those will look FAR more dated in 40 years than a 5000 series.

Don't forget the issue of climate and operating environment in vehicle design. There's a good reason why Russian, American, and Canadian railcars have a much more... "robust" and utilitarian design aesthetic than the toys that operate in southern Europe, Australia, etc.

When your typical temperature range is a mediterranean 40F-75F (or even 50F-90F such as in subtropical regions) your design constraints are much different than when your temperature range is a midcontinental 0F-100F --- and all that time below 32F also means you're dealing with corrosive salt spray if your ROW is anywhere near a road.

I doubt it. In 40 years, the HK will look 40 years old and the 5000 series will look 80 years old - they already look like a 40-year-old design to me. I know there are "reasons" Chicago doesn't have cars you can move between, but honestly they've had the better part of 50 years to work out the complications and I don't see why it can't be done. Even if it added a few minutes per coupling, the safety and comfort factors seem like a no-brainer to me.

Then there's the new LED signage. The LEDs they chose are old tech. Sure simple is sometimes more reliable, but it just looks dated right out of the box. Honestly, I'm so disappointed in the LED signs I'd rather they'd stuck with the old ones which at least had the train color on obvious display and had more style.

Some of my favorite cars are the Stockholm ones, and while Stockholm doesn't have quite the temperature range Chicago does, it's a lot bigger than a Mediterranean or subtropical range. The cars in Germany or Austria or Moscow or pretty much anywhere in central Europe would certainly have to deal with temperature swings like Chicago, as does Beijing.

and that's precisely where we differ.

there's no accounting for taste.

Germany for the most part has an oceanic climate, much more similar to Seattle than Chicago. Winters in German cities are milder and a lot less snowy than Chicago.
Central Europe falls into the continental range, but even there the weather is generally more similar to places like Maryland or Virginia rather than the upper Midwest.

You have to travel very far east in Europe to experience temperature swings as in the Midwest. That would include Moscow, which isn't in central Europe by any stretch of the meaning.

CTA puts riders in a N.Y. seat of mind

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Ma...-Save-Chicago/


Chicago has several mottoes and names, like Horto in Urbs Urbs in Horto, the City that Works, and the Windy City. But more recently the unofficial motto has been "Chicago: We're not Detroit." It's fun to get urbanists and historians talking about why that's the case: why Chicago, though it has lost population over the last decade, has avoided the collapse its midwest/rust belt peers have faced. There are a lot of answers, like the fact that the city's base as a real hub for the products of the Upper Midwest allowed it to transition into a virtual one, laying the groundwork for its financial industry.

But Detroit could have done something similar, leveraged the power of automobile manufacturing to become the center for management, development, and finance for the world wide automobile industry even after manufacturing had declined. And to some degree they have done that. It is not like the auto industry worldwide has collapsed and foreign manufacturers have a strong presence in the Detroit area. What is different, is that there was no agglomeration forces keeping Detroit as the economic center of the region. Today most of the work is spread out over a vast stretch of land hobbled together in different political boundaries, i.e. Toyota in Ann Arbor.

Of course this was true from the very beginning and a natural effect of huge manufacturing plants but even the headquarters and research firms are spread to thin throughout the region. This dilutes the political and economic power of a city/region. One of the most important numbers for strong cities is revenue per area. The higher the ratio, the more businesses will come together and the higher the economies of scale. This is what keeps a city together.

Chicago followed the exact opposite path of Detroit and the reason why the city and region is much stronger than Detroit today. Great Lakes shipping concentrated along the river meaning shippers and financiers needed downtown offices and docks. Eventually railroad shipping over took the boats but maintained the central location theme. Meat packing was concentrated at the stock yards. Regional and local transit catered to this centralization and developed in the spoke pattern we see today. The l, trolleys, buses, street cars, and commuter railroads dumped vast quantities of people in an extremely small area which allowed businesses to make large profits per square footage and build up rather than out.

