Ford City was always the planned terminus for the Orange Line, since the initial planning in the 1980s. It's the

I just realized Ford City is within the city limits (maybe I heard that before but it didn't quite register). Is there somewhere one can download a relatively detailed map of where the precise city limits are? It's kind of surprising how generally elusive this information is in the world of cartography.

Check out the Chicago GIS

http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/w...OID=-536886490

You could also look at the online bike map

Ford City area

There's more commercial businesses down there than people give it credit for, too. I suppose that better connections could mean better reverse-commute options, too.

^ Thanks for the map links guys. The bike map in particular is really very nice. I think I've actually seen it in print once. I look forward to a PDF version.

Well, the bike map doesn't go up as a PDF, just as the HTML tiles. Printed paper copies shouldn't be too hard to come by. They're supposed to be at all Chase branches, City Hall, Active Transportation Alliance office, etc. The new edition (at the printer now) is sponsored by AT&T rather than Chase, so in June they'll probably be in AT&T stores.

Freight train traffic: Suburban leaders seek help from Obama in rail traffic fight
By Richard Wronski | Tribune reporter
May 14, 2009
Several suburban state legislators and mayors called on President Barack Obama Wednesday to fill a vacancy on a federal regulatory board with someone sympathetic to their opposition to more freight trains in their communities.

State Sen. Linda Holmes (D-Aurora) introduced a resolution in Springfield calling on Obama to nominate a member to the Surface Transportation Board who will consider "significant community impacts related to public safety, noise, vibration, traffic congestion, and other environmental concerns..."

The board in December approved the Canadian National Railway's acquisition of the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern line through their suburbs. Canadian National purchased the line to divert freight traffic around Chicago's congested rail corridor.

"People felt like they spoke up but weren't listened to," Holmes said of the thousands of residents who opposed the deal at public hearings.

The board's three-member governing body has a vacancy due to the departure of W. Douglas Buttrey in March. Holmes and other officials asked Obama to make an appointment "that will protect communities from the unnecessary safety and economic concerns that can be caused by railroad expansion."

The officials cited letters Obama wrote as a U.S. senator in opposition to Canadian National's acquisition.

Are there any signs that the cross-town right-of-way parallel Cicero is seriously being considered for rail development? This was an idea floating around a while ago, if I remember correctly.

Looking at a map, it seems that there is some (abandoned? partially built-over?) right-of-way extending north from the 90-94-Cicero interchange through Lincolnwood into Evanston. Does anyone know the story about this right-of-way? If the Cicero cross-town corridor ever came about, one could see this old right-of-way linking places like the Lincolnwood Town Center, the far northwestern Chicago neightborhoods, and maybe even downtown Evanston (with a half-mile subway from Church and Dodge to Church and Davis) in on this new "western north-south trunk line."

In short, it seems there are a few existing rights-of-way in underserved areas that could be put to more intense use and I was wondering if any plans existed to develop them.

There are always plans, but there isn't always money. Chicago has defined priorities, and the Cicero corridor right now is low on that list. One only needs to look at the CTA's "Alternatives Analysis" page to see which projects are at the top: the Red, Orange, Yellow extensions and the Circle Line.

As I said earlier, the Circle Line will probably not be a rail line. In fact, the study might even push out a No-Build result, although more likely it will just be a quite cheap system of dedicated lanes (bye, parallel parking!) and traffic signal priority, something that can be done for under $200 million probably.

The downtown improvements in the Central Area Action Plan are the next group down on the priority list: projects like the 3 circulator lines and the Clinton St Subway. These have been associated with the Olympics, so there's a push to get them done soon. They may eclipse the four current expansion projects at CTA, or they may just get postponed, especially if we lose the Olympics.

After that are the grander and more expensive plans: Mid-City Transitway (Cicero corridor), Blue Line extension to Lombard, Brown Line extension to Jefferson Park, Airport Express, etc.

