think the el has been much cleaner, although i really haven't noticed a difference in on-time performance. It still seems to be pretty volatile.

One thing that i think the CTA still fails it is overall station conditions. This could be related to the fact that i'm at the roosevelt stop, where when it gets warm the station still reeks of urine. I say they need to hose down that place once a week, my wife says they just need to stop peeing in the station, i think we're both right.

I think the bus tracking thing has been a great move along with the credit card kiosks, but the tracking needs to be expanded to include el trains so that way it can answer my question, "should i take the el or the bus?"

overall i give the CTA operational aspect in the past 4-6 months a 'B'.

Is there much that can be done for the curve on the red line from Division onto State? The way the cars seem to "fight" the tracks in that area can produce some rather piercing whistles. And even when a train goes through that area without the ear splitting sounds, you can still feel the rather strong friction as the train scrapes over the tracks. Is the curve just too tight to ever have a smooth & quiet trip that doesn't crawl through the area?

It just needs a thick new layer of track grease and the screeching will go away.

My guess is that they stripped off the grease during the tie work because they have to remove/replace the running rail every weekend, and the grease getting dragged along the tracks by the trains makes that more tedious. Either that, or they're just waiting to apply the periodic new layer of grease until after the work for similar reasons.

Those curves can handle 35mph speeds, though at that speed it's rather unpleasant for any riders who aren't pretty firmly planted.

There are grease machines in that curve that apply grease to the tracks, in order to lubricate the rails and reduce screeching. However, as was stated the subway work sometimes temporarily removes it, making the sound worse.

There's some irony here - the CTA is actually recently having this problem crop up more in all its curves. Its thought that the reason is the increased track maintainence / inspections / construction has reduced the "give" in the rails through these curves, which is of course a good thing for safety reasons. However, some of the trucks (wheels) on the older cars are not properly aligned, and the tighter track gage has dramatically increased the screeching. Long story short - the CTA needs more money to maintain and replace cars as well as the track in order to fully solve this problem.

Put the station between the 2 and make an extra long platforn.

There, problem solved.

Harrison Street curve is even squealing under every train this weekend. I've never heard that before.

Many people in the southside communities are afraid of being pushed out due to gentrification and redevelopment. You have to respect that fear. There aren't that many vacant lots on the North Side as I'm sure you know. Unfortunately another problem is a lot of the people resent outside developers coming in to build. They think that black architects should design the structure and it should be built by a black developer with a construction loan from a black bank which is short sighted and contributed to the lack of development i.e. Dorthy Tillman. The main development has been done by church organizations.

yes, now everyone complains ! :haha: :haha: :haha:

....ok, but can you say approximately when the O'hare line will finally be rid of the slow zones and other track repairs and we can just go (uninterrupted) from the Loop to O'hare ?

......they have been digging a huge hole under State & Washington (it was re-filled with concrete last night) ......I assume it has something to do with the superstation .......but can anyone fill in the details ?

...oh, also......they are finally removing that wall of construction trailers that have been sitting on State for the last three years....

I'd say the outright line cuts and slow zones will be totally done by the end of autumn (probably by Thanksgiving, give or take). The cab signaling project is supposed to wrap up sometime in Q1 or Q2 2009, so there might be some periodic late night single tracking until that's completed.

Well that is only true if the northside is defined as everything north of the Hancock and East of the Red line. As soon as you get west of the Red Line there are oddles of open lots/parking lots...


This is so true, I'm actually working on clearing the title on a lot owned by a church right now.

There are some, but it's not even close to be comparable with the South Side. Show me an area on the North Side that's anything like Kenwood or Bronzeville or around 63rd. There are certainly large parts of the South Side that are strong, cohesive neighborhoods, but there are also large areas that are not. The West Side also has this problem, but the only parts of the North Side I've seen thar are even kinds similar are industrial land or 1 or 2 blocks here and there. I've never run across residential areas like Bronzeville or Lawndale where 1/2 full blocks stretch for miles at a time.

.........what's the hole digging going on at State & Washington over the last week ?

I just saw this expaned explanation on the CTA website. It actually gives quite up to date and easy to understand information:

http://www.transitchicago.com/news/motion/szep.html#red

There are also a lot of links on the CTA website which will give you additional information about projects and updates.

Now my question.....


I've been taking the 134/135/136 express buses home from work now that I've moved to Uptown.

