That is a terrible idea, there is no need for a subway there, Streeterville is only 5 or so blocks from the Redline and is only that far away for like half a mile. Why would we waste resources on that when there are dozens of other areas that could use a subway or EL line way more.

On top of there where on the North Lakeshore do they need a second el line?

Apparently you've never tried to get from Clinton and Adams to Chicago and Fairbanks in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time.

Many times in the past 40 years, the city has considered a subway under Monroe, turned north under Streeterville. A subway line like that strongly links the two business districts here in Chicago and helps bring west loop commuter rail patrons to the east loop and Streeterville. Currently anyone in the West or NW suburbs is sacrificing quite a bit to take Metra to a busride to Streeterville. Sure, some do it, but a lot more could/would if there was grade-separated service.

As for the North Lakefront, it's probably the ONLY place in Chicago that could really justify added rail right now based on density and existing transit usage. Yellow Line extension might be cheaper, but how many more riders would it get? 2-3,000? Not until you got to Irving Park would a North Lakefront Line get within 3/4 of a mile of the existing Red Line, and if that were really a bad thing you could join the Red Line by the Sheridan stop. A north Lakefront Line would probably have more riders than the Circle Line.

I disagree. It would be one of the most used subway lines in the city for non-business travel. It also would open up new development potential in areas of the city that really should be ultra-dense, but which at present are near the breaking point.

The line should go through Lincoln Park and probably would meet up with the existing Red Line near Lawrence. In a dream world, it would carry on, connect to the Brown, and then hit the Blue line at Jefferson Park.

With some creativity, it could also move southward through Illinois Center's netherworld and connect up to the Grey Line proposal.

There are probably more pressing ideas from a statistics perspective, but in terms of helping Chicago reach its full potential, I can hardly think of a better improvement. This is also why I am a strong supporter of the Circle Line, although the numbers people might think it's pointless.

It's not just the capital costs of stringing the wire. There are significant new costs to maintain the overhead. In contrast, the differential in energy costs between diesel and electric is not that huge. With only a couple dozen trains each day, Metra lines are just not busy enough to recoup the capital costs.

Actually that is extremely easy. Walk one block east from Clinton and Adams, hop on the 151 and ride to Chicago and Michigan the walk one more block east and you are there... I take the train from Union all the time to go back to Milwaukee and I lived at Pearson and State all last year, the 151 is really a breeze on that route except during rush hour when using all busses (and most trains) in downtown sucks...

Yes, if ran it along the lakefront it would not get within 3/4 of a mile of the Red line, but that would also be the least efficient place to put it. You don't run transit lines along the edges of density, you run them through the middle of it. If you put it under the park or LSD for example, the you are only using 50% of the potential area that could be served by such a line since there are only buildings on one side of it. That would be a complete waste of money and capacity. Adding to that, we already have a perfectly fine and efficiant (and cheaper) express bus system that serves the highest density along the lake and is MUCH faster than any train...

So putting it along LSD or through the park would be a waste. What if you were to try and put it in the dense areas like I suggest instead. Let me ask you where exactly you would plan to run it through the north neighborhoods. The street grid is completely messed up until you reach about Irving park where the constancy returns. This would only magnify the costs of putting in a train line and make it run slower due to more curves...

@ Honte, where on the northside would this create new density? Streeterville? That's completely built out. Gold Coast? Completely built out within 4 blocks of the lake. Lincoln Park? Also built out between the Red Line and the lake not to mention crawling with anti-density NIMBYs. Lakeview? Also built out, though less so than LP and GC. I think the best shot for more density would be Uptown which is already rapidly filling in and is much better served by the Red Line than LP and GC...

I really don't understand where you guys are seeing any benefits or practicality here... We shouldn't be running a train line along the freest flowing bus routes in the city, we should put it somewhere that busses get snarled in traffic all the time... I'm thinking a line that uses the pink line and heads N/S along the West side would be far more likely to jumpstart growth...

For example, the Northside would gain a lot more benefit from an El that ran roughly along Ashland. Have it start and Howard with the Redline, but go along the existing Metra ROW. Then it would meet up with the Brown line where the Brownline goes N-S allowing for E-W transfers, then continue along the Metra south until it hits the river/Kennedy where it would go along ashland south to the pinkline and then maybe extend it to end at the Orange line or something. Then place Superstations at the intersections between it and other lines like at Ashland and Lake. It would actually be useful to people who don't have express buses or the Red Line right at their door and would service the already dense Ashland/Clark Corridor in RP and Andersonville as well as encouraging density and growth between it and the Red line... And, gasp, you could actually go somewhere in the more western neighborhoods of Chicago without wasting time going all the way downtown and then back out again...