What this meant over time was that the city of Chicago was much more powerful in its region as compared to Detroit in Southeast Michigan. Just look at the number of people living in Detroit as a percent of those living in the entire region and compare it to Chicago. This suburbanization dilutes the political and economic power of not only the city but the region. The suburbs and the city are linked together and cannot grow without working together. In Chicago's case, the city has used sheer numbers to hold onto power but as the population on the periphery increases and the population in the city declines, there might be a shift of power to the suburbs that could undercut the viability of the entire region.

To this extent, CTA and Metra did save Chicago. Today these transit options allow for huge numbers of workers to come together in a small area and make vast quantities of money. Relying solely on the car means firms have to spend large amounts of money on parking spaces or move towards cheaper land diluting the economies of scale. The resurgence of bike commuting and walking to work also allows for large numbers of commuters in a smaller area and why all forms of transit should be pursued. High speed rail should be pursued not because American's like big and fast things but because it gets large numbers of people to a small area quickly as opposed to airports that need huge quantities of land. That is why putting Detroit's rail station in New Center is a mistake. It should be Downtown.

Of course most people on this board already know this but it feels gratifying to say things sometimes. Democracy demands wisdom.

I noticed at the Chicago Brown Line stop last night that there were a few large piles of new planks - the creosote kind - that will presumably be installed to replace the quickly-failing planks people have been complaining about.

^ Cool. I thought creosote was prohibited, but apparently it's fine for certain uses.

I still maintain that CTA should be using artificial decking of some kind, but going back to tried-and-true creosote is an improvement. Of course, creosote is only a preservative. You still need a sealant and a fire retardant. Historically CTA has used coal tar sealant, which is gross and awful in hot weather. Hopefully there is a better alternative.

hmm, actually tonight I was on the far south end of the platform, and the new planks piled there look like ordinary pressure-treated boards. I have no idea what they're doing with the mix.

Crosswalks
 

Has anyone else noticed that, at least in the Central Area, Chicago seems to be switching from the two-parallel-line style crosswalk that's common in most of the U.S. to the multiple wide lines running perpendicular to pedestrian travel that's common in New York, Toronto and a few other places?

I notice that Boston, Atlanta and Washington also have a style in some places that mixes the two, and Seattle has its own take on crosswalks, too. I didn't realize there was so much variety in the way to mark crosswalks until I started looking at what other cities do. For example, San Francisco is mostly parallel lines, but then they do have some of the perpendicular style, and some of those are done in yellow paint instead of white.

Is there some sort of standards shift that Chicago is joining? Or maybe the film industry said we could stand in for New York more if we had New York-style crosswalks? ;)

By "perpendicular", I assume you mean zebra-stripe, Abbey Road style?

I really dunno, but my guess is that the zebra-stripe crosswalks are far more visible to drivers, which discourages them from blocking the crosswalk with their vehicles and encourages them to slow down as they approach. As pedestrian traffic has grown in downtown Chicago, so have the conflicts between drivers and pedestrians.

Good one.

I was entertaining a foreign visitor once who saw two different styles in the same intersection, and asked the obvious question of what the functional difference was. All I could think of was, different reigns, different eras at Streets & San. Though I always do end up also querying the roles of snowfall and snowplow scraping when it comes to trying to explain any street markings.

But that did lead to the discovery of all the crosswalk information your little heart could desire -- at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_crossing -- including this transit-nerd pocket-reference diagram-cum-eye-chart:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...8en%29.svg.png

Going by that, it appears we're aligning our crosswalk style with our climate - continental.

RTA asks transit users: How's the ride?


November 29, 2011

Read More: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...833,full.story




http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/...1/66380733.jpg

Noise of old train cars Vs the 5000 series cars
 

Having recently moved to a building right next to an elevated L station on the Green/pink line and finally ditching my car, I can hear the frequent rumblings of the trains passing by. And I can definitely say that the 5000 series cars are SO much quieter that any of the other models. It'll be interesting to walk on any of the loop streets after all train cars used in the loop are 5000s. Wabash will be so much quieter

I work on the 26th floor overlooking the Pink/Green lines at the corner of Lake and Wacker. I can slightly hear the rumblings of the trains when they go by, and definitely noticed right off the bat when the new ones started. Instead of the jerking and slamming of the trains starting and stopping, you hear that 'hiss' more as they slowly speed up and down. I always think of DC when I hear that whine, since I'm assuming they use alternating current as well.