Why do the CTA buses go past the northbound entrance to upper Lakeshore as you're crossing the river and go through the Illinois and Grand stoplights before then entering Lakeshore? Those lights always take awhile to get through, and they drive right past an entrance ramp to get to the one 1/2 mile down the road. There are no bus stops here.

The only reason I can think of is because the earlier entrance ramp is entering traffic from the left instead of the right on upper Lakeshore, and that might be a problem with the drivers line of sight?? Like people crammed in the front of the bus and he/she can't see traffic to the right?

That's all I could think of, although the drivers are constantly moving around lane traffic downtown and have no problem merging into right hand lanes.

It just really bothers me when there's a ton of traffic on random nights and it can take 5-8 minutes to reach that entrace ramp after waiting through the Illinois/Grand lights.

:previous: my guess is you answered your own question....lots of congestion there and often the backup from the light and left-turn lane at Chicago effects the movement there....

now my question:

I've been googling this for some time now w/o success....has anyone noticed the semi-permanent but clearly unanticipated temporary support columns added to the new Helmet Jahn canopies at O'hare? It would appear that someone figured out that the structural design or excecution was in danger of catostrophic failure and I'm surprised I can't find anything in the press or on the web about it....

I googled it as well and came up with.......your question on this forum. Ha.

Could you explain more what you're talking about? I don't know what those are or where they're located. Haven't been to O'hare in over a month...

Although sometimes when I'm bored at work downtown I hop on the Orange Line and ride it to Midway to eat lunch in the terminal. I told my coworkers about that a few months ago and they still constantly bring it up as one of the most bizarre things they've ever heard. They keep asking me if I want to take them to the airport for lunch someday. I can't help it if I love infrastructure!

OK...let me try to explain further:

As you probably know, the new canopies are a very impressive cantilever from relatively large, round or elliptically-clad columns. The large cantilever over the access road appears to be anchord by a shorter cantilever attached to the original structure. The last time I was out at O'hare, they had installed exposed pairs of steel columns at regular intervals along all of the canopy contsruction which at that point was almost complete. The steel columns sit on the upper sidewalk, are painted to match the canopy, and also have cables at the top attached to the cantilevered section of the structure.

This particular detail makes it appear that someone suddenly realized that for whatever reason, the structure was in danger of failing due to the uplift wind loads.

Metra says so long to its rail saloons
Bar cars are home away from home for many commuters, but space is needed for other passengers

By Richard Wronski | Chicago Tribune reporter
August 27, 2008

Every weekday at 5:17 p.m., the bar car on Metra's Milwaukee District West line becomes the place where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came.

With beer and wine cups in hand, a cast of characters that seems straight out of "Cheers" tries to make the daily commute home as merry as the sitcom.

"It's happy hour on the rails," said Kevin McHone, 40, an information technology engineer from Gilberts and a bar car regular.

But just as every TV show eventually ends its run, this Friday will be last call aboard what Metra officially calls its "refreshment cars."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,1946689.story

Thats a shame, although a necessity today I suppose. Although, I usually avoided the bar car in my Metra days because I enjoyed a quieter ride; the rolling tavern created a unique atmosphere that provided that "third place" were people could decompress between work and home. It provided a nice asset that public transit offered which in no way could be matched with private cars, and made the ride very enjoyable for folks who might have otherwise drove to work.

Yellow Line extension wouldn't go farther than Old Orchard Road, CTA says
 

Yeah, while I did not ride that often, I'm going to miss the bar car for its ambience. It seemed too good to be true.


Anyway some good news on the Yellow Line Ext....

Residents hear train and bus expansion proposals
By Emily S. Achenbaum | Chicago Tribune reporter
10:35 PM CDT, August 26, 2008
A possible extension of the Yellow Line north from Skokie's Dempster Station would either be rail or bus along an existing right-of-way or a bus along Gross Point Road and Skokie Boulevard, officials said Tuesday.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,7021953.story

They had bar cars? Wow. Who would ever, ever drive home? That's awesome.

Well at least this will not effect the general Metra ETOH policy

How is a bus lane on Gross Point/Skokie an improvement over the current situation? There's already a bus that runs from Dempster station to Old Orchard, and I don't think it encounters heavy traffic very often to justify a dedicated lane. Plus, it still requires a transfer at Dempster. A BRT line along the Union Pacific right-of-way is just as bad, only vastly more expensive.

