SkyscraperPage Forum

SkyscraperPage Forum (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/index.php)
-   Transportation (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=25)
-   -   CHICAGO: Transit Developments (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101657)

Nowhereman1280 May 26, 2010 5:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChicagoChicago (Post 4852891)
I've yet to see any type of tracker in any business here in Chicago, so while some may have in fact thought it up, they haven't yet made it viable.
.

My condo building bought a flat screen monitor and a mini mac specifically for this purpose. The screen is mounted on the pillar by the door and shows not only all the local buses, but also the weather, time, and news stories. Its been up since about a month after Bus Tracker came out.

I don't really even use it anymore because I have Bustracker linked to my Nexus One. I wonder if I can set that up to use the GPS to automatically show all buses from the nearest bus stop?

emathias May 26, 2010 5:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280 (Post 4853741)
My condo building bought a flat screen monitor and a mini mac specifically for this purpose. The screen is mounted on the pillar by the door and shows not only all the local buses, but also the weather, time, and news stories. Its been up since about a month after Bus Tracker came out.

I don't really even use it anymore because I have Bustracker linked to my Nexus One. I wonder if I can set that up to use the GPS to automatically show all buses from the nearest bus stop?

I don't know how well it works, but I think both bustracker and TreKing (which I prefer) have the ability to do that.

ardecila Jun 4, 2010 5:38 AM

Does anybody know how the 136 works? I'm curious as to why it only provides service in one direction. How do the buses return to the other end? Do the buses switch to some other route, like a 147 or 151, to make the return trip? Otherwise, they'd have to dead-head those buses, which seems like a big waste of money to me.

jpIllInoIs Jun 4, 2010 12:32 PM

New Auxiliary Entrance on Archer Opens at Cermak-Chinatown Station
 
http://www.transitchicago.com/news/d...ArticleId=2628


6/3/2010

Elevator to be Added at Cermak Entrance

CTA President Richard L. Rodriguez and Chicago Transit Board Chairman Terry Peterson today announced the opening of a new entrance to the Red Line’s Cermak-Chinatown station. Located approximately one block north of Cermak on Archer Avenue, the new entrance will serve as the primary access point for customers while the main entrance to the station on the north side of Cermak is reconstructed and made accessible. The south entrance on Cermak also will be closed to customers beginning Friday night at 11 p.m.

"Infrastructure improvements like this are very important to CTA but are dependent on capital funding," said CTA President Richard L. Rodriguez. "Thanks to the stimulus funds we are able to renovate this station, provide a new entry point and use our scarce capital funds for other much needed projects. When the work is complete at Cermak-Chinatown, customers will be able to enjoy a more modern and accessible station with the added convenience of another entrance and exit."

Beginning Friday, June 4, both the north and south entrances on Cermak will be closed to customers so construction can begin. As a result, the westbound and eastbound #21 Cermak buses will undergo reroutes. The eastbound bus stop at Cermak/Wentworth will be eliminated. Eastbound #21 and #62 Archer buses now will stop in front of the new Archer entrance into the Cermak station.

Westbound buses will stop at Archer/Wentworth to allow customers to access the station at a signal controlled crosswalk rather than crossing in the middle of the road.

"Capital projects such as this require a significant amount of funding; however, they must be done if we are to have a reliable public transit system that serves all customers," said Chairman Peterson. "The availability of stimulus funds is a great opportunity to make improvements the agency otherwise couldn’t afford."

In addition to the creation of the new auxiliary entrance on Archer, the station renovation project involves upgrading the main Cermak entrance by replacing the stairs and escalator, building a new station house at street level on Cermak and constructing a protective perimeter, including posts and planters around the outside of the station. The main Cermak entrance sustained major damage as the result of a traffic accident in April 2008.

An elevator will be installed at the Cermak entrance making the station accessible to customers with disabilities. When construction is complete by the end of 2010, 92 of 144 CTA rail stations (65%) will be accessible.

Ridership at the Cermak station on an average weekday is 3,530. CTA’s Red Line is the busiest line in the rail system with 249,225 rides on an average weekday.