A spur from Union Station/Ogilvy, Clark/Lake, Michigan/Lake, Ontario/St Clair and then Chicago just east of Michigan would make perfect sense to me as far as commuters and shuttling people more from the east side of the loop/Metra up to Watertower area.

I would imagine it would only be utilized to the level of actually building the thing during rush periods though.

I don't really see a huge need to have it go up further north. Express buses and the Red Line serve areas up north quite well. 151 works pretty good after you get south of Diversey (north of that it's a mess), but by the time you get to Belmont you can either take an Express or walk to the ever closer-to-the-lake Red Line. The 151, 36, 22 and 8 might be slow, but they're always available.

I think people in other areas of the city would benefit more from rail connections. I would love to see a line under either Fullerton/Diversey or most likely Belmont that connects from Harlem to the Red Line and Blue Lines. It would open up that whole area of the city to faster travel than being stuck on a bus for 40 minutes to work over to the Red Line/Blue Line. I lived out near Kedzie, and there were always a TON of people who were going from northwest side to the trains.

Record ridership strains CTA, Metra, Pace—and it's likely to get worse
Lack of capital improvement catches up to transit agencies

By Jon Hilkevitch and Richard Wronski | Tribune reporters
September 2, 2008

Hop aboard the bus or train, if there's an inch of space for the doors to close, and prepare for a rough ride.

The surging popularity of mass transit in the Chicago area is on a collision course with the system's shortcomings: too few seats and inadequate capital funding.

Fueled by high gas prices, ridership is at or near record levels for Metra and the Chicago Transit Authority. Expect it to become even more crowded with Labor Day in the rear-view mirror and families returning to work and school from summer vacations.

"There's a huge bounce in ridership after Labor Day vacations," said CTA President Ron Huberman, who noted CTA ridership historically peaks in September.

It promises to be challenging for the CTA and Metra to accommodate the extra riders. As it is, try to squeeze onto the overcrowded CTA "L" platform at Clark/Lake—let alone actually get onto the next train—at about 5 p.m. on a weekday.

"It's another wild night on the cattle drive. Moove along," commuter Katie O'Shea, 33, said during evening rush last week as she held her backpack in both arms and pushed toward a Brown Line train approaching the station.

The CTA is hurriedly hiring hundreds of bus drivers and train operators after higher-than-normal attrition and a hiring freeze last year prompted by a series of "doomsday" threats that would have slashed service, raised fares and furloughed hundreds of workers.

Delivery of new CTA rail cars—to replace trains that began service in 1969 and should have been retired more than a decade ago—remains at least two years away. In addition, the CTA has received only half of the 400 new buses it ordered to replace 1991 models that had been due for retirement in 2003.

The predicament leaves the transit agency no option except to attempt to recycle its existing equipment more quickly on routes and put supervisors on train platforms and at bus stops to improvise service changes to deal with waiting passengers.

"I guess you could call it the poor man's version of expanding the fleet," Huberman said.

There's no hiding the desperation.

The CTA is removing all the seats from some of its rail cars and reducing seats on some buses as part of an experiment beginning this fall to pack in more riders.

To boost its seating, Metra ended bar-car beverage service Friday and plans to remove some on-board toilets. The commuter railroad is also rehabbing five 1950s-era bilevel coaches that it had sold to a Virginia commuter line and bought back earlier this year.

Even the Pace suburban bus system, the unfortunate symbol for years of how the car is king in the suburbs, is packing them in these days on routes that feed Metra and CTA rail stations and business parks. Pace reduced special express service to Cubs and Bears games to free up buses for regular evening service, officials said.

The CTA, which provides an average of 1.7 million rides a day and is already operating at full capacity during rush periods, is bracing for up to 200,000 additional riders each weekday, transit officials said.

At least many CTA customers ride for relatively short distances. Most Metra riders aren't as lucky, traveling up to 50 miles each way, in some cases while standing in the aisles and vestibules or sitting on the steps of packed trains.

When the trains are too crowded, the conductors don't always collect cash fares, so revenue is lost, Deborah Moore pointed out after her morning Union Pacific North Line train arrived last week in downtown Chicago more than an hour late.

"Metra, the way to really fly," said Moore, mocking the commuter railroad's slogan. "Oh, yeah, how could I forget? Flying doesn't seem like a good idea these days, either."

