In the 90s they ripped out over a mile of the green line in Woodlawn with the bizarre idea that it would help the area's development. It actually killed a lot of the ridership on the line as a whole because it made transfers much more difficult. As anyone who's been around there can see, it's been less than a success.

Something that also makes a big difference in ridership is that the southern portion of the red line and both outer parts of the blue line were rebuilt in highway medians in the 50s and 60s, putting them in a kind of dead zone when it comes to transit oriented development.

I've been thinking recently of ways these stations could be retrofitted a bit to make them more appealing to pedestrians. Platform screen doors could block out a lot of the wind and noise that make them so uncomfortable, as well as allow them to be heated in the winter. If some kind of enclosed hallways could be built that would allow people to walk to the stations without feeling that they're on top of a busy highways overpass that might help too.

These seem like reasonably cost effective solutions that could bring in more riders and propel some nearby development. On the blue line at least, many of those stations are more than due for an overhaul.

^^^Wholeheartedly agree about the highway median L stops......not a solution to spur local transit use it seems....more a foreboding excercise in how not to make a system usable

mid 1970's video ride on the CTA Redline from North/Clybourn to Howard. I am wondering why after Belmont the Redline train goes to the outside track where the Purple Line Express of today is.
• Video Link

Brown Line Loop to Paulina
• Video Link

Purple Line Evanston to Wilson and what! A CTA train faster than Metra!
• Video Link

Polk to Jefferson Park Blue Line. Trains were only two cars long, wow. But on all the videos those trains sure seemed to move along well
• Video Link

Part 1:
From Sox/35th Redline towards the Loop and to Ashland. it doesn't go underground?? It stays elevated much like I think the Orange Line does when approaching the Loop today. the train loops through the Loop and after Clark/Lake goes directly west where the Green Line does today.
• Video Link

Part 2:
Ashland to Harlem/Lake and back to downtown.
• Video Link

95th st to downtown. Again different route than today it appears
• Video Link

Jackson Park/63rd st to the Loop. This line no linger exists I assume
• Video Link

Before 1993, the Green Line ran Oak Park-95th and the Red Line ran Howard-63rd/Jackson Park. They switched in 1993 after a short subway connector was built between Cermak/Chinatown and Roosevelt.

An Open Letter to Gabe Klein (soon-to-be former director of the DC Department of Transportation)

Elevating Chicago
Ted Rosenbaum on 12.08.10 at 9:59 PM

Thanks for posting these.

Addison used to be a side-platform station before being rebuilt as an island platform int he 1990s --- so North-South B trains would switch the outside tracks to serve Addison, then switch back to the inner tracks. This was the result of how the Northwestern Elevated was first built and operated (inner express tracks, outer local tracks), and Addison was a "local" stop.

Looks like there was also some track or station work farther up the North Main when the video was shot, too.

edit >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Great idea courting Gabe Klein for the CDOT or CTA - he's worked wonders in DC. He's a real visionary in trasnport and thoroughly understands urbanism - something that I'm not sure can be said about any local transport agency. He's really on par with leadership you'd find in progressive European cities and is exactly who I'd like to see at the helm in Chicago.

I agree. I don't blame the Bloomingdale Trail group, but I also think they're wrong and that the embankment there shouldn't be turned into a park.

If I were king of the world (or Chicago transit anyway), what I'd propose is creating a McCormick Place-Streeterville subway that then followed Clark to Armitage, then west and jogging back south to meet the Bloomingdale embankment. If built in conjunction with the proposed Circle Line subway near Ashland, it would greatly enhance transportation between Humbolt Park and Lincoln Park and everything in between.

Below is a map where the new yellowish markings are how I'd use the Bloomingdale ROW. The Orange Markings are other officially proposed (or at least mentioned in official documents) extensions or lines.

