Lake Shore Drive bus lanes: Blame Rio?

August 10, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com
Four years ago, Mayor Daley opened the door to dedicated bus lanes on Lake Shore Drive to give 62,000 daily riders speedier, more dependable service.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politic...-bus10.article

Eh?
 

Somebody tell me what's happening in CHicago.

Okay, I get it--there's a capital budget and operational budget for transit. Both fund different things, and they're not supposed to be mixed.

So you can build a superstation downtown, or a new L stop, buy new buses, or build a new CTA headquarters, all while slashing services.

I know, it's weird but that's how it goes. But is that basically it? Is it not possible to plan the use of funds more effectively, where they're needed?

Is there any future to this system at all or will it continue to be a victim to the WEIRDNESS that characterizes how it's supposed to get funded?

Some capital funds are discretionary, for example in order to reduce the severity of the fare increases and service cuts required this year, CTA will move about $60 million from the capital budget to cover operations.
Obviously, $60 million is alot of money and will have repurcussions. If you continually move your discretionary capital to operating, eventually your assets will deteriorate to the point where it's pointless, since you won't have anything to run the service with anyway.

Transit Funding's Future Remains An Unknown

Bob Roberts Reporting

CHICAGO (WBBM) - Now that the Illinois House has finished dealing with the state's budget, it is about to turn its attention to Chicago-area mass transit.

WBBM’s Bob Roberts has the story.

But its chief sponsor was unable to say how quickly legislators could act upon the bill, or if it would become bogged down by amendments not crucial to its passage.

The chief sponsor of the bill that would provide regional transit with new funding streams filed a comprehensive 200- page amendment Thursday night that includes far more than the controversial sales and title transfer taxes intended to provide more than $400 million a year in new funding.

The chair of the Illinois House Mass Transit Committee, State Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston) said it also provides a comprehensive solution to the imminent collapse of the CTA pension fund, codifying terms of the five-year tentative labor agreement CTA reached with its unions last month, and attaches funding for downstate transit systems in an attempt to attract the numbers needed for supermajority approval and an expected veto override.


Link, WBBM Chicago

Her website is juliehamos.org, and I encourage everyone who uses the CTA and cares about the future of this city and its mass transit (they are related) to call her office and voice their support of what she is trying to accomplish. Also, everyone should go to transitchicago.com and click on the icon to save mass transit in Chicago. Of course, everyone should email and phone their state Representative and Senator, as well as Governor Blagojevich’s office.

Hey guys what is the closest Metra station to Midway??

There's nothing too convenient. If you had to use Metra you could probably take the BNSF line to Cicero then get on a Cicero bus (#54) to go south a few miles to the airport, but its probably much easier to just get on the CTA Orange Line downtown....it's about 20 minutes downtown to the airport, and the station connects to the terminal.

^Yeah, the Orange Line isn't getting shut down anytime soon.

Thanks GUYS!!!!

Came into town this weekend for a Sox-Mariners game. We parked at Cumberland and took the Blue line in. Wow, I have to say those slow zones suck.... and they shut it down in between Western and Jackson, had to transfer to shuttle bus. That was quite an experience. I am glad they are finally doing something about the slow zones, but, Wow! it took an hour and fifty minutes to get from Comiskey back to Cumberland via red/blue lines/shuttlebus. CTA made it easy for myself & friends(all transit rookies) and it was still dirt cheap. $2 train ride, free shuttle service, and $2 to park all day (11 hours) at the Cumberland deck... Cant beat that!

^ I hate to quote myself, but I want to address a particular excerpt from this article:

In 1998, the Chicago Department of Transportation studied dedicated bus lanes on Lake Shore Drive, only to drop the idea for two reasons: Logistics made it difficult and the volume of passengers using CTA express buses did not, at that time, justify the idea.
Since then, ridership has increased to 77,000 a day -- so much that CDOT is about to launch another feasibility study.

^ So ridership of the CTA express buses has risen by 15,000 riders/day over the past 9 years. The question is, will they consider the possibility that with a dedicated ROW bus service on LSD, ridership may rise considerably?