Sustained ridership increases month after month leave little doubt that transit across the U.S. is experiencing a renaissance as commuters drive less. The 53.2 billion-mile reduction in total miles driven nationwide since last November has surpassed the mileage decline during the oil crisis of the 1970s, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

But in the Chicago region, another crisis that has been developing for years—no new money for capital improvements for mass transit—threatens to erupt as transit ridership grows.

CTA bus ridership has increased 6 percent through July, compared with the first seven months of 2007, while rail ridership rose 2 percent, the CTA said. Weekend ridership on the CTA system also increased 6 percent. And ridership in 2007 was the highest since 1992.

"We're ecstatic about the phenomenal growth in ridership but concerned about our capacity to manage and keep the new customers," said Huberman, who calls state passage of new capital funding to help pay for new buses and trains the CTA's No. 1 priority.

"Some people are willing to push onto a crowded train or bus during rush hour and find that acceptable," Huberman said. "Other people simply will not opt for that transportation."

The CTA plans to introduce operational changes after Labor Day to try to maximize efficiency. Its efforts include:

• Deploying managers who have the authority to call extra buses into service at pinch points during rush periods. The goal is to redistribute buses where they are most needed and ease bus-bunching.

• Increasing the number of train runs through the end of the year as slow-zone construction is completed, particularly on the O'Hare branch of the Blue Line and in the Red Line subway.

• Doing more short-turning of trains on the Brown Line corridor and along the Blue Line to address pinch points where waiting passengers cannot board already full trains. Short-turning involves running some trains on a portion of the route in the morning to pick up passengers at high-volume stations and deliver them to the Loop.

Meanwhile, Metra ridership increased 5 percent in the first half of this year, compared with the same period in 2007.

Metra expects 2008 to be its third consecutive record-setting year, said Lynette Ciavarella, the railroad's director of planning and analysis.

Eight of Metra's all-time top 10 ridership months have occurred since June 2007, she said. In particular, weekend ticket sales are outstripping all categories, up 20 percent in the first half of 2008, she said.

But without millions of dollars in new funding from a state public works program, Metra cannot buy the additional cars it needs to meet ridership growth, said spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet. The commuter railroad has not acquired any new trains since 2005.

Pace's total ridership increased 3.6 percent through July. July's ridership was up 10.6 percent compared with the same month last year, the highest July hike in the suburban bus system's history, said spokesman Patrick Wilmot.

Pace is also coping with equipment shortages due to the capital funding shortfalls. With increases in ridership slowing service, on-time performance has suffered.

"We've used a majority of our capital funding to cover operating deficits over the past several years," Wilmot said. "The issue for us is whether a capital bill is passed soon enough and is adequate for us to replace our fleet."

I was looking at some maps the other day and I actually had a similar idea. What about the Bloomingdale Line that then crosses over the river and runs under Armitage? There is only one or two one nondescript commercial buildings that seem in the way. It could also go further west then the Bloomingdale Line I think along the MD-W line to meet up with the Mid-City line. You could then have the service make a turn south and run through Lincoln Park which would lead to a number of options of routes towards downtown.

I saw that this morning on the front page of the Tribune. About time it gets serious discussion.

I'm also in favor of a rail connection between north RED and BLUE. Belmont Red over to the O'Hare leg of Blue would be beneficial to a good number of people, in my opinion.

I still think the North Side really needs another N-S line between the Blue and REd that can intereact with the Brown in some way. They should also extend the Brown to meet up with the Blue Line creating the necessary E-W corridor...

CTA slow zones cut in half from last year, officials say of rail upgrades

By Jon Hilkevitch
1:18 PM CDT, September 2, 2008

Slow zones now account for only 10 percent of track on CTA rail lines, transit officials said Tuesday.

The improvement, credited to aggressive repairs, reduces slow-zone track from a high of 22 percent last October, CTA President Ron Huberman said. The update was provided as a new round of track work is set to begin Wednesday on the Loop elevated structure.

The replacement of railroad ties installing a new signal system will cause inconveniences for riders through much of the fall.

But the goal is to have all the work done before Thanksgiving, resulting in faster and more reliable service around the Loop, Huberman said.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,1191471.story

South Shore To Stop At 18th Street
 

http://www.nictd.com/info/featured.htm#Bears

To better accommodate passengers attending Chicago Bears REGULAR SEASON home games, NICTD plans to stop select South Shore trains at 18th St. Station. In addition to our regular service to Roosevelt Rd.; the following trains will serve 18th St. Station for Sunday games:

^ I hope the rickety stairs hold up for one more season!:whip:

Midwest High Speed Rail OPEN HOUSE tonite
 

RSVP for Open House
Please join us to celebrate the opening of our new office.

