Why not build a short spur off the NCS line just south of the Rosemont stop and take it under Mannheim Rd and right into the surface parking lot of Terminal 5 next to the ATS station?

That has to be cheaper and more direct than most of the plans put forward.


Also in other news apparently the city will open the new Halsted bridge just south of Division on Friday. To celebrate they will immediately close the Halsted bridge north of Chicago until May. Way to go CDOT.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2...-branch-street

They were scheduled that way to ensure detour traffic used Chicago Ave.
Closing both at the same time would have created major problems. The other bridge is in terrible disrepair. I can't believe a bridge is allowed to exist in such condition.

The detour through Goose Island wasn't heavily used, particularly because Division is almost always a parking lot between Halsted and Elston so nobody wanted to go near it. It would have been better do do them at the same time and have the whole road open again.

The other brige is in terrible shape but I trust it more than the Grand Ave. bridge, which I am convinced will just fall into the river one way when I'm walking across it.

Running an O'Hare express from NCS into Terminal 5 isn't a bad idea but it wouldn't really shave off the time enough for most passengers the clear majority of which will still be going to the domestic terminals. They would still need to make a transfer to the ATS mover at Terminal 5 anyhow.

If one wants to maximize convenience and have x-press to terminal service it would be best to just run the trains into one of the domestic terminals though its so congested there I'm not sure how easy or cost efficient that would be to do.

While train to terminal service would be nice I think I lean towards an enclosed super station of sorts where the NCS/x-press and the ATS can meet given that many passengers will make the ATS part of their travel anyway to get to their final terminal. Such a state would also still be able to cater to Metra passengers and perhaps even Amtrak/HSR trains as well.

It would seem a LOT less expensive to have people transfer from Metra/express rail to ATS at T5 than to serve the other terminals with heavy rail. They'll have to buy some more cars and pump up frequency on the ATS but that has to be done anyway. If you only have a couple minute wait time and a trip time of 5ish min to the farthest terminal I think that's pretty reasonable. Heck it already takes at least that long to walk from the blue line station to any of the security lines.

That bridge is in atrocious shape. My Lord. It is literally crumbling beneath you. I just walked across it last night walking home from Girl and the Goat.

I posted this a while back.

O'Hare express, plus downtown circulator subway loop. Dotted blue stops are local stops only for the circulator. Solid blue are airport express stops. Green dots are transfer to intercity HSR. Other than cost, the biggest problem with this is probably that HSR cars couldn't make most of those turns.

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5052/5...1258020a_z.jpg
mine - Click to enlarge.

Exactly... The deep foundations of the skyscrapers really limit your alignment choices. SF is facing that problem right now trying to design tunnel access into the new Transbay.

This is not to say you couldn't tunnel beneath a skyscraper if you absolutely HAD to, but it's best to avoid it if possible.

I had occasion to be in Union Station a couple times on the 23rd and 24th to meet family coming into town and predictably the concourse was a disaster.

Luggage carts blocking pedestrian flow? Check

2 of 4 Quick Track ticketing machines broken down? Check

People trying to cluster around the tiny ancient displays that show track locations for arrivals and departures? Check.

Anonymous boarding lines extending out through the doors of the waiting area an into the ticketing room? Check.

LOTS of lost people? Check.

Meanwhile in the Great Hall there were a few random people waiting for long distance trains and what looked like a flea market taking up most of the space. Fantastic use of real estate.

^I can't disagree with you, but how would you ever get people to go into the Great Hall rather than wait as close as possible to their gates?

Pull all Amtrak/Metra ticketing and customer service into the great hall. Add larger clear displays to the hall for departures/arrivals. Move most food concessions out of the concourse and into the vacant retail surrounding the hall.

After all that is done they can gut much of the concourse and rework it into something useful. At the top of the list would be queuing areas for boarding to keep the lines from stretching all through the waiting/ticket areas which consequently blocks traffic flow.

I don't understand why they can't just queue on the platforms, or just have open access to the trains and do ticket checks on board with a several-hundred-dollar fee for ticketless riders. European trains have been remarkably terror-free considering how many intercity trains are run every year.

The reason train stations are ideal for a dense urban environment is the simplicity of rail travel, which requires only simple compact facilities. Overly complex security and boarding procedures are cumbersome, expensive, and unnecessary.

Metra does it so I'm not sure why Amtrak doesn't, there has to be some reason beyond tradition (DHS maybe?). I don't really have a problem with making people wait in the concourse but they need to actually have somewhere to wait that doesn't obstruct the rest of the station. The platform areas at Union could also use some work though (waterproofing, ventilation, lighting, pressure washing, etc).

Amtrak also needs to aggressively roll out more e-ticketing and Quick Track stations.

^^ Agreed about the machines. Metra should really switch to machines for their downtown terminals, too. A bank of machines would be far cheaper than a handful of ticket-sellers. Then there could be a consolidated ticketing hall with maybe 5 or 6 Amtrak ticket-sellers, one Metra seller, and a bank of machines off to the side for Amtrak and Metra.

If you think about it, there's no reason you couldn't sell all kinds of Metra tickets from a machine. Reduced fares, which require ID, and elderly/disabled persons could continue to use a greatly reduced number of ticket sellers. Metra Electric already works this way.

Rather than firing the existing ticket sellers, you could transfer them to stations that are currently unmanned. Jefferson Park comes to mind, or Clybourn, Ravenswood, or Grand/Cicero.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,6808704.story

I am not very sympathetic

^^^ I'm thrilled. This is exactly the kind of policy that chokes the suburbs while not driving businesses out of the metro. There is nowhere they can go to avoid these tolls. They can go all the way out to Rockford and STILL get tolled. So the logical answer is to go downtown where your employees can pay as much as they pay in tolls and avoid gas money by taking the Metra.

Driving's not so appealing when you start having to pay the full cost of it.

^Tollway drivers have always, by definition, paid the full cost of driving.

Does air quality or anthropogenic climate change factor into that definition?

^No more than in the numbers for Metra. It's pretty tricky to allocate externalities or indirect costs to things, but not indirect benefits.

Of course not, but fuel-tax money obviously goes towards transit programs and CMAQ which reduce emissions in selected areas.