I do agree though, just walking up and down Lake Street all day, the new trains are quieter. It's funny when one goes by, cause people that walk the street on a daily basis will all look up to see what the new noise is coming from the L tracks.

I filled out the survey a couple days ago. It was lengthy but it asked important questions.

In Michigan they sometimes recess the pavement a bit and then stripe within the recess for lane markings and crosswalks. This allows plows to pass over without lifting the paint. I haven't really seen this done anywhere in Chicagoland.

^^ Creative solution.

Nowhereman posted a link in the General Developments thread that inadvertently showed me something I wasn't aware of. It's well-known that CTA plans to use the UP's alignment through Roseland for the Red Line Extension. However, UP's line is at-grade and has quite a few grade crossings, which pose a problem for station access, as both a major inconvenience and potential safety hazard.

Therefore, the city is exploring the idea of relocating the UP entirely between 87th and 101st Streets. The new alignment would follow the existing CRL/CN lines, which are fully grade-separated and under-capacity, and could be linked together with a new flyover and two track connections. Freeing up the UP corridor would also allow the city to avoid any property takings along the new Red Line route. The city could then build the Red Line more cheaply on the former UP alignment, and potentially re-connect streets to fill in the missing links in the grid.

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/4843/updiagram.jpg

Three Years Down, 72 More to Go On Chicago Parking Meter Lease by Michelle Stenzel


December 6th, 2011

Read More: http://www.urbanophile.com/2011/12/0...g-meter-lease/

If the freight railroad operation were eliminated from the equation, the Red Line Extension could be placed in a trench, or cut-and-cover subway (best) - for MUCH less cost than an aerial structure.

Freight is worth alot more money, and it employs alot more people in the city than the CTA does.

I still don't understand all the fretting about the parking meter deal. It's wonderful to see parking rates downtown on the meters go up up up where they belong. I know it makes me think twice about taking my car downtown and makes taking the Blue Line in, even if I have to transfer to Chicago bus or something, a LOT more appealing. That would never have happened without taking the pricing out of the control of the city where the political reality of "free parking as a constitutional right" reigns.

Where on earth are you getting your construction cost estimates? Retained cut is twice as expensive as elevated structure, and that's without filling back over it. Actual subway is more than four times as expensive. Any time you go below grade you have utility relocation, soil stabilization, dewatering, and construction of bridges for all the overcrossing streets.

The 2007 city budget proposal included purchasing the payboxes (around $35m investment) and raising rates itself, but as Nowhereman points out, the aldermen balked. By the 2009 budget, money was so tight that there wasn't even anything to spare to buy the payboxes, and they needed the one time infusion to plug the budget hole.

From a purely financial, it wasn't a terrible price paid (just run the numbers yourself using a reasonable discount rate). The crime was using what should have been $1bn in capital reserve to gain interest and fund construction projects over 75 years to pay ~3 years of operating expenses.

For one, a costly railroad relocation adds to the cost of the Red Line.
Proposed UP relocation could make CREATE proposal for Amtrak Grand Crossing re-connection redundant.
Proposed high-speed rail corridor to Saint Louis would need most of the available right of way and the raising of the existing UP overhead bridge south of Kensington to ease the vertical curve in electric power catenary.
The Metra Electric Kensington Junction also needs to be expanded, increasing use of the right of way.

Welcome to the forum Harveyk400. You put alot of random fact statements out there. Care to address them in a little more digestible form?

For Instance: construction of Create P4 is currently unfunded so while the UP relo and alignment with CN-IC is redundant it is not a bad thing in regards to Create P4.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. You're offering reasons but no main argument.

Anyway... it may in fact be cheaper overall to relocate UP than for CTA to seize all the properties adjacent to UP and create their own ROW. Plus, relocating UP doesn't displace any residents (except for maybe around 95th/Cottage Grove when they build the flyover).

The IC right-of-way is eight tracks wide. It is wide enough to accommodate both passenger and freight demands for the next 100 years. With proper management, four tracks is more than enough for the future high-speed trains, Metra Electric commuter operations, and the South Shore. CN reserved four tracks in that area for freight operations - two tracks for mainline freight and two tracks for storage. With CN shifting more and more of their traffic onto the EJ&E, their sidings and main lines within the city will see much less usage. The storage tracks can become a new UP mainline while the two CN mainline tracks can be saved for super-express and high-speed intercity trains.