When: Thursday, September 4, 2008 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Where: 4765 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL

RSVP by completing the form below the picture.

LINK:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o...p.jsp?key=3595

:previous: Anyone go ?

Transit nearby pays at the pump
High gas prices boost transit-oriented housing developments
By John Handley | Special to the Chicago Tribune
September 5, 2008

Manhattan still is waiting for housing near mass transit.

That's Manhattan, Ill., not Manhattan, N.Y.

The far southwest suburb, 40 miles from Chicago at the end of Metra's Southwest Line, is hoping for a transit-friendly project. "We've designated land near the station for high-density condos, " said Mayor Bill Borgo.

But, in much of the Chicago area, transit-oriented developments already are steaming forward as one solution to surging gas prices.

One office worker is happy his car is collecting dust in his Des Plaines garage. Lauren Centioli takes the Metra Northwest Line to his accounting job at Boeing's downtown Chicago headquarters.

"When I was looking for a condo, it had to be on a train line," said Centioli, who bought at Waterford Condominiums, a mid-rise development at 799 Graceland Ave. in Des Plaines, a year ago.

"At that time, my No. 1 priority was convenience. Now, with higher gas prices, the financial impact of where I live would count for 50 percent of my decision," he said.

Because of his location near the train, he estimates he drives only about 1,000 miles a year.

America's love affair with the car may be slowing down as sticker shock at the gas pumps is forcing many to reconsider the cost of driving to work.

Housing built close to transit—known as transit-oriented development—is nothing new, but $4-a-gallon gas has jump-started renewed interest in these fuel-saving projects.

"People are finding TOD [transit-oriented developments] more attractive now. It's been only in the last several months that higher gas prices have started to cause behavioral changes," said Mandy Burrell Booth, spokesperson for the Metropolitan Planning Council.

"I got rid of my car last year," said Booth, who lives in Chicago.

"TOD is the new buzz word. Every housing unit near an "L" stop or train station is now more desirable. The gas crunch is causing more people to think about locating near transit," said real estate analyst Steve Hovany, president of Strategy Planning Associates in Schaumburg.

He said the new condos being built near train stations in suburban downtowns—like Des Plaines, Arlington Heights, Palatine and elsewhere—are attracting both empty-nesters and young people who are concerned with the rising price of car ownership.

In 2004, the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission stated in a report: "TOD creates mixed-use, high-density communities that encourage people to live near transit and decrease their dependence on driving."

Finally, TOD's time may have come.

"This is a tremendous opportunity for TOD. It's an opportunity for people to re-evaluate where they live," said Robert Dunphy, senior resident fellow for transportation and infrastructure at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C.

Several northwest suburbs have been cheerleaders for TOD for years.

"The biggest spur to high-density housing in downtown suburbs has been TIF (tax increment financing) districts established by such communities as Des Plaines, Arlington Heights and Palatine," said Ray Franczak, president of R. Franczak & Associates.

Franczak said the purpose of TIF districts is to revitalize aging downtowns. His firm built the Waterford Condominiums where Centioli lives. The three-building complex on the site of the former Des Plaines library offers units ranging from 1,405 to 1,731 square feet and base-priced from $295,900 to $359,900.

(Click link above to read the rest of the article)

So when might the Washington/State Redline Stop reopen? Sometime next year? Also are there any renders of what the "super station" is suppose to look like?

its the little things that make me hopeful about the cta.

Harrison Red Line Polk Street Entrance Renovations Begin

Location Circa 2002 Via Chicago "L"
http://www.chicago-l.org/stations/im...son.polk03.jpg

Just curious but are they going to be renovating the entire station or just the new entrance? That station has really needed a big renovation especially with all of the growth and future growth to that area. I mean with Astoria Tower going up now, and be surrounded by like 3 surface lots in the immediate vacinity, its only a matter of time before they get developed so this is well needed. I hope they restore and renovate the entire station.

^ Just the entrance. This whole thing is curious, because CDOT usually takes responsibility for all subway station construction work including the mezzanines, stairwells, and platforms (CTA maintains the track, power, and signal infrastructure), but the Polk Entrance work is apparently being spearheaded and paid for by CTA. There's a political story somewhere that we aren't hearing.