Map by CTA. Edits by myself.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5248/...7421e0c93e.jpg

Well, sure you can take the public transportation. It just seems to me that you can still choose to take whether or not there's a place to park. (For instance, you might take the Red Line to your office for work, but then take your car to go grocery shopping or visit your friend in Lawndale, before picking up your grandmother at the nursing home to take her to her salon appointment or something.)
It you don't have a place to park your car, you're effectively forced to take public transportation, whether it suits your particular needs at the time or not.

Except the unused part ends at Pacific Junction (1800N/3800W). West of there it's an active Metra line.

I actually intended to end the line sooner, but accidentally drew it too far.

Nonetheless, another way to use that would be to electrify that Metra Line and run the Metra Electric lines north through a subway to Streeterville and along the same alignment. Could be a northern extension of Mike Payne's Gray Line proposal.

I've thought of that as well. It would be nice to see them put up some windbreaker panels opposite that of the platforms in order to break up the loud noise winds that invade the platforms. The only downside of that I presume is the difficulty in keeping the panels clean of the accumulated exhaust. Also in the summer the winds help keep the platforms a bit cooler and if you blocked the outside air they could become sweltering in the summer. It would be a fair trade off though I think.

I like it....just wondering the orange dotted line are official proposals....I see the circle line dots and the ford city dots and mid-city dot......what are those orange dots just west of current orange line that look like they would be traveling n-s through pilsen or so? Have not heard of that.


My one criticism is I just have a fantasy of essentially a city long subway at Western running from asbury all the way south to at least 63rd where it would tie in with a green line extension or perhaps even have that tie in and continue it south to loop into the the redline extension to 130th

That's the Clinton Street subway, which is part of some iterations of the West Loop Transportation Center.

Ok. Not sure how that's a criticism, though. :-)

Point taken....any educated guess as to how much your plan would cost to implemented....would it be primarily subway or above grade?

I have never been able to find an estimate of how much a Western subway would cost?

You could design a system of louvers that would open in the summer and close in the winter. The mechanisms, and the glass itself, would be various forms of durable plastic to avoid rusting from the salt mist and moisture in the expressway.

Alternately, you could build a glass partition down the middle of the platform (glass for security reasons). Passengers would just stand on the leeward side of the wall from the wind until the train comes, at which point they could go through one of several portals in the wall. Next-train signs would eliminate the need to peer down the tracks.

I'm used to Cumberland, where most people wait in the stationhouse (but inside the faregates) during poor weather, and when they see the train approaching, they head down the stairs/escalator to the platform. The transparency of those stationhouses leaves that open as a possibility, unlike more closed-off stations on the elevated lines or in the subways.

I don't know. Based on costs from other projects in Chicago and other cities, here are some costs that are probably at least reasonable starting points:

Clinton Street Subway: from Division to 18th Street
Approximately 3.5 miles of subway: $1.4 billion
Maybe 5 individual stations: $500 million
One long platform between Ogilvie and Union stations: $200 million
1 1/2 complex integrations with Blue Line: $300 million
TOTAL: $2.4 billion

Circle Line: Elevated connection to Orange, Subway to Red
Approximately 1.5 miles elevated (to Orange): $150 million
1 new elevated station constructed with structure: $25 million
Approximate 3 miles subway (to Red): $1.2 billion
Maybe 4 individual subway stations: $400 million
1 complex integration with Red Line: $200 million
TOTAL: $1.975 billion

Brown Line to Blue Line
Approximately 1.8 (Montrose) - 2.2 (Lawrence) miles subway: $720 million to $880 million
OR 2 miles elevated (alley just south of Lawrence): $200 million
Maybe 2 individual subway stations: $200 million
OR 2 elevated stations: $50 million
1 complex integration with Blue Line: $200 million
OR complex elevated integration: $100 million
TOTAL: $350 million to $1.28 billion

Mid-City Transitway (along Cicero)
Approximately 11.5 miles elevated/existing embankment mix: $1.1 billion
Maybe 18 elevated stations: $450 million
1 complex integration with Blue Line: $200 million
TOTAL: $1.75 billion