For example, I tend to shy away from buses (in fact I virtually refuse to ride them unless it's a last resort--and I'm a big transit advocate!) simply because they chug along in seas of traffic which 1) slow them down and 2) make their arrivals at bus stops very unreliable. But I could imagine that if there were prospects of bus-only lanes taking me halfway across town, with no traffic to deal with, that would REALLY change my transportation habits.

In fact, and pardon me if I"m making too many assumptions here, but a bus-only lane on LSD seems almost to be similar to the lakefront light-rail that everybody is touting, at least logistically. And I imagine that it's much cheaper to implement.

Just a thought..

^ depends on the exact form it took, in re: capital investment. For example dedicated on-ramps/off-ramps etc., or whether or not its reverse running (presumably it would run on the inner lanes of LSD). If the bus lanes are in the far left and running the same direction as traffic, the additional traffic tie ups caused by the lane reductions and the buses trying to get across so many lanes would probably negate any travel time savings.

That said, of course BRT capital costs are less than rail, and in certain corridors of Chicago should have been considered in lieu of rehabbing rail lines, but the lake shore corridors, e.g. the densest, are exactly the ones that do absolutely need rail service. Transit has never quite been Daley's forte, however...

^ Wouldn't it make sense to simply have the right-most lane headed south and the left-most lane headed north as the dedicated BRT lanes? That would seem to minimize any interference from traffic. Plus, how do you figure that taking a turn or changing lanes at the beginning/end of the journey would negate the entire benefit of not dealing with any traffic throughout the trip?

I defer to your expertise, because you are basically our inhouse Chicago transit expert, but while the lakefront surely needs rail service, don't you think that a good BRT system could go a long way towards at least supplementing it?

^ It would certainly go a long way toward giving the pols an excuse not to implement rail!!

I think if they want to implement more frequent rail service on the south lake shore, they should just convert the Metra Electric Line to rapid transit rather than commuter rail. It already has most of the infrastructure in place for that.

That would mean they'd have rapid transit in University Park... that would just be weird.

What I would do is convert two of the tracks to rapid transit, and let Metra Electric continue operating. ME would then serve only suburban communities, with the exception of a transfer station at 53rd. All the local, urban stops would be handled by the rapid transit.

The ex-IC main line would then be 2 tracks rapid transit, 2 tracks ME/South Shore, and 2 tracks freight/Amtrak.

Gray line proposal
 

There's a guy living on the southside of Chicago who has kinda made it his life's work to promote what you suggested. He's got a website for his Gray line proposal (http://www.grayline.20m.com/). His name is Mike Payne, he's just a regular dude (not a transit professional), but he's come up with a fairly detailed analysis why this is a win-win proposal for both Metra and the CTA.

CTA - No funding Write you Legislators!!!!!!!
 

Subject: SHAME ON YOU for taking a raise and not fixing MASS TRANSIT!

To: Greg@GregHarris.org, ronen@senatedem.state.il.us

I don't want to hear any excuses. That would have been acceptable if I would have heard you fighting on the floor of your chambers and seen you in the media raging war to bring a solution to our mass transit situtation in the Chicagoland area.

You should have been kicking and screeming to get the cameras on you so you could tell the state to fix this huge issue. But hell...what do you care....you got to fly to Springfield and am sure we picked up the cost of that along with the parking and transportation to the airport. How many times did you take CTA to O'Hare or Midway on your trips to Springfield?

I expected a fight from Chicago. I expected a fight from my two representatives to correct this situation. I know I am going to do all I can to let people know that you both are helpless in Springfield and need to be replaced.

Wil Snodgrass

Keep sending these emails, folks! Encourage your friends to do the same if they feel strongly about better transit.

I personally have sent 3 to various people in IL government, including the Governor.

Greg Harris - Impressive Turn around time on my email!
 

Here is Mr. Harris' turn around. Note that the 3rd link is to the actual bill and it appears to have been extended until August 17th. Write your legislators people.

I wrote back asking what we could do.