I found that curious as well, could that be left over federal funds from another CTA project?

I think that is pretty ridiculous that they arent going to do the entire thing. That is one station that really needs some major TLC. It smells, its dirty, and it just looks like a very scary and uninviting place to be especially at night.

Good one, Blago! :tup:

http://images.google.com/url?q=http:...k2inxpcOPeuRCQ

CTA to cut jobs, overtime, maintenance
80 administrative positions will go in bid to save $40 million
By Jon Hilkevitch | Transportation reporter
10:19 AM CDT, September 8, 2008
The CTA will eliminate 80 administrative jobs this year and make other cuts to save about $40 million, agency officials said Monday.

Riders will be spared service cuts or fare increases for now, but those options remain on the table for next year, officials said.

CTA Chairman Carole Brown said the agency is "preparing people for what will be a very difficult 2009 budget season."

The job cuts include eight senior managers in areas like the technology, purchasing and law departments and are expected to save $4.9 million for the budget for 2008.

Other belt-tightening measures include deferring spending in all non-critical areas, reducing employee overtime and cutting bus maintenance costs.

The CTA also will hire private companies to collect garbage at its facilities.

The budget crisis has been caused in part by soaring fuel and energy costs, which will be $37.3 million higher than last year.

The budget crisis was exacerbated by Gov. Rod Blagojevich's decision to provide free rides for senior citizens and low-income disabled passengers. That will cost the agency at least $30 million this year.

The governor also vetoed more than $16 million in reduced-fare subsidies this year for the CTA in the state budget.

In addition, the City Council legislated free rides to disabled military veterans and active service men and women in uniform.

The projected budget deficit for 2009 is $66 million, agency officials said.

:previous: They should redefine the criteria for senior citizens and only include those senior citizens who have had their drivers license's pulled from them or volunteer to give them up. If a senior citizen can afford a car and chooses to be depend on it then they can afford to contribute to the CTA.

http://www.economist.com/world/unite...ry_id=12208702

Nimbyism

Train wreck in suburbia

Sep 11th 2008 | CHICAGO
From The Economist print edition


China quietly builds, America noisily deliberates: why Barrington is not Beijing

CHINA, as anyone with a television now knows, builds big. This can have a huge human cost. For the Olympics, neighbourhoods were razed and families displaced. America, by contrast, scarcely builds at all, investing 2.4% of GDP in infrastructure compared with 9% in China. And on the rare occasions when projects are suggested, they are often met with noisy outrage.

Take the suburbs of Chicago. Barrington, Illinois is not Beijing. Last year Canadian National Railway (CN) announced that it would buy a suburban railway, an effort to divert freight traffic from Chicago. But in trying to avoid the Charybdis of the city, CN met the Scylla of suburbia. The Surface Transportation Board (STB), which must approve the deal, has never seen such outcry. On August 27th hundreds protested in Barrington. On September 9th the fight moved to Washington for a congressional hearing. A new bill would make it harder for the STB to approve a merger that does any local damage. Some call it nimbyism; others, democracy.

America has long struggled to balance local objections with broader goals. In the middle of the 20th century Robert Moses, New York’s master-builder, ruthlessly uprooted thousands. The fight in Chicago’s suburbs is an example of the other extreme. Many suburban residents fear that CN will change their quality of life. Karen Darch, Barrington’s village president, argues that road traffic will increase and that ambulances and fire-engines could be forced to wait while long trains pass.

Supporters argue that the merger has broader benefits. Although some 30 communities would see more freight traffic, twice as many, including crowded parts of Chicago, would see less. Freight investment is also sorely needed, explains Joseph DiJohn of the University of Illinois at Chicago. The city remains America’s hub for moving goods, but congestion threatens further growth. A train can take more than 24 hours to pick its way through Chicago. This is likely to get worse. Demand for freight rail in the region is expected almost to double within 20 years.

Efforts to solve this problem have moved slowly. CREATE, a public-private partnership, has a plan to spend $1.5 billion on local rail projects. So far the group has raised less than $300m of that. Acquiring the railway, explains Karen Phillips, a vice-president at CN, is a private-sector remedy that would allow the company’s trains to move through the region more quickly and begin to ease congestion.

