There wasn't any money to move it over to Ashland. Building an entirely new viaduct would pose numerous challenges (crossing the Eisenhower, moving sewer pipes and utilities under the road, etc).

Plus, you'd get an unsightly viaduct running down the middle of Ashland. It's much better in an alley, where buildings can conceal the tracks and muffle the sound. It also means CTA doesn't have to worry so much about the aesthetics of the track and structure, and can sink more dollars into stations and other public areas of the system.

The ROW North of Lake St. has been extensively built over, and would require much acquisition and clearance to restore rail service.

Yeah, but the neighborhoods (Ukranian Village, Wicker Park, Bucktown) would never allow a new elevated line to be built past their homes. If, God forbid, the Circle Line is ever built, it will be in a subway north of Lake Street.

Wacker drive expecting 125 concrete trucks tomorrow. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,7600828.story

Do you know what those plastic pipes in Wacker Dr. are for? Are they for heating the street in the winter?

A new ORD express rail site now open......

Let's choose up sides for convenience:

I am first on the "It'll Never Happen - For Good Reason" side.

But that has nothing to do with the Paulina Connector.

^The Paulina Connector—back when it was just the main stem of the Met—extended all the way north to Milwaukee Ave. Today, the only real purpose is to interconnect the system; it's the only way to get rolling stock from the Blue Line to the rest of the network. To get state money to rebuild it, CTA pretended it was the first phase of a "Circle Line," but the state called their bluff and told them to run revenue service over it or give the money back. So CTA had to invent the Pink Line.

No, probably for post-tensioned rebar rods. Post-tensioning the slabs allows them to be several inches thinner than the old slabs.

Doesn’t the Pink Line also help with resource utilization and frequency—by being separate from the Blue Line the Cermak branch can run shorter trains at higher frequencies.

I finally sat down to describe how I think my suggestion for a real airport express/downtown circulator might actually operate, and I sent it to that new group advocating for a private airport express, telling them a public/private partnership that did more than just a West Loop to O'Hare run might be syngergistically far better.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5052/...1258020a_b.jpg

What I sent them:

^ Interesting suggestions. Hopefully somebody up there takes a look at it (although how much do you want to bet you'll get a response like "our focus is on ORD-Downtown express, any other projects are outside of our scope" since, after all, why would we ever engage in regional planning?)

Emathias, given the fact that they are seeking private capital from an entity outside of the United States who simply may not understand Chicago's mass transit needs, have you considered a way to present your proposal so that 1. Private investment towards a ORD-Downtown terminus can begin first and thus yield revenue, and 2. The latter portions (downtown circulator) that involve more public money can be phased in over time?

Finally, why is Daley forming a committee for a long term project 1 month before he leaves office? The future of this project is really up to Rahmbo at this point.

The Humboldt Park, and Logan Square Met routes operated in the
same N/S alignment North of Lake St. up to Milwaukee Ave., as the remaining Paulina Connector (Pink Line) South of Lake St.

The old 'L' bridge over the UP West ROW remains as a UP signal support; but there has been much construction over the rest of the old Met 'L' ROW since.

Google Earth: 1700 W. Lake St., Chicago and you can follow the old Met 'L' ROW North to Milwaukee Ave., and see all the new construction: http://www.google.com/maps?source=ud...e+St.,+Chicago

I'm sorry I didn't add "as it currently exists" to my sentence. I'm well aware of the history, however that's all it is today - history.

I think that's open to debate, particularly since nearly half the line's mileage is non-productive replication of other services.

There is another issue where more frequent than necessary service gets ran on the Forest Park branch of the blue line. If you live along this line, I imagine it's rather nice, but I don't think the ridership is there to justify that service level. I suspect the old configuration of a Douglas and Forest Park branch of the Blue Line was a more efficient system.

Yeah, but the CTA short-turns trains after UIC-Halsted, so the Forest Park branch has half the frequency of the subway and O'Hare branch. Previously, they just ran every other train to the Douglas branch.

I think there are only around 6-7 daily short turns at Morgan Middle Track --- it's definitely not every other train.