Rail is the most expensive, but it's also the only one that offers a real improvement over the status quo. If the CTA can't afford it, then they should just concentrate on building the infill stations in Skokie and Evanston.

^Because of the distribution at the outer end. "Old Orchard" is not a single point, it's a range of destinations all the way from Harms Road to the North Shore Centre. If you want to reinforce a 19th century idea that rail is the ideal and lazy people must walk to it, then by all means just put a station on the North Shore ROW next to the high school. But if you want to attract the most patrons, you run the transit all the way to their destinations, even if it's not on steel rails.

I wasn't at the meeting, but apparently 5000 people showed up yesterday in Barrington to protest the CN purchase of the EJ&E line. 52 of the 53 speakers were against it.
This one is getting messy.
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=230804

2008 Metra numbers
 

..

South side represent! The only transit lines currently losing ridership.

Thank you, Dan Ryan widening...

I would also postulate that the gains from the north suburbs are partially due to expressway construction on both the Tri-state and Edens and will subside - MD-N and UP-N probably also got a boost from the extra couple daily trains added this year.

If Chicago could huff and puff and get its mojo together, the city can really bear down and stop making parking such a priority in downtown and urban lakefront areas.

That's one of the things that allows NYC to pull it off; the fact that people simply have to be in Manhattan at any cost allows the city to do away with subsidizing the automobile. London is in a similar situation.

It helps Chicago that it has a lot of transit infrastructure and it continues to grow as a financial center, and it helps that companies continue to be attracted to its downtown. It also helps that its downtown/lakefront neighborhoods have become much more vibrant, liveable places. But is it enough? I'm not sure Chicago will ever reach the point where a critical mass simply has to be downtown, or in Lincoln Park, or Lakeview, or Wicker Park, Bronzeville, etc etc to justify the city doing away with subsidizing the car.

Does anyone know how current South Side lines ridership numbers compare to numbers before the Ryan construction started? The recent loss has to be due to construction finishing up on the Ryan, but I'm wondering if any commuters who switched due to construction are staying with the train.

That's it? I would have guessed 2-3 times that, from how packed the trains look at AH and Palatine.

I'd attribute most of it to the continuing decline in the south side's population. Some of the south suburbs now look less dense than rural Tennessee.

Long-delayed MetraMarket gets construction loan

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=30790

^OMG, could it really be moving forward? This thing was first proposed about 7 years ago. It should be a great asset for the neighborhood once it finally opens.

I really don't see why city subsidies were need to get this moving. Then again I don't think city subsidies are needed for almost any real estate within the CBD, especially considering the justification for handing out all these corporate relocations incentives is that the losses will be made up with increased property/sales tax revenue.

You could do both.... and run the bus shuttle more east-west circuit. I would like to see the extension move ahead with stations at Golf Rd, Old Orchard Rd and finally up to a Lake Street terminus. Also adding the Oakton station in Skokie and Dodge and Asbury in Evanston. Gptta dream.

The reality is that mass transit overall is a 19th-century technology, as are, it should be noted, automobiles. But that doesn't make it irrelevant to modern life. Rail is more energy efficient and has higher carrying capacity than buses. The CTA isn't very aggressive about using the latest technologies in rail, but rail can be 21st century every bit as much as automobiles depending on how it's applied.

What the Chicago region is particularly bad about is appropriate zoning for rail. Any CTA rail station should have guaranteed FAR-5+ zoning withing 1/4 mile of it (I'd argue it should be FAR-10 within 1/4 mile and FAR-7 within 1/2 mile, but not enough people share that ideal to make it worth pursuing). Metra stations should also have higher guaranteed zoning near them, but not as high as CTA rail stations unless Metra wants to start running much more frequent schedules. But that's not the way things work in this region, so you have lots zoned for single family homes within a block of some stations, which from a policy standpoint is simply idiotic and very wasteful.

What are the chances of Metra converting more lines to Electric lines? If I were them, I'd put that far ahead of the STAR line as a goal. Reduce (or at least centralize) emissions, transition costs away from wildly fluctuating petroleum, etc. They have a lot of stations in relatively windy areas - they could even get into the power business, allowing them to keep a portion of their energy costs fixed - no small feat in today's environment.

Wouldn't this be difficult on on the lines where Metra shares rails with freight (most of them)?