Total cost of the project is $12.5 million and is funded with American Reinvestment Recovery Act – also known as stimulus – funding. CTA received a total $241 million in stimulus funds. Projects funded through stimulus funds include the track renewal project in the Blue Line’s Dearborn Subway and the purchase of 58 hybrid articulated buses.

Mr Downtown Jun 4, 2010 2:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardecila (Post 4865209)
Does anybody know how the 136 works?

Two or three picks back, CTA switched to a new computerized program for run-cutting that basically looks at where a bus ends up as it completes one trip and what is the next trip that starts nearby, no matter what route it is. So a driver's run may now include three different routes and wander over a good chunk of the city. This has led to a tremendous increase in interlining. There has always been some; you might have a run that consists of two complete 147 round-trips and then a quick 157 trip in the peak direction only before returning to the garage or being relieved.

Supposedly deadhead mileage is reduced with this program, but there are two downsides. Drivers are not as familiar with their routes and it ended CTA's old official (but seldom practiced) policy that buses are always in service and passengers may ride even on garage pull-outs or pull-ins.

ardecila Jun 5, 2010 5:47 AM

I'm assuming this program has some function that matches specific bus types to routes based on ridership? The articulated, standard, and short buses can't all be used interchangeably...

NYC2ATX Jun 6, 2010 10:41 PM

Question for all forumers: I have enjoyed reading the debate about new CTA rail lines and new stations and BRT corridors and everything of the like on this thread. I looked back about ten pages, and I had a question for all the proponents of new lines throughout the city.

What, if ever, do you think would be an adeuqate new coding system for the CTA 'L' lines once colors become too confusing to distinguish them? I imagine having a Magenta line or Chartreuse line may be a bit complicated. :D As most or all of you know, New York's Subway uses letters and numbers to define service routes (i.e. the A train, the 6 train). The Paris Metro has 14 services known by their numbers (i.e. le ligne 7), and the London Underground's lines are colored, but known by their names (i.e. the Jubilee Line, colored silver). Even L.A.'s rapidly growing Metro system already has people talking about kicking colors to the curb within 50 years.

When do you all think such a new naming system may need to be implemented in Chicago (as in, how many expansions away from this are we?) and what type of names would you prefer (letters, numbers, full names, etc.)??

Keep up the lively discussion! :tup:

Mr Downtown Jun 6, 2010 11:51 PM

As the designer of the CTA map, I gave the matter some thought four years ago when the Pink Line was named (though I had no part in that decision). It's not really a problem of color theory, but of semantics. Which colors are the general public immediately able to name? I concluded that Silver and Gold could be used, though there are printing and display challenges. Black and White are obvious, but there might be political baggage to overcome. Yellow could be redeployed, and the Skokie branch called a Red Line Shuttle or something. Beyond that, I felt the most distinctive and recognizable colors would be Maroon, Aqua, Lime, and Magenta. Things are complicated by the CTA's decision some years back to translate the color names into Spanish. This is linguistically problematic: on one draft of the first Spanish edition of the map we used three different Spanish words for brown in three different sections (translated by different people)—and it's unhelpful, since none of the system signage uses the Spanish names so you have to translate in your head anyway.

So CTA could use colors for a long, long, time if it wants to. As for a different system, I would suggest the direction or richtung system used in most of Europe, indicating trains by their endpoints rather than an abstract name or number. Red Line trains would thus be marked Rogers Park or Roseland. Brown Line trains would go to Albany Park rather than Kimball. Green Line trains to Oak Park, Woodlawn, or Englewood.

Busy Bee Jun 7, 2010 12:06 AM

Quote:

I would suggest the direction or richtung system used in most of Europe, indicating trains by their endpoints rather than an abstract name or number. Red Line trains would thus be marked Rogers Park or Roseland. Brown Line trains would go to Albany Park rather than Kimball. Green Line trains to Oak Park, Woodlawn, or Englewood.


^Good grief. What goes around comes around I guess.

OhioGuy Jun 7, 2010 2:21 AM

Considering the cost of building new rail lines, I can only see three additional lines as even remotely possible in the future: the circle line, the Clinton Street subway, and something in the Metra electric corridor. You could call the circle line the gold line, the Clinton Street subway the silver line, and the Metra electric corridor the gray line (although I guess extra care would have to be given to differentiate between silver & gray since the colors can be somewhat similar... maybe bronze would be a good color option since the line would serve parts of Bronzeville, though that too could be confused with gold). Beyond those three, it seems like any additional mileage of rail would just be extensions of already existing color-coded lines (red line south, orange line south, blue line west, and brown line west).

