You are both wrong. What needs to be built is a Ravenswood El line. This would closely parallel Ashland, but completely eliminate the need for any digging or ROW creation. The Ravenswood Metra Tracks easily have enough room to be sandwiched by two El Tracks. There would be stations in Ravenswood and Rogers Park where transfers between Metra and the El could be made. This would not only offer excellent access to neighborhoods like Andersonville, but it would act as an excellent collector for the Metra System and vice versa.

Additionally it would be built to hop over onto the Brown line North-South Tracks at Wilson where there is currently a huge parking lot that could easily be the site of a flyover. Then it would join up again with the Metra ROW at Roscoe where the Brown line currently crosses the Metra. From their it could go straight downtown and either break off where the Metra crosses Ashland and follow Ashland south as a subway, or it could follow the Metra all the way Downtown and feed into a Clinton Subway and WLTC.

I would prefer the Ashland route to the South and have it jump onto the Paulina Connector and then back to Ashland and to the Orange Line where it would terminate and provide direct access to Midway from the North Side. It would also build a station at United Center and greatly open access to United Center via transit from all sides of the city.

Additionally the line would swing round where the Metra line passes the Howard yards and be routed through the Howard Yards to terminate in the brand new Howard Terminal. This would also open the possibility of Sending Purple Line Trains along the near west side or express to WLTC or Midway. It could also be made to have stations at alternating streets from the Red Line to provide maximum rail coverage for the zones between the two. It could have stops on streets with bus service that don't have Red Line stops like Devon, Peterson, and Foster, further increasing coverage and integration with the Bus System.


Think of the possibilities of such a route. You could route every other Brownline to downtown via my hypothetical Line X. You could send every other Line X train East to the North Main Line and on to the loop or State Street Subway. You could route some Red Line Trains to Midway via the near west side. The Possibilities are endless. Such a line would massively increase ridership across the system at a very low construction cost. It could also be done in conjunction with the inevitable reconstruction of the Metra embankment in the next decade or two.

That's EXACTLY my logic... Western is currently an auto speedway that is lined with auto-oriented businesses. It's a far cry from being suburban (too much of the pre-war city remains) but it's also a far cry from being North Halsted or Clark Street. If you spent billions to build a subway under this pedestrian-hostile avenue, with virtually nobody living directly above the line AND no direct connection to downtown, few people indeed would ride the thing. They'd continue to do the bus-to-L trips they currently do.

If it did go directly to downtown somehow (I dunno how, maybe using the extra space in the Ike median) then the ridership might be higher, as people living along the corridor might venture into auto hell for a one-seat ride to the West Loop.

I disagree with your assesment that a transfer would male this route untenable, people transfer from red to brown and vice versa all the time to get to various areas within the loop / dt.

With western crossing all the radial lines, a transfer to DT could be quite easy as the brown / blue (both) and green lines, orange and the 63rd green line stop if extended to terminate at Western. Effectively creating a super loop around a large part of the city, and reducing the need to go DT to utilize radials

THe western ave bus in the aggregate, 49, 49b, south western, I think are among the busier, if not the busiest line in the system. I would imagine a subway line other Western would effectively make the bus route redundant and unnecessary.


TUP -- I would love an ashland subway as well, I just think the Western shows promise to a far greater number of peop;e; and still on the northside at least goes through some of the more dense parts of the city

Given how the northern portion is so close to the North Main, I would think it would be politically more probable to have Chicago annex portions of the Moon than to get that built. Enough people/wards around the city are nowhere near adequate transit that they would demand construction for their areas first. I love the idea of capitalizing on Metra r-o-w though.

The loophole that could get that built might be to say that, since both Metra and CTA will be rebuilding all their viaducts in the north, the cost could be piggybacked onto Metra's construction - and then try and say you want to shut down the entire north Red Line for 2 years for rebuilding, so the city first needs a new Line X along Ravenswood to Howard. Still wishful though.

It's a cool idea but it's Chicago 2050 at least I'd think (at the pace we're going at).

Hey, what about a bike path along this Metra r-o-w - a bike express High Line / Bloomingdale Line? Safety issues too much an obstacle?

Metra is built on a solid-fill berm with plenty of trees and bushes preventing erosion. No major concrete retaining walls, like the North Main has. The retaining walls it does have, at street crossings, are solid stone and they aren't going anywhere. It's the steel bridges that need replacement, which is an important but relatively minor project with relatively little impact on Metra service. The viaduct is built for three tracks but only has two currently; so single-tracking and shifting trains over is easy.

Really, it's not the type of major project you're envisioning. Moreover, I'm not sure, politically, how you would sell a major and preventable inconvenience to a line that carries 41,000 people a day, many of them numbering among the richest and most influential people in the entire Midwest.

Plus, it's not a Metra line at all. It's a Union Pacific Rail Road line on which Metra pays to have special trains run.

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Does the station really need side AND aisle platforms? If so, why? Are the side platforms intended for some sort of conventional CTA service, while the center one is meant for airport traffic? (or vice versa) What conventional CTA trains would go through that station?