No problem having freight trains under wire if you put it high enough, but the clearance under a lot of existing viaducts is insufficient. Plus, at $200,000 per mile, it would take hundreds of years to recoup the capital costs--and it introduces enormous new maintenance costs. In fact, there's some thought that the South Shore might just dewire rather than replace the entire 1920s overhead plant.

The Milwaukee Road's electrification through the Rockies was the main factor that forced it into its second bankruptcy in 1925. In the late 1980s, Nacional de México nearly finished electrification of its México City–Querétaro mainline, but eventually canned the project for various reasons, including the high maintenance costs. I think it's much more likely that advances in battery technology will allow diesel-electrics to have regenerative braking, and become much more efficient, especially for lightweight passenger trains.

I think it is only a few percent because this line has been heavily used for such a long time. So an 13% increase on the NCS is probably a smaller increase in actual people than a 3.5% increase on the UPNW.

Just guessing though, because the NCS schedule sucks butt and the UPNW schedule kicks it.

Question: Why do the northside express buses (146, 147, etc.) take crowded and tourist-clogged Michigan Avenue rather than Lower Michigan where every commuter could save 10 minutes of commuting time each way. Taking the lower streets assumes most people work south or slightly north of the river, rather on the Mag Mile itself, but isn't that mostly true? And the buses could still be accessed by stops on the lower level. This might be disorienting to tourists, but the Mag Mile Express and other buses that aren't major commuter routes would still run on upper Michigan that they could take.

Apparently some of the Illinois Center buses already run on Lower Wacker. I wonder why the CTA doesn't use this whole network of uncongested streets more often?

A lot of people get on and off between Oak Street and Ohio. There is only a Lower Michigan until Grand, and then where would the buses go on northbound routes? For southbound routes, how would they get to the Ave? They'd have to take LSD around the curve and then drive to Grand Ave.

And south of the River they'd have to get back up to Michigan Avenue or State Street, which would require some creative routing through areas not especially useful for people.

If the city really wanted to emphasize Michigan as a transit route, they should make the center lanes reverse-flow for buses, with island loading platforms, like in San Francisco and some other cities. That would be about the only way to make enforceable bus lanes on that street.

One other alternative would be to use Chicago Ave to Fairbanks for one or two routes, to relieve congestion on Michigan Ave.

Really, though, I think the city should figure out how to afford a subway through Streeterville and up the north Lakefront. Everyone says it's too expensive and whatnot, but it would be so useful and, properly done, relieve so much bus congestion.

Am I the only one who thinks 200K per mile, weighed against the fuel and maintenance cost of diesel is actually pretty cheap?

I think it sounds rather reasonable. I am always not sure if I get why a high frequency line like some of the Metra lines wouldn't see long terming servings relatively quickly. Wouldn't high frequency lines the type of lines that could most benefit from electrification?

Metra electrification - I'm not sure it makes sense to electrify the entire network, especially since some lines have heavy freight traffic. But Metra owns the Rock Island and Milwaukee District lines and can dictate terms to any freight companies seeking to run trains along them.

The total length of the Milwaukee District is about 85 miles, 85*200000=17 million. Just to be generous, let's multiply that by 2.5 to allow for double and triple-tracked sections. $43 million to electrify all that track is an extremely paltry sum, and it would allow power generation to be centralized. Plus, it would electrify the north end of Union Station and provide for high-speed rail in the future. There's a reason why every European and Asian country with decent transit has moved toward electric systems for both regional and inter-city rail. Your Milwaukee Road example was a bit irrelevant, since many railroads went bankrupt repeatedly between 1890 and 1950 - it was a natural part of the business cycle at that time in that industry. The Pennsylvania Railroad, I might add, electrified successfully in the same era.

CTA Circle Line - CTA has posted on their website that the Screen 3 meetings will take place this fall. Once these happen, then a locally-preferred alternative will be chosen soon after - that is, a definite plan for where the line will run (alignment) and what kind of line it will be (mode). With an LPA chosen, the politicking can begin to try to get funding.

I did say earlier that the Circle Line had been abandoned, but apparently CTA is still moving forward with it. The LPA may end up being a BRT line, however, or a different alignment may be chosen. If Huberman was planning to totally nix the idea, then it would have happened already - he's been fairly straightforward and pragmatic with all of his decisions so far.

Likewise, the Red Line extension is also having Screen 2 meetings this fall, after which an LPA will be chosen. (a Screen 3 is not necessary because the Red Line extension is a simpler, more clear-cut project)