Bloomingdale/Streeterville/McCormick
Approximately 3.8 miles rehab embankment (Bloomingdale) + extension: $380 million
Maybe 8 embankment/elevated stations: $200 million
Approximately 5.5 miles subway: $2.2 billion
Maybe 12 subway stations: $1.2 billion
Highrise proximity/nimby extra cost: $500 million
2.5 miles at-grade: $125 million
Metra conflicts engineering fixes: $150 million
Maybe 4 at-grade/below-grade stations: $160 million
TOTAL: $4.915 billion

ALL PROJECTS HIGHEST TOTAL:
$12.32 billion

Putting this into perspective, this is less than the cost of New York's Second Ave Subway, and less than Boston's Big Dig, and about three times what LA will spend on one single extension of the Wilshire subway from downtown to UCLA. It's also less than the cost of expanding O'Hare.

I've never seen a serious consideration of a subway under Western, probably mostly because most of Western is not dense enough to even come close to supporting the cost structures of subway work.

Way too much when you could just build elevated tracks a few blocks to the east along Ashland/Ravenswood which already has right of way for most of its length. The line I envision would beging at Howard and then jump over a block or two onto the Ravenswood Metra tracks. Follow along those with plentiful stops in Andersonville and Ravenswood. Then when you get to Lawrence, it skips over a half block or so and shares the tracks with the Brown line N/S segment allowing ample transfer stops (much like Fullerton and Belmont stops). After that it merges back up with Metra until you hit the northbranch where it would go subway to meet up with the Blue Line Divison stop. Further south it could either remain subway or reemerge near United Center and join up with the Pink Line N/S tracks. After the Pink Line turns West it would continue south and terminate after crossing the canal at the Orange Line Ashland Station. Now that would be a relatively cheap and extremely effective new line. So many awesome, undeserved, extremely dense neighborhoods would have greatly enhanced service and you would hardly have to build any new ROW.

Additionally, if you really really want a line further west a second new N/S line could be built along the already existent North Branch of the river. This would be a simple ROW for a brand new line and would require very little emminant domain. In fact one could feasibly run the tracks low enough near the river that all the existing bridges would be overpasses and the noise/unsightliness of an elevated structure would be eliminated in favor of an all "ground level" set of tracks. Such a line could potentially begin at purple line terminus in Wilmette and share a transfer with the Yellow Line at McCormick and Howard and the Brown Line at Francisco. This would serve parts of the city that are currently transit deserts. Might get some pushback from park advocates, but the river itself is fenced of from the parks along it for the vast majority of its length because its a hazardous, polluted, channel that no one really wants to get near.

Or, as long as we're dreaming here, we could do like the Germans....

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2764/...6628af19_z.jpg
Wuppertal Schwebebahn, photo mine

:slob: :slob: :slob:

So sexy!!! I am going to build that in Chicago once I make my first billion... :D

I forgot to mention that all that new track would require additional rolling stock. If we treat the new track miles as route miles, proportionally we'd need at least 315 more rail cars to support added service. That probably means a couple more rail yards - I have no idea what those cost.

The rail cars themselves would cost about $470 million based on the costs of the new 5000-Series cars on order.

After all that, there would of course be the additional operating costs. Even assuming that the costs of new service would be partially offset by reductions in some bus service and maybe some balancing away from existing lines (for example, the Clinton Subway may generate new ridership, but it would also at least partly take some ridership from the existing Brown, Purple and Red Lines), we'd still be talking about increasing the number of stations by 1/3. The cost of operating a station doesn't change much with demand, so that would pretty much be an instant 30-35% increase in stations-related expenses. The full cost of track maintenence would take years, maybe even a decade to be fully realized, but as the track aged it would add to the costs of maintenance. It's about a 30% increase in track amounts, so track maintenance costs would increase proportionally. And then there's the cost of the train operators.