^ Good questions Ardecila. I also would like to know if this station can tie into WLTC or if it was designed as a stand alone airport express station. If it does not tie into WLTC then it seems to be a competing station.

I think the idea was that there would be tail tracks coming off both State and Dearborn subways, so that trains could terminate and lay up there. The through track(s) would be in the center.

WLTC works better with rerouted North-South trains using a new Larrabee subway, though you could also have some trains come in from the Milwaukee subway if useful. If the connection to O'Hare comes in at Union Station, you might just as well use a Metra-Milw train. The whole reason to bring airport trains into Block 37 is to reinforce the central Loop's importance.

So then:

A) Block 37 airport express service indeed would be a competing service to WLTC airport express trains.

B) Block 37 as planned does not link with WLTC.


UNLESS

C) To synchronize WLTC/Block 37 the new Clinton St subway could have a connection under Fulton/Clinton with the Blue line where Loop bound trains could cross over to Clinton St-proceed south to the WLTC-then turn left at a new Clinton/Congress connection to proceed into the south Loop to finally emerge at Block 37? I'm asking.

Neither --- I believe the side platforms were for boarding (each for Midway/O'Hare service, with separate fare controls), with the island platform for shared alighting.

I don't think the trackwork as designed would support this; in short, the tunnels and planned track connections were for SB Blue to SB Red and NB Red to NB Blue. For reasons I'm still not clear on, the entire B37 airport express concept was contingent on express service to both airports, rather than allowing for express service to only O'Hare (i.e. building a stub track terminal for O'Hare Express under B37 and possibly utilizing the Airport Express terminal with car rental, parking, and baggage tag/check-in facilities that was already built as 203 N. LaSalle back in the 1980s...)

In theory, an O'hare-only express service could just pull through B37 and lay up on the Roosevelt incline or go all the way to the middle track at 35th street, but that would be quite inefficient and increase the vehicle requirement and non-revenue mileage to operate the service. There were very brief pie-in-the sky concepts floating about a couple years ago to do a Green Line spur at Cermak to McCormick Place and the Olympic Village, to serve as a stub terminal for the O'Hare service, but we all know how that turned out.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, a key part of the Downtown Distributor system (a Madison or Monroe subway) would have served the function of connecting the two nodes... one can almost visualize something akin to the Times Sq-GCT shuttle in Manhattan shuttling between Union/Ogilvie and B37/State/Dearborn to tie the system together, but would quickly run up against the standard constraint of money.

I've never heard of any airport express service from the WLTC. I don't see it mentioned anywhere in the Central Area Action Plan.

^I think the idea is that a WLTC based ariport express would come in the form of a HSR train, possibly as the last leg of a St.Louis-Chicago 200Mph+ service as proposed and advocated by the MHSRA and the newly formed HSR authority.

Shared alighting - that's the opposite of shared delight, right?

The Downtown Distributor system, at least the Monroe portion and the portions between Streeterville and McCormick is still sorely needed. Wish it'd been built back in the 70s.

If all Chicago routes (St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Indy, etc) stopped both at O'Hare and a WLTC, it probably wouldn't take very many additional trains to have frequent (20-minute interval) express service both ways between O'Hare and the West Loop.

Yeah, either that or have a shuttle using the same HSR consist that all HSR arrivals at the WLTC/Union would transfer to. I can see something like this running every 15 minutes.

A bus transitway under Monroe is still in the Central Area Plan, making just as likely as the WLTC.

Smith+Gill's DeCarbonization Plan uses Monroe as a "green spine" across the Loop. Their website has some cool renderings.

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/9533/monroe2.jpg

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/96/monroe4.jpg

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/5070/monroe1.jpg

^ Now that is what I would like to see downtown.

All questions regarding whether the city should prioritize WLTC vs. Block 37 would be resolved by this one project. That is one project that would finally improve access to the east Loop for the north and west suburbs.

I know for sure that, if implemented and well done, I would use that service and actually consider taking the train to Chicago more often for recreation.

The whole reason people visiting Chicago for recreation tend to drive is because all of the trains converge in the west part of downtown, while all of the recreational facilities (Mag Mile, Millennium Park, State St, museums) are on the east part of downtown.

Of course people would use it. It would be extraordinarily popular. The cost would probably be enormous, though - as a low-level subway, relocating utilities would be an incredible pain in the ass. A regular deep subway requires you to relocate utilities only in station zones, but this would require complete relocation along the entire length of Monroe from Clinton to Columbus. You'd also have to carve out a new river tunnel, since there isn't an old one at Monroe, and said tunnel would also have to go beneath the tracks at Union Station. You might be able to get away with an at-grade intersection with Lower Wacker, but that might cause safety concerns.

I'm really hoping CDOT finishes the Alternatives Analysis for the Carroll Transitway sometime in the next year. It would be great to get moving on that. AFAIK, nobody in Chicago is submitting New Starts applications right now, so it's a great time for CTA or the city to submit a modestly-sized request for a busway along existing ROW.

Someone tore down Italian Village and built a new tower. Maybe this is the mystery tower that Pandemonius teased us about once upon a time...