Looking at the Blue Line schedule, it seems like, in addition to turning around at UIC-Halsted (only five trains according to the schedule), some trains seem to be held in Desplaines Yard after running south from O’Hare and through downtown during rush hour, so inbound frequencies are in the 7-10 minute range, not the 3-4 minute range of the O’Hare Branch. This leads to kind of a weird situation where the reverse commute trains on the Forest Park line running at higher frequencies than the regular commute. So peak headway is little bit longer than on the Green Line’s Lake Branch (6 min, IIRC), and both have around the same ridership (~27,000 weekday boardings on non-downtown stations), so I don’t think the line’s inbound frequency is too high.

Upgrading the interlocking and third track behind UIC-Halsted was proposed in the late nineties as part of the Schaumburg extension of the Blue Line—O’Hare trains would continue to Forest Park and Cermak, whereas the new Schaumburg service would end at UIC-Halsted. I don’t see any reason (besides money, of course) why they couldn’t do this now—it could also help boost frequencies for reverse commuters on the O’Hare branch, who definitely are a larger market.

I'd prefer if they relocated the holding track to west of the Medical Center station. With 900k boardings in 2010, it has more traffic than Clinton or LaSalle, but much more than stations further west. Plus, it would allow for a high frequency of service to a major employment center (in 2010, Medical Center captured more riders than Polk, despite a less-convenient location).

CTA has a massive four-track right of way, with extra room for station platforms, so they can put the holding track anywhere, and construction is a breeze.

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.

Emanuel names Claypool new CTA president
 

Chicago Tribune
April 19, 2011
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/...president.html

I figured Cirrus would jump on this before I could get to it. :haha:

Klein represents a major shift from Daley's typical transportation chiefs, who were part of a revolving door between a small handful of big road-engineering firms around town.

As you might expect, none of them ever showed much sensitivity to proper urban design, other than the bike lanes and the token streetscaping that Daley himself pushed for. Outside of that, there was always an odd disconnect between the big-ticket projects downtown that showed some level of sensitivity to pedestrian concerns, and the boneheaded decisions in the rest of the city (like in Uptown, where Broadway was widened and sidewalks narrowed right in front of a massive redevelopment with a Target and hundreds of units of new housing, one block from an L station).

We couldn't get Janette Sadik-Khan, but we got the next best thing. Hopefully Klein will push for some of the major projects currently in the study phase (like the Bloomingdale Trail, the Polish Triangle at Ashland/Division/Milwaukee, and the West Lakeview intersection of Belmont/Ashland/Lincoln) to incorporate proper pedestrian and bike planning like the advanced thinking that's been shown in DC and NYC. I also expect a proper bike-sharing system to be implemented within 18 months.

I'm pretty sure it was best in the the Americas. I mean, I know Brazil is everybody's favorite right now, but if it can even be a contender in a *North* American contest, I'm sensing a fix. ;)

..........;...

^^^^This is an example of roosters coming home to roost.

The land use patterns and consequently the density patterns in all but a very few Chicago suburbs make PT all but impossible to implement successfully....most development is far too sparse.


Better to focus PT in areas where the underlying land use make its adoption amenable..ie certain inner ring burbs and the city itself.

Finally, a realistic plan. I'd be happy to see some dedicated bus lanes and stations (not shoulders) pitched for the inevitable Addams Tollway rebuild that's coming up in a few years. Houston's bus lanes on US-290 are pretty cool. The buses have their own exit ramps to get to park-and-rides.

Finally a realistic plan for transit in the Northwest Tollway. Hopefully in the inevitable reconstruction/widening of the expressway we can get some dedicated bus lanes.

Mr. Downtown's plan (and illustration):
http://www.chicagocarto.com/NWC.gif

maybe the original mentioned St Paul, and then the dumb writer of the article thought St Paulo was a translation of São Paulo instead of really being the US city? :shrug::shrug:

Not to rain on anybody's parade, but I'm not sure the APTA "best transit agency" thing should be taken very seriously. In 2008 they gave the award to Richmond, VA. I don't know what their criteria are (maybe administrative/management as opposed to service?), but I promise that Richmond does not have the best transit agency in the state of Virginia, much less the continent.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4042/...6cb9dd7c_z.jpg

I believe the award was given purely based on the CTA's innovative development, testing, and implementation of Bus Tracker and Train Tracker - not any other, more substantial measure of CTA's quality. If CTA was really America's best transit agency, then I shouldn't need a train tracker.