There are a ton of abandoned ROW's in the near northwest suburbs. I can think of at least two that cross Howard between the Northshore Canal and I-94.

Capital costs aside, one of the biggest questions for any fancy new rail transit service is how its operation will be paid for. Several cities (St. Louis and Dallas come to mind, and I'm sure others) have paired the opening of light rail lines with substantial bus service cuts - much moreso than just to routes paralleling the rail line. Short of cutting service, the only other options are: (1) new public revenue sources via taxes (which seem unlikely) (2) higher fares or (3) improved off-peak and reverse commute utilization of the system, so more revenue can be acquired without commensurate need to increase service levels. (1) & (2) are political hot potatos, and (3) is a land use question in a region that engages in zero comprehensive land-use/transportation planning as well as nearly zero meaningful regional planning to begin with. Long story short, I wouldn't get my hopes up for significant expansion of the rail rapid transit network outside of incremental construction at the margins, e.g. 2 mile extensions here, infill stations there, etc.

About the land use issue:

Are there initiatives on the federal level to require local land use reform as part of the qualification for federal transportation funding? I imagine such an initiative could be sold on the federal level as "demanding a higher return on the public investment," while also insulating local politicians from NIMBY pressures, in a "my hands are tied" kind of way. It would be something like what often happens in Europe, where local politicians can retain popularity despite enacting painful reforms by claiming "Brussels is making us do it."

^^^Oh God, the wingnuts and ditto-heads would really be screaming their socialism screeds if that happened; so French so EU...UUUUUUUU

Is the Brown Line extension anything more than a twinkle in a geek's eye -- has it ever actually been identified by CTA or some other body as an actual potential project?

^^ It was included in some official document that I saw. :shrug:

It's not in CMAP's 2030 Plan, but neither are the downtown transitways.

RTA's Goroo.com
 

Here's the URL: http://www.goroo.com/

I checked it out, and the FIRST transportation option it gives you is driving.

WTF. We all know that for the vast majority of trips, driving is going to be fastest. But does the RTA REALLY need to be reminding people of that for every single trip search? It's like saying, "Ride us, we're slower than driving!"

I ride transit despite it being slower for a lot of different reasons, but demonstrating for every trip search just how much slower it is just plain stupid in my opinion.

What on earth posessed the RTA to do that?

For example, just to see what it does, I searched from 500 W Madison to 1800 W Lawrence (Ogilvy to the Ravenswood stop on UP-North), leaving at 1:30pm (there's a 1:35 train).

Here's what it came up with:
17 minutes to drive (yeah, RIGHT - I used to live there and work near there, it NEVER took less than 20 minutes in a cab, even in the dead of night).
20 minutes to "drive to train" - yeah, I'm at the station's address and they say it's faster to drive to the train than walk in the front door. They're seriously screwing themselves if they don't provide estimates on time to park.
21 minutes to take the train. Okay, that's probably the most accurate time on their site.
Then it gives you some other "drive to train" and train options to take the "L" instead of the UP-North, ranging in time from 43 to 60 minutes.

Seriously, does the RTA even actually think about what they're doing?

I just messed around with that site for a bit - and yeah - it is total crap. Apparently walking is not an option at all. On one trip it told me I would have to drive 75' to get to the Milwaukee Ave. bus.

Looking at the route you entered I think even 21 minutes to take Metra seems long, I take that train quite a bit and it takes about 10-15 minutes.

I compared to Google maps just to see if this is a difficult route to plan for some reason. Google maps gives a time estimate of 14 minutes by Metra and even provides a cost comparison:

Nice! The RTA should just get out of the way and let the people at CTA who partnered with Google run everything for the whole system.

:shrug: :yes:

The bike map is one of the best maps of the city. To add to Mr Downtown's list, they are, of course, also available at probably every bike store in the city. They're free, just make sure you get the Chicago map and not the (not-free) Chicagoland map.