Labor takes up about 70% of the CTA buget. The CTA is already robbing from the infrastructure budget to meet operating needs. Only if the economy stages a fairly robust recovery over the next few years would it be able to even consider adding more than small amounts of service.

One thing does support this sort of plan, though - the ratio of CTA rail to CTA bus ridership has changed fairly dramatically recently. For a long time, rail ridership was about 1/2 of bus ridership. For the past two years, however, the ratio is closer to rail being 2/3 of bus ridership.

Based on the 2011 budget proposal, adding the tracks I estimated for in my first post would result in an increase in operating expense minimally:

Security: +$10 million
Power: +$10 million
Scheduled Transit Operations positions: +333 positions
STO labor costs: +$36 million
Non-STO labor costs: +$52 million (extrapolated from current ratios)
Material: +$10 million
TOTAL: approximately $118 million in additional operating expenses

IF (a big if) ridership and fare revenue increased at a proportion of new stations, 45 new is 31.25% added to the existing 144 stations, then rail ridership/revenue would increase by 31.25%. If that happened, and rail started from a base of 40% of all ridership, then ridership/revenues would increase by 12.5%. That would mean about $65.4 million in additional fare revenue. Advertising revenue would also go up some, probably only at the same ratio, though, so maybe an extra $2 million, tops. So that means all that extra track work would yield about $67.4 million in extra revenue. With increased costs of $118 million, leaving a shortfall of $50.6 million annually.

Now, that's well within the mandated farebox recovery ratio, which is good - that means that it would overall improve the efficiency of the agency. It also doesn't include any of the potential bus savings, although I think that would likely be at most about $20 million a year in savings, at most. Either way, you're left with a structural deficit of several percent of the budget that would need to be paid for somehow.

The CTA is estimating that a "normal economy" would yield nearly $100 million a year in more tax revenue, but most of that would be offset by stopping taking money out of the infrastructure budget. The portion that isn't, will soon have to go to catching up the funding of employee pensions.

Which leaves us with having to find a new tax source - a source on top of whatever source we'd have to find to support the infrastructure build-out to begin with.

Now, over the long haul, if the city aligned zoning with the new stations so that average ridership per station was higher than the system average for the new stations, these numbers could look better. But the per-station average would have to be nearly 80% higher than the current system average for the operating costs to be fully covered by new ridership. That seems highly unlikely.

I suppose the easiest way to fund that difference would be through Cook County property taxes. If City residents alone took on $60 million a year in additional property taxes, we'd be looking at something along the lines of $5/month per household (yes, per household, not per person - it'd be about $2 per person per month). That seems reasonable and politically doable to me. If we included all of Cook county, that'd probably drop to $3/month, although I don't know if politically we could get the whole county to participate.

Of course that's just for the operating costs. To fund $12+ billion worth of infrastructure, that's over $4,000 per man, woman and child in Chicago. If the Feds paid half of the cost and we spread the costs over 40 years (10 years of construction with 30-year bonds), with inflation and interest we'd probably be looking at something in the range of $90/year per man, woman and child for the next 40 years. For the "average" household in the city, that'd be something like $25/month in extra taxes. Is that a lot to swallow? Yeah, probably, but if the City were serious about building out an improved rail infrastructure it might be politically possible. Another option would be to create micro-TIF districts around the new stations and funnel 100% of those property taxes into the infrastructure coffers. That would be a interesting test of the power of TOD, and it would force the City to better align appropriate zoning with Transit infrastructure because it would be dramatically more transparent if they lost tax revenue due to poor zoning choices.

Ok, Mr. Wayne ... :)

You bet your ass I will, but I won't get distracted by any of that superhero shit...

This Mid-City Transitway quote can't include the easement costs or the flyover costs of an alignment along the rail line parallel to Cicero, but if it is a Cicero overhead street alignment, you'll have to add quite a lot of street improvement costs. Because the Mid-City would rely on transfers in order to match the RTA's desire for a fully integrated transit system, there would be additional transfers to the Green Line, Forest Park Blue Line, Pink Line, Orange Line, & 2 Metra Lines.