Greg Harris" <greg@gregharris.org> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: wilbsnodgrassiii@yahoo.com
Subject: transit advocacy

I just read your email about my lack of advocacy on CTA and other
transit issues. That is just not true. I have participated in several news
conferences emphasizing the importance of addressing the needs of the
CTA and other agencies. The Chicago TV stations did not cover
them....but myself and other legislators have this issue on the top of our
agenda. Here are a few clips from these events:

From the mass transit organization news bulletins:
http://www.nationalcorridors.org/df2....shtml#Transit

From the Chicago Tribune:
http://www.juliehamos.org/transit/news/05-30-07.asp

And I am a sponsor the RTA/CTA/Metra/Pace rescue package, Senate Bill
572:

http://ilga.gov/legislation/billstat...1&SessionID=51

I continue to work with Rep. Julie Hamos, the Chair of the House
Transit Committee on this issue. I hope this clarifies my position.

IL - District Rep locator
 

focus your efforts on senate bill 572. the above budget does not mean that there will be no money for the cta, though it would have been nice to find 400 million goddam dollars in a $59 billion budget.

write the governor. he backed down on his promise to veto pay increases for government workers including the legislature, tell him that if we can find money for a few hundred select people, we need the money for the 2 million people who take the rta (1.5 of which are on the cta) every weekday.

Link to Below Text, Lake County News-Sun

Senate Bill 572 was crafted in a lengthy bipartisan effort to address public transportation funding shortfalls and the need to finance congestion-easing road improvements in the collar counties.

Introduced by state Rep. Julie Hamos, D-Evanston, and co-sponsored by state Rep. Sid Mathias, R-Buffalo Grove, and Kathy Ryg, D-Vernon Hills, the bill was not passed prior to last week's budget adoption, but officials still hope it will be approved this year.

Senate Bill 572 would provide long-term revenue for public transportation and significant road improvement projects to address traffic congestion.

write julie hamos in support, write madigan to support it, write tom cross, senate republican leader to support it (remember to write top-ranking republicans, they will be needed), and write governor blagojevich, no matter what you think of him.

I don't see it necessary at all. Its not as if the bus takes a long time on LSD to begin with. However, there needs to be some way to put a few bus lanes on Michigan. If you're trying to get to the Loop from say, Foster and Sheridan, it takes 10 minutes on the drive, but 15 minutes to just get to Michigan and Wacker from the Michigan ave exit.

Agreed, LSD usually flows smoothly. Basically there are a few key bottleneck points that should be addressed that don't require a huge bus lane investment. Michigan Ave. is one. The exit to Belmont from LSD NB is another biggie. Foster could also use some work. Otherwise, nothing too big.

Regardless, it's nice to finally see Daley telling CDOT to be mindful and thoughtful of transit concerns.

^ Yeah, while he sits mum on service cuts and fare increases

He has been vocal about the CTA and schools being the most important issues the state had to deal with this year, but that was back in May last I heard about it (i.e. when the state should have been dealing with it).

Though, I am always tempted to snark about Daley's obsession with Chicago being an eco/green-friendly city when for most of his tenure City Hall has showed relatively little interest in promoting and improving public transit, an obvious and much more effective way of addressing green concerns (improving air quality, reducing oil consumption, reducing sprawl, efficient land use etc) as opposed to a few square feet of green roof and some marked bike lanes on Elston Ave.

^ You've gotta wonder if this is simply a generational bias, ie a flaw of his generation that simply turned its back on transit and embraced the auto, and something that he's simply not willing to understand. I'm guessing that Daley has had plenty of 'education' to the contrary from his numerous visits to other cities with better transit system, so in that sense I'm really not sure what gives.

Whatever..

While it is telling that he doesn't seem to ever personally use transit, I think the mindset that's a problem is the idea that transit funding comes from other levels of government, and isn't something within his control. Capital, and until recently, operating money came from Washington thanks to Lipinski and other well-connected congressmen. And the rest came from Springfield. I don't think he wants anyone to discover--much less discuss--the paltry $3 million the city gives to CTA annually. And I don't think he wants anyone to start thinking of TIF as a way to finance transit.

^^^
So the City is only spending $3,000,000 on the State Street Subway station? Wow that is a great deal we are getting!

True?
 

The city only spends 3M? If this is true I have little sympathy for them not getting much from the state. I think it is fair the whole state helps pay but not just pays for it.

^ I think the state should pay for it. Chicago IS Illinois. Where do you think all that tax revenue comes from?