Just stop right there.

Freight built this city and continues to ensure our economic status both now and in the future... and you want to just eliminate a line? For the sake of (supposedly) saving (doubt it) a couple hundred million dollars in construction costs? Care to guess on how much it would cost to buy that ROW (without providing an alternative) off of Union Pacific? Im betting a lot more than whatever possible saving you would have on the Red Line extension... and it would simply add to the freight rail clusterfuck that is the SouthEast side of the city.

Yeah, sounds good.

When I said "freight railroad eliminated from the equation" - I was talking about the UP ROW between I-57 at 99th and the MED ROW at 119th.

I meant that if freight trains were re-routed (as per the image) onto the MED ROW at 95th, they would be "eliminated" from the ROW of the Red Line Extension, instead of having to share it; I did NOT mean getting rid of the freight services altogether, which is how you seem to have interpreted what I said.

And while the Red Line Extension seems to be a done deal (or it will be), I obviously favor the 25 MILE 40 STATION Gray Line Conversion of the in-city Metra Electric District services (from the Downtown Millenium Park Station at Randolph & Michigan - to [93rd & Brandon], [115th & Cottage Grove], [Downtown Blue Island] and [Hegewisch]) at a TOTAL Capital Cost of approx. $200 Million: Grayline.20m.com

That 200 MILLION Dollars is ONE S E V E N T H of the 1.4 B I L L I O N Dollar Total Capital Cost to extend the Red Line only 6 miles with only 4 stations (ALL South of 95th St. - and now add the cost of re-routing the UP freight trains).


btw: I believe these same UP tracks will also be carrying the new Metra SouthEast Service: http://metraconnects.metrarail.com/ses.php http://metraconnects.metrarail.com/p...ap09012010.pdf

CHICAGOTRANSIT@yahoogroups
 

I have just discovered this group and many of your discussions are repeated on CHICAGOTRANSIT@yahoogroups. I am only a member there but you might find additional and interesting discussions there, so here's an invite to come take a look. I have just posted a response from CTA sources about wheel truing and the new AC5000 cars, for instance.

Meanwhile I am enjoying going through your past pages.

David Harrison

Welcome David, you will be a valuable asset to this forum; here is a link to the CHICAGO TRANSIT forum for all to use: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/CHICAGOTRANSIT/

Where does this magical $200mm number come from? At the very minimum this project requires 40 station rehabs, or complete rebuilds. Add to that the changes that would be made to the HighLiner cars (removal of bathrooms, plastic seats, signage), acquisition of HighLiner maintenance facilities/machinery and new staff trained to work on the HighLiners. No way even a fraction of that gets accomplished for $200mm.

I'll let Mike defend his own idea, but the pricetag seems very realistic. If you assume that every station must be accessible, then the cost would go up substantially. But if you don't, then the Grey Line can be implemented as soon as they re-install the missing turnstiles and purchase new rolling stock to allow for the higher service frequency.

Maybe someone already mentioned it, but the CTA now publishes Open Data on the web. It's a lot of data! Included in the ridership statistics are "L" ridership numbers for over a half-million station-days (a specific day at a specific station).

There are some interesting numbers in that big pile of numbers, for example:

The four busiest station-days are at the Belmont Red/Brown/Purple station for the last Sunday in June for 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. The 2011 day was 15% busier than the 2nd-place day despite the station being closed down for several hours. For those of you who don't know, the last Sunday in June in Chicago's Gay Pride Parade, and Belmont station is the closest "L" station to the middle of the route. Also the biggest Sunday ever for Addison, and biggest-ever days for Sheridan, Wellington and Diversey. Altogether, 2011 Gay Pride Parade resulted in at least 73,000 riders across the stations within 1/2 mile of the Parade route. A typical weekday for those five stations together would be less than half that - around 35,000.

Obama's 2008 Election Day rally in Grant Park is the likely reason Clark-Lake takes the 24th-busiest station-day.