I'd personally construct the entire Mid-City as a Light Rail line, running from Old Orchard to Ford City, it would connect most lines, without sharing much right of way & would carry ridership more akin to a light rail project anyway. The cost savings of switching to LRT would likely fund a line up to the former right of way of the Skokie Valley Line, part of the old North Shore Line.

The Brown Line extension in the alley just south of Lawrence would require to acquisition of nearly every property bordering the south side of the alley between Kimball & the Edens, as well as large & recently redeveloped properties West of the Edens. Not to mention a complete redesign of the Kimball yards, or a reconfiguring of Kimball ave to gain adequate clearance under the tracks during their ascent.

There is no doubt both of these projects could be done, but their execution would be much more complex than dictated by the above costs.

I'll post a proposed transit map including these connections sometime today.

I know that you're doing a pure thought exercise, but I'm not sure I see a need for three in-city circumferential rail corridors.

I would prefer to do a BRT line for the Mid-City Transitway. A BRT line could be located on Cicero itself, in the ROW of the Belt Railway, or some combination of the two. It could be in the railway corridor and then detour to meet existing rail stations, saving the expense of transfer bridges and making the system more user-friendly.

Buses could board the line at any point and speed to any other point, so direct O'Hare-Midway services could coexist with "local" services and "limited" services.

Laying reinforced concrete pavement is much cheaper than laying rails and ballast, and there's no power distribution or signaling systems to worry about. CTA could also recoup costs by opening the busway to authorized private operators to run specialized regional services (Van Galder, for example).

The cost savings over heavy rail would be tremendous, even more than LRT. You could put the savings toward an Inner Circumferential line on the Indiana Harbor Belt (DMUs).

The debate between LRT & BRT will go on forever, I've yet to see a BRT system that delivers on its promises in North America, & most LRT routes have not had significant changes in land uses to match the successes of European Light Rail systems. I just think that the combination of rail ROW & multimodal connections of any proposed Mid-City transitway, would benefit from using rail technology.

I'm having trouble posting the map of a routing system which would utilize the oft-proposed transit wet dream investments. Creating added connectivity & attempting to maintain additional capacity evenly throughout the system, while providing new services to take advantage of underutilized sections of rail.

I'll try to figure out how to post it the most clearly tomorrow, but the basic routes are

Purple: Linden to Cottage Grove via State St. Subway
Orange: Linden to Ford City Mall via State St. Subway
Yellow: Old Orchard to Ford City Mall via Ashland Corridor
Red: Howard to 130th via Clinton Ave. Subway
Brown: O'Hare to Ashland/63rd via State St. Subway
Pink : Jefferson Park to 54th/Cermak via Loop
Green : Jefferson Park to Harlem via Loop
Blue: O'Hare to Forest Park via Dearborn Ave. Subway

This matches most lines with similar ridership on the opposite side of downtown, eliminates crossings in the loop. It adds express lines & some new transfer stops, which would cost significant money, but could change ridership patterns drastically, & potentially reduce crowding on trunk lines.

whoap, figured out my mistake

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...outing2050.jpg

the map looks northside centric, because the transit system is northside centric, along with population, street activity etc. There is no way this system could work though, until the other lines weren't running 2 car trains at times that the brownline runs 6 car trains. I just liked the exercise of attempting to create different single line connections, such as the Northwestern to U of C Purple line, stopping at almost every major university other than UIC along the way, essentially a university line. A yellow line which ferries passengers swiftly across the city, from Skokie to Midway, but likely at limited frequencies, while providing connections promised by the circle line, without circling. Lastly, a direct O'Hare connection via rail from the most heavily frequented CTA stations.

I'm very jealous of your mapping skills. I love maps - I have maps all over my walls at home.