A well-oiled, well-running Chicago is critical to the state, end of story. Otherwise, Illinois is just another Iowa.

The suburbs have an enormous job base and are certainly economically independent, but they are part of the 'Chicago Metro' which I view as one large unit that simply should not be tampered with by the powers-that-be who depend on such tax revenue to run the whole Prarie State.

And lets not forget the hundreds of thousands of well-paid suburban professionals who use Metra every day

RTA (CTA/Metra/Pace) actually get close to nothing from the State budget for operations, rather the state simply authorizes the sales tax (which is only collected in Cook (1%) and the collar counties (.25%) to be directed to the RTA. CTA is only funded out of the portion from Cook County. So people downstate aren't subsidizing CTA a damn bit. Also, the city does pay about $20 million per year for the Chicago police transit detail, as well as the few dozen million they've been spending lately on capital improvements in the downtown subway stops. So it's not like they don't contribute any money, though one can make the argument that its relatively small compared to many other major systems.

The only time state money comes into play is on the large capital spending side, where of course the Chicago region subsidizes downstate (and in a broader sense, Illinois and most other blue states subsidize the sparsely-populated red states in the hinterland)

ah ha.
 

Viva thanks for clearing that up, I was having trouble grasping how so little could have come from the populace of Chicago.

To anyone who knows a lot about how everything is funded, do you have any plans that you know or thought of that would be an effective way to fund the RTA and the CTA? I'm very interested in this issue, and as a Metra user, a little concerned..
Thanks

I believe state income tax is the fairest tax and most related to ability to pay and to the employment that relies on good public transportation and urban density. The problem is, I doubt that the state constitution allows the income tax to be different for Chicago, Cook County, and Downstate in the same way that sales taxes can vary. Locally collected income taxes are not nearly as efficient, and I think are forbidden by the current constitution.

Regular sales taxes are regressive and unrelated to transit (they're largely from car dealers and big box stores, which benefit little from transit). Gas taxes appeal to carhaters because they have a strong element of "punishing the sinner." But a closer look shows that they are terribly regressive and unfair to blue-collar workers who don't have the luxury of working in convenient office buildings near the train terminals.

The Georgists like to posit the single land tax as the answer to all questions, but I think their view of what creates land value (transportation access) is hopelessly one-dimensional and mired in the 19th century. Land value is today determined far more by proximity to rich people than proximity to transportation, which is fairly ubiquitous in the automobile age.

Here's two of those sparsely-populated "red states" us "blue state" folk are supporten...http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/imag...s/rolleyes.gif

http://www.saddlemt.com/Florida%20St...e%20Magnet.jpg

Population: 18,000,000

http://www.saddlemt.com/Pennsylvania...e%20Magnet.jpg

Population: 12,500,000

Rant:
The whole red state/blue state identity thing is one of the more dishonorable developments in American political history and I don't think most of the public who loves to label entire states as backward, right wing, intolerant, xenophobic or whatever don't realize the notion they are putting forth: that of a broken, selfish and polarized country.

pennsylvania went blue the last two elections. also, cal, ny and il, 3 of the 5 most populous states went blue in the last two elections. add pa, and it is 4 of the top 6 most populous states. what is your argument, and do you really want to compare per capita incomes of blue states to red states??

have at it, friend.

edit for help, friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Househo...ncome_by_state

have you ever really travelled the u.s.?? really?? the difference is evident the moment you cross over to kentucky or missouri. once you get to alabama, where my liberal mother is from, but where her neo-con family and "spiritual cousins" live, the more conspicuous the difference. hell, just spot the difference on the california and nevada sides of tahoe.

sorry to harp on an off-topic post, but the ignorance of people like busy bee (not even bothering to double-check that pa went blue in '00 and '04 -- and, uh hum, fla in '00, too, natch) pisses me right off, mate, to quote mike skinner.

un-united country?? sorry, but your post is so silly i have to come back to that line. what makes this country great is that it is and always will be an "un-united" country.

anyways, off to the off-topic forum, dittohead.