The Stanley Cup rally on June 11, 2010 gave Clark/Lake and Lake/State Loop stations the 5th and 9th-busiest station-days ever.

Not surprisingly, 7 of the busiest 100 station-days are related to Independence Day fireworks (the stats I have only cover 11 years, so 7/11 are in the top 100. 6/11 are in the top 50 and 2 are in the top 10 busiest station-days.

Those were just some ones I could picking pick out with a spreadsheet. I'm sure ever more interesting data could be mined with a little scripting.

New Connection Between Chicago and Quad Cities


December 13, 2011

By Ellen Cannon

Read More: http://www.examiner.com/homeland-sec...nd-quad-cities

The Union Station Master Plan meeting drew a good crowd. No earthshaking ideas (or funded projects). When Canal Street is rebuilt (next few years) it might be done with the east curb lanes for buses, and a taxi dropoff island in the middle of the street (but no access to that island except at the Adams and Jackson crosswalks). The offstreet bus facility south of Jackson was described as "for CTA buses," which probably means no Megabus or private shuttles. "Medium-range" ideas to someday create additional through tracks and to shift some of the south side tracks over a bit, widening passenger platforms enough to allow escalators up to Jackson by eliminating the underused baggage platforms.

Here's a PDF of the presentation.

Yea, the same stuff I garnered from the animated GIF they had a few weeks ago.

One new thing is that the city is considering adding new tracks under Canal instead of Clinton. Adding intercity or regional trains under Canal with CTA under Clinton may be cheaper than the crazy 4-level WLTC concept under Clinton. It could greatly simplify junctions and underground clearance issues. Plus, it would divorce the Clinton Street Subway from the expansion of Union Station, allowing them to be funded separately.


If you look closely, both alignments include four tracks. Clinton has them in a stacked arrangement, while Canal has them on the same level.
http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/851/westloop.jpg

What about Blue Line? Will they ever more rail service extension?

Blue Line Tiger III Grant
 

Looks like the Blue Line scored a little money for 3 mile of track and a bike facility..

http://www.rtands.com/newsflash/chic...rant-4827.html.

^^ I'm confused. That track is not a slow zone, according to CTA's own maps. From personal experience, I know there is a southbound slow zone around California. But how can it possibly cost $20 million to replace only 1600' of track?

CTA did rebuild all the track in the Dearborn Subway and between O'Hare and Addison.

^ The report quoted says '3.6 miles' of track.

Also, not all 20 million will go to the blue line. Some is also going to the bike sharing program.

Yeah, but the slow zone map I linked to (the most recent one at the top) only shows 1600' of slow zones.

^ Maybe they are trying to prevent future slow zones?

Emanuel, Quinn hope bicycles fill the missing link in mass transit


December 16, 2011

By Jon Hilkevitch

Read More: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,3771067.story




Gov. Pat Quinn, from left, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gather Thursday at the Logan Square CTA station to announce a $20 million federal grant for Blue Line repairs and a bicycle-sharing program. (José M. Osorio, Chicago Tribune / December 15, 2011)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/...2/66804248.jpg

Could also be they knew they were going to get it and so already did the work and will just replace the money they used.

But more likely it's that the current condition is such that they can keep it out of slow zone status, but it takes more and more work to do so, so replacing track or whatever it is they're doing provides a more permanent solution.

Hopefully they can use the recycled-plastic ties and modern tie clips to give the track a longer lifespan than the previous generation of track.

I just have a fundamental issue with CTA using one-time grants to pay for periodic maintenance. What's gonna happen when we get conservatives in Washington (it's guaranteed to happen eventually) and the well dries up? We're still gonna need to find those maintenance funds somewhere.

Will Rahm Emanuel Show America What BRT Can Do?


December 19, 2011

By Ben Schulman

Read More: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/12/19...at-brt-can-do/




With Mayor Rahm Emanuel signaling a commitment to high-performance bus rapid transit, the Chicago-based nonprofit Metropolitan Planning Council envisions a 95-mile BRT network that would carry an additional 71,000 daily riders.

http://dc.streetsblog.org/wp-content...12/MPC_BRT.jpg