The STB is likely to issue its verdict by early next year. In its long review, the board considers everything from whether the deal threatens railway competition to whether it might increase noise or harm the eastern prairie fringed orchid (unlikely). But five Illinois representatives have joined others in Congress to argue that the STB is not doing enough to consider the impact on local communities. Their bill, the subject of the hearing on September 9th, would change this. It is not without opponents. Joe Schwieterman, a professor at DePaul University, testified that the bill would have its own unintended consequences, favouring local interests over regional ones and possibly discouraging private investment.

If the board approves the deal, who will pay for mitigating its effects? The federal government usually foots most of the bill; unfortunately, it has little cash. Ms Darch and others want CN to cover more of the cost. So expect further protests.

In Chicago itself, a bigger test looms. If the city wins its bid to host the Olympics in 2016, it will have to balance its plans with the legitimate concerns of residents on the South Side, who have already seen lots of redevelopment. The quest for the common good is imperfect, but at least it is noisy.

All bitchy NIMBYS need to be ruthlessly squashed for the greater good! When you buy land, you only have a right to your land, not the land near you as well!

Philosophically I tend to agree, but decades of case law surrounding property rights and land use in this country suggest otherwise.

Actually there are centuries of case law around this. A lot Thomas Jefferson's early work as a lawyer concerned exactly this sort of thing and he researched British law on the issue going back to the time of the Magna Carta. He even had personal experience with it when someone upstream from him diverted a creek he relied on for crops and livestock, effectively lowering the value of his property.

In this case I side with CN, but they need to look at some of the legitimate concerns about rail crossings and noise abatement and make a good faith effort to mitigate the impact on the surrounding communities (I believe they have done this). There always needs to be a balance between letting NIMBYs squash all projects and letting large corporations and government do whatever they please.

Rush hour's pretty dang important and for this definition consists of about 4 hours of the day, which is about 25% of the entire day. The subway I most support would run from the West Loop (where exactly I'm open to suggestion) to Streeterville. If it could continue to about Clark/Fullerton to pull in the Chicago History Museum, the Lincoln Park Zoo and the Nature Museum, that'd be great, but it's less important than the route between the West Loop Metra stations and the East Loop and Streeterville. It would tie together all of Chicago's biggest office districts and help out with residential growth in Streeterville.

Circle Line + better use of and tie-ins with for Metra (is it the UP-N that runs along the Brown Line and kisses teh Purple in Evanston?) would accomplish a big chunk of what you propose there. Depending on the alignment, it could even create an impetus to develop the Bloomingdale path into passenger rail. I also agree a brown-blue connector would be a good thing, if difficult to implement. It might work best as a companion to express tracks between downtown and O'Hare.

All of this, though, is still highly dependent on a rational zoning ordinance when it comes to transit. Density near transit shouldn't just be "possible" it should be required. Right now, it's sometimes barely even possible.

On the South Side you could get E-W alignments at 41st-ish using existing ROW, again with the idea of better utilization of Metra being a relatively cheap and easier way to accomplish some of these things.

Also, no one seriously would propose putting a rail line literally next to (or, even worse, under) Lake Shore Drive, but both Clark and Broadway, while having a few gentle turns, are mostly straight. Diagonal, but straight.. Milwaukee breaks the grid, but it's got a subway under it.

I personally don't agree that CN should be allowed to put whatever traffic they want on this line without improving it to decrease the impacts on vehicular and commuter rail traffic.

Historically, Chicago required all railroads in the city to elevate their tracks above city streets. Why can't Metra, the state, and the suburbs force something like this to CN? Separate the EJ&E on an embankment through areas that meet a certain density requirement (people per square mile, grade crossings per track mile, etc). I would think that the potential impacts to Metra alone would be enough to warrant action like this. If CN says they can't afford it, that's BS; they have more money now than they've had in decades.

A 1 mile long embankment through Barrington would probably cost on the order of, say, $10 million if through freight traffic doesn't have to be maintained during construction. The only other places that would probably meet this requirement for density and where grade separations don't already exist, are a few other historic downtowns, like Lake Zurich, West Chicago, Chicago Heights, and a few streets in Joliet. So with five, 1-mile long embankments at $10 million each, most legitimate neighborhood concerns will be assuaged.

^ most grade-separations would cost a great deal more than $10 million each (D/E + C) unless the local municipalities and IDOT would allow the roads being separated to be completely shut down during the project, which seems unlikely due to the lack of alternatives. If through vehicular traffic is to be maintained there is no way around each one being a very large project.