Polarized is a word that more accurately describes my sentiment. It really was just a reactionary post. At this point I hope someone will just move or delete it so it won't get picked apart by people like yourself.http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/images/smilies/tup.gif

^ Busy Bee,

In fairness, my post did specifically mention the Red States in the hinterland.....implying the likes of Wyoming, Nevada, Montana, Alaska, etc. Texas and Florida would generally be excluded from this generalization. But I don't think a single blue state gets consistently substantially more transportation money than it pays in, most of them are donor states (I'll have to find the exact stats to be sure though).

Iowa (a swing state) also falls under the category of being subsidized by the rest of us, though they still swing because both Democrats and Republicans generally fall all over eachother to see who can propose the biggest farm subsidy (the recent one that just passed was about $40 billion

My broader point is that Reds/Republicans are often just fine and dandy with subsidization, which they often rail against, as long as it is them or their interests being subsidized; this is relevent to the local discussion because of DuPage county, who gets much transit service provided than they pay to RTA in sales taxes, and subsequently demand that the suburbs get over 50% of any additional transit operating funds despite CTA providing 80% of the transit rides in the region.

Could the RTA ever agree to a funding formula that allocated $3.00 per boarding plus $0.15 per passenger-mile (or whatever)? The idea would be to get past the ceaseless feuding over more rides vs. longer rides and instead feud about where to get the money in the first place.

Metra officials prod lawmakers
 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...i_tab01_layout
More in link

I was in Chicago last week. Metra seems to work fine, but the CTA's L system is in need of major repairs. What's with all the slow zones?

See this article from January: Crain's Investigates: What's wrong with the CTA

Are they still spending "$130 million building a super-station under the Block 37 development on State Street that would anchor express service to O'Hare." Meanwhile the Blue Line has 6 mph slow zones?

Or the "Brown Line expansion, which has grown in cost from the $298 million estimated by the CTA in 1998 to $530 million today — not including $250 million needed to upgrade signals, structural steel and electrical substations."

And the "$37-million reconstruction of the Paulina connector" for the Pink line?

Track, signals, and other infrastructure is being neglected while flashy expansions and capital projects are going forward? What's up with that?

Edit: Here is a link to the slow zones map, which is updated regularly:
http://www.transitchicago.com/news/w...ticleid=107056

The brown line was in danger of being shut down if fed funding was denied for this renovation. Thanks to the much maligned former guv Ryan, state money matched the Fed and its a go. Tons of progress has been made on the CTA in the last 20 years. much more to go though. Blue Line and Red Line North are next on the upgrade list.

Cheat,
CTA finally announced a plan to eliminate slow zones; of course at current they are most prominent because they are on the lines with the highest ridership (Blue, Red, and Brown), while those with lesser ridership are all in fantastic shape (Pink, Orange, Green). Basically, the latter lines would have been shut down completely if they hadnt been completely rebuilt over the last 15 years. Given that the new president was able to rearrange the capital budget in just a few months to accelerate the critical track repairs to the Red and Blue lines, there's definitely some concern that the previous CTA President was holding the track repairs out as a bargaining chip for more funding (<--speculation)

Anyway, Red Line slow zones are supposed to be substantially eliminated by Dec. 2007; Blue Line will be done by Sep 2007 in the subway, the portion in the expressway median will take at least a year because the work has to be contracted out (it's several thousand ties that have to be replaced, but the good news is that the portion between Addison and O'hare will be rebuilt to 70mph standard, i.e. what it was originally designed for, which should ultimately shave a couple more minutes off the running time). The Blue Line has been atrocious for about a year (~65 minutes travel time to O'hare when it's supposed to be about 40-45)....the Red slow zones have been annoying but overall the line has still been usable, at least (slow zones have added about 5 minutes to the end-to-end running time, Howard to Lake is presently about 40-42 minutes and should be around 35).

The downtown express station.....much-maligned, but the city forced CTA's hand on the project, because the development there was going forward and it represented the only opportunity in any of our lifetimes to build the connecting tunnels and an express station for service to both airports. Of course that $130mn could have gone a long way towards bus and railcar replacement, and track renewal....but in ~10-20 years when Chicago has high-speed airport express service to 2 major airports, will people remember the decision with fondness or disgust?

^ Will Chicago ever have this?