How about an extension of the Forest Park Blue Line to Maywood, Bellwood and Hillside. I can't understand why this is has never been a major priority. Seems to me to be a large transit riding population with many neighborhoods just as dense as the west side. The line could terminate with a large intermodal center at the three way intersection of the Tri-State, the 88 Toll and the Eisenhower. Such a location with quick and easy interstate access would guarantee substantial kiss and ride and parking lot commuters.

Thanks

Anhy way you could provide a clickable version that would allow us to zoom in?

Hey, as long as we're sharing our future CTA maps, I thought I'd post one I made up on google.

I'm sure it's not as well thought out as yours in certain respects. My main idea was to provide rail transit to everywhere within the city limits. Obviously it's extremely ambitious, but I think it would be nice to have a plan that focuses on eventually covering the whole city with a transit grid. I tried to follow existing rail corridors wherever possible.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en...d1329&t=h&z=10

working on it

I have it in PDF form, is there a way to attach it that way?

The only way I know how on this forum is to link to the pdf via a hyperlink; consequently your pdf would need to be hosted on a server some where accessible to internet

Free PDF hosting for those interested provided by
http://freepdfhosting.com/upload.php


http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...outing2050.jpg
Link to Map

You can see at closer inspection that my map making skills are quite lacking. Also forgive that I forgot to alter a few wrongly colored station names & stops from previous iterations. I'd also love feedback on all aspects of how this system might function, where deficiencies might exist, how to improve the concept, & what other new services could be provided.

one such idea? Rush Hour Brown & Purple Line Loopbound service to supplement existing service, which is just what the trains currently do.

Totally unrelated, but this photo of Dearborn Station was recently posted on the fantastic Shorpy.com and is so stunning I just have to post it:

Dearborn Station, Chicago, 1910

http://www.shorpy.com/files/images/4a24000a.jpg
http://www.shorpy.com/files/images/4a24000a.jpg

Sure wish they would have reconstructed that gorgeous roof.

There's a possibly apocryphal story that Mayor Thompson jokingly scolded the firefighters for saving so much of the building. The architecture was always rather eccentric and by 1922 was probably considered hopelessly old-fashioned.

http://i55.tinypic.com/15poadk.jpg
Chicago Daily News Collection, American Memory Project, The Library of Congress

Who said it's not a priority?

An extension to Oak Brook has been seriously discussed for several years now. The extra room in the Eisenhower median would potentially allow for express service to compensate for the long trip.

Soon, IDOT will move forward on their study of the Eisenhower widening. That study is also investigating potential corridors and ridership for Blue Line service.

The extra room in the median is only between California and Halsted.

Serving Oak Brook and similar destinations is a job perfectly suited to a busway, so that there's not a long walk from the train station to the office building. Some of the old CA&E right of way next to the Maywood Court House might be used, but most of that is now part of the Prairie Path.

There appears to be sufficient room along the entire row to add express track, signals would have to be relocated and some of the clearances from bridge supports will be tight but it looks doable.

You mean Laramie? I'm sure the clearances could be worked out.

Further westward (as I keep mentioning) the CSX's Altenheim Sub (the freight line) is used very infrequently, and the trains that do use it will diminish gradually in the coming years.

I'm sure CSX would part with it for the right amount, and IDOT will need to buy it if they want to avoid costly and unpopular property takings through Oak Park for the widening project. Oak Parkers have been the main opponents, so appeasing them is crucial to the whole effort. However, the land available is more than what is needed for two additional lanes. That leaves room for the express tracks.

Sure, let's do a busway. No suburban leader will take it seriously. Buses in the suburbs (i.e. Pace) are pretty much a long-running joke. CDOT has, so far, been the only agency to seriously consider busways, both along the lakefront, in the Carroll Street corridor, and on numerous other corridors.