That said, I don't disagree with you. I think there is definitely some onus on CN to invest serious money as a contribution to a larger fund for impact mitigation, but I'm not sure exactly how much that should be, either in percentage terms or dollar terms. The local municipalities and counties should probably shoulder a majority share of such costs, since it's not like CN is building a new railroad, just running more trains on an existing one. If it were a new railroad I'd say near 100% of the cost would be on the railroad operator, but not in this case.

You probably know more about this than I do, but if you try to tunnel every road under the railroad, without adjusting the grade of the RR, all while maintaining both RR and vehicular traffic, of course it would get very expensive very quickly. That may nonetheless be the most cost effective option when you're building a grade separation for just a single road, but that approach doesn't scale at all, so it's not really what I'm talking about.

What I'm talking about is simply shutting down the railroad, and constructing an embankment on its existing alignment to raise it above the roads. No change to the roads themselves. This would apply only to areas with dense population and dense road networks.

Grades on a railroad should be maintained at 1% or so. Assume 23 feet vertical clearance (to allow for potential double-stacked container freight trains on the UP-NW), plus perhaps 6 feet for substructure, deck, and ballast. So that's 29 feet vertical rise, which would dictate an approach of 2900 feet on either side . Sure that's a lot of dirt to pile, but the kicker is that once you've built the approach and you're already got that 23 feet of clearance, you can cross as many streets as you want for much lower marginal cost. There are 5 grade crossings on the EJ&E in Barrington (4 roadway plus the UP-NW line) within a space of about 4000 feet, and way more than 2900 feet with no crossings on either side to allow for construction of the approaches. Same for West Chicago. 5 grade crossings within 2000 feet, and plenty of space on either side for the approaches. CN could knock all of those out, and shut up the nimbys, in one fell swoop.

Perhaps $10 million is an underestimate of the construction costs for a 2 mile long embankment (including approaches) but just pushing around and piling up some fill dirt really doesn't cost that much. With the railroad closed, construction of the embankment (fill, plus retaining walls where necessary) should be possible entirely within the RR right of way. Therefore the only time when the roads would have to be closed would be during the removal of the grade crossing, and during the installation of the bridge decks. The Main Street bridge replacement by CTA in Evanston showed that this can be done in a single weekend.

If the residents of Barrington choose to demand a trench instead of an embankment, which they may try to do, then all bets are off. Roadway closures, excavation issues, immense retaining walls, dealing with seepage and drainage, as well as crossings of water and sewer utilities would increase the costs of the project by a factor of 10 (and therefore into the realm of impossibility.)

^Gotcha. I'm not sure the EJE could be shut down long enough to allow such work. It might be feasible in a few locations with available ROW or vacant property using temporary sidings with temporary grade crossings (and all that entails in terms of signalling and crossing gates).

Oh geez, the answer was right in orulz's post.

Also depends what you're going over... a truck route will need much more clearance. Like orulz said, I doubt you could get a rail grade much more than 1%. I don't know the hard limit for that.

Actually, moving dirt around DOES cost a great deal of money, especially when you're doing it within spitting distance of wealthy homeowners in a narrow, constrained area where all the dirt must be trucked in. There's also the engineering cost of building the road spans.

When they're building, say, the I-355 tollway extension through cornfields, work can proceed on a typical 9-5 schedule (no overtime costs) and extra land alongside can be purchased relatively cheaply for staging, or as a source for the dirt for the embankment so it doesn't have to be trucked in. This greatly lowers construction costs, which is a big reason why sprawl-creating highways often get priority over density-creating urban transit lines.

I should mention, orulz, as a Barrington resident myself, that UP does not run double-stacked containers on the Northwest Line, although CN definitely plans to run them on the EJ&E. The tallest cars on the NW line are auto carriers, which appear frequently.

It seems to me that the J--as it is now--is one of the few railroads that actually could shut down completely for track elevation.

But we should also remember the incredible red tape required for filling and elevation nowadays. The J runs adjacent to lots of wetlands. If CN had to pay for track elevation itself, it would probably be a lot cheaper to just go out by Rochelle and build an entirely new beltline through farmland. CN is buying the J in a cynical attempt to avoid contributing any money to CREATE.

So you claim that by building track which completely bypasses the built-up portion of the Chicago area, they could save money? That there wouldn't be grade-crossing issues if they did this? Seems a bit implausible to me.

Methinks your answer is overly simplistic and incredibly biased. Of course CN is trying to do this as cheaply as possible, but they aren't the evil pirates Barrington residents (and apparently you) make them out to be. They are just a business, operating like any other business would given the conditions.

Incredibly biased? Just because I'm thinking about the relative probable costs of two approaches? Hey, I have no problem with CN buying the J and running 20 trains an hour through Barrington.