Busy Bee Jun 7, 2010 3:18 AM

All this is a bit like naming planets that haven't been discovered yet.

NYC2ATX Jun 7, 2010 5:35 AM

Thanks Mr. Downtown, and everyone else. It's true that it may be a long time before color-coding becomes a problem. I only wonder if it would become confusing as colors become more similar in appearance. Like would the Gold line not be confused with the Yellow line? It might be better to execute the redeployment of the Yellow color and come up with a less distinctive color for the less prominent Skokie line, as was said. Maroon could be confused with Brown also, and so on and so forth. A directional naming system may be what it evolves to naturally since it's already the Green line to Ashland/63rd or the Pink line to 54th/Cermak etc. As I mentioned with the Paris Metro, the only way to know which direction a train is going is to hear the number and the terminal station (i.e. la ligne 2 à Porte Dauphine). In New York, of course, we have the advantage of Uptown, Downtown, and direction based on which outer borough it's headed to, but I agree with the directional theory.

ardecila Jun 7, 2010 6:26 AM

Aqua is indeed a good color from a cartographic perspective, although from a conceptual perspective, it would be nice to reserve aqua for any future lakefront light-rail or BRT trunk line.

I'm assuming that the Circle Line, if built, would actually be CALLED the "Circle Line", while the other lines would retain their color names. On a map, gold would probably be the best choice, represented as a muddy yellow. There'd be no chance of confusing it with the Yellow Line due to their extreme separation at opposite ends of the map.

All the other heavy-rail proposals are, or can be viewed as, extensions of existing lines. Even the Clinton Street Subway would presumably receive a re-routed Red Line, leaving the State Street Subway for the Orange Line, Purple Line, or both.

Mr Downtown Jun 7, 2010 5:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Busy Bee (Post 4868011)
What goes around comes around I guess.

Well, the historic CTA line names were a confusing combination of destinations and corridors. Lake, Dan Ryan, Milwaukee, and Congress were corridors, while Howard, Jackson Park, Englewood, Garfield, Humboldt, and Douglas were (more or less) destinations.

To the color-blind, the current color names are already just random words. I see that some signage is now using color stripes only, without the reinforcing words. Visitors don't know that the colored stripes are anything other than decoration.

sammyg Jun 8, 2010 5:48 PM

Has anyone gotten any pictures of the North/Clybourn reconstruction?

All they've done so far is reskin the old building with the kind of beige brick you see on a suburban bank. It looks nothing like an Apple store.

ardecila Jun 8, 2010 10:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyg (Post 4870323)
Has anyone gotten any pictures of the North/Clybourn reconstruction?

All they've done so far is reskin the old building with the kind of beige brick you see on a suburban bank. It looks nothing like an Apple store.

Check out this Flickr set:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zolk/se...7621014018884/

Busy Bee Jun 8, 2010 11:26 PM

Ugh to the sconces. The rest isn't horrible, but has about all the charm of a 5/3 Bank branch.

Nowhereman1280 Jun 8, 2010 11:35 PM

^^^ I was going to say, so apple, in all their progressive wisdom, decided that the beautiful moderne station should be "upgraded" to a cheap mcdonalds appearance... Good job Apple, way to shit up our subway stop...

ardecila Jun 9, 2010 5:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280 (Post 4870848)
^^^ I was going to say, so apple, in all their progressive wisdom, decided that the beautiful moderne station should be "upgraded" to a cheap mcdonalds appearance... Good job Apple, way to shit up our subway stop...

At least Apple isn't touching the platforms, except to scrape/repaint.

Only Clark/Division and Harrison remain un-remodeled on the Red Line... :(

denizen467 Jun 9, 2010 8:26 AM

^ Did Apple have a say on design, or were they just providing funds? The only thing I remember about Apple's rights was regarding naming rights and advertising in the station.


All times are GMT. The time now is 10:32 PM.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.