The Elgin-O'Hare project is considering both a busway and LRT for its transit component, but the fact that LRT has not yet been ruled out tells me that the politicians driving the process won't settle for less than a sexy new rail line. The busway even has a built-in funding advantage, in that it can be funded entirely with highway dollars, while an LRT would need to seek an FTA grant.

If you view the picture full size, you can see a very racist Gold Dust billboard advertisement on the far right

edit
.....
.

At least for downtown commutes, a busway would probably be more useful in retaining existing riders than capturing new ones. I have a hard time imagining a lot of west suburbanites catching a bus to transfer to the Blue Line. It’s also worth noting that most (if not all) the busways I’ve seen proposed—mainly in various Cook DuPage Corridor study documents aren’t exclusive busways, but HOV lanes with ramps to off-line bus stations. There’s also the issue of Oakbrook Center being several miles west of Forest Park. True, jobs are more dispersed and some bus shuttles would be necessary, but it would make more sense to have a rail station and transit center anchoring those routes at Oakbrook Center rather than way off at Forest Park. Just looking at the area from Google Maps, it also looks like with some improvements to the pedestrian environment and increased density a lot of Oakbrook Center jobs could be put within easy walking distance of an elevated terminal around Spring and Harger (also from the Cook DuPage study).

From what I understand the busway’s eventually supposed to be part of the big J-Line, which connects looks to me like it connects most the big employment centers without ever touching anyplace with decent residential density—I remember seeing someone comment on its absence in Go To 2040 and CMAP basically replying “could you at least try the route out before we spend hundreds of millions on grade-separated bus lanes in the suburbs?” Elk Grove wants to do some major redevelopment around a combined Elgin-O’Hare highway and transit corridor, and I got the impression that the idea was to extend the Blue Line through O’Hare and then along the new expressway median before heading north to Woodfield. I saw their presentation at a conference (sorry, can’t find it online) and was blown away by the ambition—it made me think of something out of China. That said, I don’t think the prospects of coordinating transit expansion with the O’Hare expansion are all that good.

Speaking of which, from what I understand that route mainly came on the radar because of the STAR Line taking advantage of the Jane Addams median, which is pretty much a perfect example of “sexy” rail. The northwest corridor report gave a busway excellent marks, putting its ridership basically on-par with the heavy rail alternative (and both ranked higher than light rail). Maybe they were being overoptimistic about the bus, but this makes sense to me—jobs really start fanning out in all directions around O’Hare, and the Rosemont CTA station seems close enough to serve as a good anchor for this. Also, since there would be multiple routes feeding into the busway, there would be higher frequency for on-line busway stations, and there were enough bus routes to allow for skip-stop operation, increasing speeds.

Of course, no one in the suburbs would ever think of riding a bus, no matter how convenient. And everyone loves Metra. And thus we get what’s essentially a slightly less frequent light rail line running clunky FRA-compliant DMUs down the middle of a highway from an awkwardly placed Metra station near O’Hare to somewhere outside Joliet. And even though we’re only stuck with it in long-range planning world, the fact that it’s assumed to eventually be funded means that everything still has to be planned around it.

Wow, you seem very knowledgeable for only your second post. :cheers: Welcome to SSP!

Yeah, the area in back of the mall is fairly leafy and green, and the streets are narrow. With some sidewalks and some increased density, it could be a nice little TOD node, directly feeding into the mall. I've heard concerns about the ride quality - would people really want to ride a bumpy L car all the way from Oak Brook to the Loop? Maybe they could get better rolling stock somehow.

China, or at least DC. If Elk Grove wants to be ambitious about TOD, that's great. As a 1960s planned community, they don't really have a downtown, so more power to them.

The J-Line is a good idea, but it needs to tie into Metra better than it does, so that you can access the system from suburban downtowns. You're right - it seems like a good way for city-dwellers to get to suburban office parks, but it wouldn't do much else.

The most obvious way to serve Oak Brook would be with a bus line every few minutes from Elmhurst Metra to Hinsdale Metra via various Oak Brook destinations.