But we need to think ahead about unintended consequences. If CN drops out of CREATE because they no longer need any in-city capacity, that's bad for the region. If the suburbs along the J end up forcing virtually all traffic onto a handful of arterials with grade separations, that has bad implications for the urbanity of those towns.

Obviously they seek to reduce/minimize/eliminate their expected contribution to CREATE, but I fail to see what's "cynical" about this. If they can reduce freight congestion more cost-efficiently than through the CREATE program, then why not? Why is it cynical for a business to use capital investment to reduce operating costs?

The CREATE program is a public-private partnership, designed to use private and state/federal/local funds to accomplish goals that benefit both the railroads and the public. For CN, buying the EJ&E is much cheaper than their contribution to CREATE, and it benefits nobody but themselves. The track capacity though Chicago that they previously used will now simply be filled with additional trains from the other railroads.

CN's purchase plan falls far short of the public generosity implied by a CREATE contribution, hence the word "cynical". Obviously, it is quite self-serving, but a railroad is a business like any other, and businesses have been making self-serving decisions for thousands of years. It is, in part, what makes capitalism so successful. So I wouldn't call CN's action cynical, I'd call CREATE hopelessly optimistic. If the railroads really stood to benefit from the CREATE projects, they would have paid for them already. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the railroads pick up some of the tab for Chicago rail improvements, but the people that run the railroads are not stupid and they make the decisions that net them the most profit.

Has anybody considered building grade separations through toll financing? Toll the major over/underpasses at a low rate (say, 10 cents) and collect the tolls electronically. On a 4-lane road, the grade separation would be 6 lanes, allowing one lane in each direction for cash and two in each direction for IPass. Over 10 years, this would net about $15 million per overpass.

23 feet is standard clearance over a freight railroad. Regardless of whether the UP currently runs double-stacked container freight on the NW line, they will certainly demand that any new structures over their railroad not preclude the future possibility of such traffic.

I think either 17 feet or 17'6" is the standard clearance over an interstate highway. I presume that that should be fine for the clearance over any roadway.

Regarding CN buying the EJ&E to avoid paying money into CREATE, what percentage of the private sector funding for CREATE was supposed to come from CN anyway?

Wilson Avenue Red Line
 

Does anyone know if this is actually progressing or is this an inactive CTA project?

http://www.architraveltd.com/wil.htm

^ It's progressing, in design phase. There was some hemming and hawing about whether to rebuilt it in a dual-island configuration a la Belmont/Fullerton (expensive!) or a single island platform - I think ultimately it will be dual island, as in those renderings. Then there's also the question of whether Wilson and Lawrence should be combined into an Uptown station which would be located slightly north of the existing Wilson station. Then there's the possibility of a joint development ("TOD") opportunity, with a private developer kicking in funds but also have some say over the overall site design. So, it's an active project, as it has been for ~25 years, but there are some questions to be worked out before it can reach 100% design. For those who care, my understanding is that historic preservation and importantly, restoration of the street-level stationhouse building by Arthur Gerber is an explicit component of the project.

Good to hear about the preservation component.

I just can't see the utility - aside from cost-cutting - in combining stations. It seems to me like a step in entirely the wrong direction.

Is work still being done on the Grand subway station? As I'm traveling north & south on the red line, just looking at the platform level makes it look as though no progress is being made. It just continues to be a poorly lit station with stripped walls and a stripped floor. They do have some sort of wood enclosure up in part of the station, but nothing seems to have changed in many months. If they're doing the tile work behind that partition, it seems as though it's taking quite a long time for something that isn't overly intricate, at least not to the point of having months on end of no apparent progress. But maybe progress is being made up above at the ticketing level?

Maybe if they move the station, Wilson Yards will no longer be transit-oriented and we can forgive it if it becomes a total turkey.

From street-level, there's a lot of work being done. The stuff at track-level will likely be the last stuff they do, as most of the rework is in the stationhouse and stairs and whatnot. It's exceedingly intricate - this isn't a paintjob or tilework they're doing, they're completely rebuilding the station, and expanding it at the same time.

I was bad yesterday and wrote Bagofwind (Gov) and told him unless he had numbers to help us out and show us that CTA is lieing to the public then he needed to shut the hell up. Bet I don't get a response back.

I think I read they are doing what they did to the Chicago Station and I believe that entails them building a whole building underground...and it wasn't until the last we saw major stuff happening to the platform area.