Inquiring minds want to know! :cool:

One thing that gets me is if Daley ever plans to use this renewed Central Area TIF to build a transit line through River North/Streeterville as he and others keep mentioning

I think yes, but to what degree is definitely still up in the air. The operational decisionmakers are definitely hush about what the near term plan is (I doubt there is one, really). But a nonstop service will of course be feasible pretty quickly; with good scheduling (coordination of blue line, red line, orange line, and airport trains and re-imposition of rush hour skip-stop at least on the Blue, and assuming all slow zones are eliminated and tracks upgraded to 70mph where appropriate), nonstop service via the normal 2 track blue line could reduce travel time by perhaps 4-6 minutes. Combine this with baggage tagging and boarding pass printing at a downtown terminal and moderately spruced up rail cars, then there is a market for a premium fare for the nonstop airport trains. The best case is that someone comes up with $1-2 billion for a full express operation, making most of the Blue Line into a 4-track line and enabling express trains to make the trip in 25-28 minutes, and building the new Midway express terminal over Cicero to integrate directly with the terminal. Perhaps the express trackage from Jefferson Park to Rosemont could be included in the long rage New Start of extending the Brown Line west along Lawrence to link up with Blue, and the modifications at the O'hare station could be rolled into the O'hare Modernization Project...

Short answer is yes, this is still happening, though right now, signs seem to point to it being a BRT line, at least at first :-/
The Mayor has recently over the past year or so become a very big fan of BRT after his experiences in various Latin American countries. He's even hinted publicly that in some cases he feels it may have been more cost efficient for both capital and operationas to replace the old rotting L lines with BRT instead of spending twice as much on rebuilding the L (might have been a useful insight around, say, 1993, Rich...) At least let's hope that provides some momentum to expand the bus signal priority program to more key arterials, enforce parking/traffic regulations, and maybe some further investment in bus facilities (e.g. many LED shelter signs to tie into the CTA Bus Tracker system)

^ To Daley's credit (and you would know this better than I, so I'll defer to you on this), didn't he discuss eliminating the L system in the early 90's for this very reason?

I say 'credit', but in reality I personally prefer trains over BRT and I'm glad Chicago chose rebuild them instead of tearing them down

Interesting video recently posted on the Metra website called "Metra Connects" that describes all of their 'new starts' projects. It's very professionally done, and touts the benefits of transit to the entire Chicago region. It would be nice to see the CTA make a video like this:

http://metraconnects.metrarail.com/

The Blue Line express plan was actually Kruesi's last gasp attempt to keep this idea alive, and also in the hands of the CTA. The best route for an express train would incorporate existing frieght and Metra lines. One good route to O'Hare is along the Metra UP-NW line to the MD-N line - check it out on Google Earth or something. You basically need a tunnel connecting the downtown station to the Ogilvy Station and then a connector from just after Gadstone Station to O'Hare (could be elevated over the Blue Line in the median). The majority of the rail would be along an existing 3 track ROW that has much wider turns than the Blue Line. Following the MD-N line could work as well.

Compare that to expanding the Blue line to 4 tracks where you'd need to:

• Expand the tunnels between Grand-Division and Logan-Belmont to 4 tracks
• Build a connector from the Blue Line after Grand to the new station
• Buy and tear down a lot of buildings through Wicker Park and Logan Square (which makes the project DOA)
• Either tear up the Kennedy or build above it for at least twice as far as the NW Metra plan

The Metra rails also have far fewer turns and are all at grade (no dropping in and out of tunnels). You could run a train at close to 100 MPH for much of the run.

From what I understand this was the original plan, but Metra wasn't interested and Kruesi wanted to do it.

Another ROW (that has been abandoned) is the old Short line rail where Madigan wants to put a tollway - it is perfect for an O'Hare - Midway connector.

Another option would be to use the NCS Metra Line, you would just need to connect from the existing O'Hare transfer station directly to the airport.

It seems kind of crazy to me to build a lot tunnels and tear up a bunch of neighborhoods when there are so many existing freight lines that connect O'Hare to downtown.

The current plan would only add express tracks to the Blue Line between Addison and O'Hare. From there to downtown, it would either use existing tracks, or use UP-NW tracks.