That's a great short-term solution, although I'm still not sure it will entice a North Sider to take a three-transfer transit trip to their Oak Brook office job. Out in Barrington, I know the Pace shuttle to Prairie Stone isn't very well-used, even though the transfer is usually perfectly timed. This is possibly because the UP-NW line is inconveniently-placed for many North Siders.

Honestly, I don't know what Pace planners are thinking most of the time. It seems like they're trying to overlay a network-type system over a suburban environment that isn't dense enough to support it. The bus routes should focus on tying existing areas of employment density and residential density into the Metra system.

I'm not too sympathetic to the arguments that Pace should serve transit-dependent populations, especially because numerous people have now demonstrated that a basic used car and gas are affordable for all but the poorest individuals. Scarce transit dollars should be spent where they will generate the most ridership (and thereby take the most cars off the road, decreasing congestion and emissions).

PACE is three different systems. There are the legacy local-service lines, most notably the former Nortran and West Towns networks, which serve towns such as Highland Park and LaGrange and Joliet and Harvey where local routes are pretty important as part of the safety net for those who cannot drive. Then there are the feeder buses taking suburbanites to the Metra stations. And finally there are the experiments done with express routes to help reverse commuters get to suburban employment centers.

I'm puzzled by your assertion that the transit-dependent should be told to buy cars while we chase after fickle discretionary riders. A car on the road is a car on the road, and the experience in LA and dozens of other "new-rail" cities has been that we spend $30 per new rider trying to attract middle-class professionals to sexy new trains, while inexpensive modest improvements to bus service produce huge ridership gains among the working class and recent immigrants.

It's just not smart spending to build a rail line to some single terminus in Oak Brook that's a half-mile or more from actual office entrances. Cumberland on the O'Hare line is about the best layout we could ever wish for in a suburban office park on a rail line—yet only a tiny number of those office workers arrive on the Blue Line.

Three systems? Hmmm....

See, this is the stuff that confuses the hell out of people. These are three different types of service, performing different functions, that Pace has attempted to whitewash and unify into a half-assed "network".

If the services were differentiated clearly, perhaps many riders wouldn't be so intimidated by the system. Visual communication is your specialty - surely you know what I'm talking about.

If the ridership data supports bus service to a given destination, be it an apartment complex, industrial park, or office campus, I'm supportive. It just often seems to me that Pace buses are running empty trying to serve poorer areas of the suburbs, when I know they would have a decent number of users if they simply ran lots of office-park feeder shuttles to major rail stations. That's because the office-park shuttles would be simply tying more destinations into existing rail corridors that already have a high number of users. Most Pace service, as far as I can tell, is like stringing two crumbs together with a rope - not the best use of rope, and who cares if the two crumbs are connected?

Metra is intuitively easy to understand. CTA is a bit more complex, but it makes sense too.

But I find it absolutely absurd to expect anyone to understand, let alone utilize, the Pace system. The suburbs are not uniformly dense enough to support transit service, and they do not have the convenient rational grid of streets that the city does. Since I can't understand the pattern in Pace's routes, I can't begin to consider its effectiveness. I can only go by anecdote and personal experience - both of which have been miserable.

Pace should look to Viva by Toronto for a model that they should follow. That system is awesome and looks fantastic - which of course is something that eludes so many US transit - seemingly complete aloofness over the connection between image(fleet design, technology, integrated branding, station and stop infrastrucutre) and ridership appeal.

ardec,

I think you've more or less identified the various factors that define the impossibility of Pace's mission.


While I agree that the branding should certainly be emulated (or at least taken more seriously as part of transit's overall identity), the biggest difference is that Pace's travel market is much more likely to have free parking at their place of employment, so people are much less tolerant of the multi-leg commute trips that are a fact of life in Toronto. If you've got free or nearly free parking at the destination, the transfer penalty alone is likely to eliminate most of transit's competitiveness for middle class travelers, before even getting into travel time considerations.