I have no issue with being behind on highway funding by any amount, I'd just like to see a shift of our priorities in funding towards favoring active transportation over automotive transportation. Because citizens agree:
infrastucture spending currently contradicts the wishes of the electorate

recently heard someone argue against a transit plan, "because it benefits land speculators". The person had no issue with sub-urban road expansion projects that instigate a far less sustainable version of the same land speculation.
highway funding is entirely out of whack in the nation as a whole

If anything, government spending is conversely related to population. Large cities get less dollars of federal spending per capita than rural areas.

I've been looking forward to this for a couple years now, ever since I first heard wind of it. It will be nice to have an Archer entrance to shorten the walk to the Chinatown Square area, but it will also benefit the new development near Archer and State, as well as all the new development between Archer and 18th Street. And that hotel on Clark, if it ever gets built.

The rural voters are idiots, apparently. I don't know of a cost-effective way to provide transit service to rural areas. I'm happy that they support increased investment, but they should probably be made aware that there's not a whole lot government can do to provide transit in such low-density environments. Small cities (upwards of, say, 10000 people) might benefit from jitney services or something.

Rural areas will always get more per capita in infrastructure investment because they have more infrastructure per capita. The basic framework of the Midwest... mile-square grid of roads, power lines, state routes, and the occasional Interstate all cost money. Here in the city, we have denser, higher-capacity infrastructure, which means that a dollar invested here has arguably more benefit than a dollar invested in rural areas. That's not an excuse to deprive those rural areas of the basic road/power grid maintenance and occasional expansion that they're entitled to.

^ Yeah I am always incredulous when I travel to So. Ill and see the extensive Interstate network around the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis. They are working on their 4rth Interstate bridge connecting the Ill suburbs to St.L. Meanwhile in the heart of the great lakes megalopolis, we have 1 interstate connecting Chicago to Milwaukee. We cant get federal or state funding to finish 355 north from Lake-Cook road to Wisconsin. I know this board is dedicated to urban transit concerns, but the I-355 north completion project is a glaring omission to the regional transit system.

I have no problem with them paving roads in downstate Illinois. But when it comes to priority, do we resurface a road in Quincy that averages 5,000 cars a day, or do we repave LSD, that averages 100,000 plus.

Oak Park Residents Debate: Widened Eisenhower or Extended Blue Line

He's completely right... there's no reason both projects shouldn't be implemented. There's enough width in the corridor for both if the CSX tracks are abandoned and the Blue Line is extended along the CA&E. The only problem is the cemeteries, but I'm sure there's some way of dealing with that.

Extending the Blue Line makes total sense, since it would even out the ridership between the O'Hare and Forest Park branches, making it more cost-effective for CTA to run frequent trains to Forest Park. Doesn't CTA currently short-turn some Blue Line trains at LaSalle?

The problem with the strategy described above, though (extending the Blue Line piecemeal) is that a terminal station in Maywood is unlikely to pull many drivers off of the road. By the time they get to Maywood, most drivers have already entered the fray of the Avenues. A Hillside station would be more effective, but you'd need to put the station near the highway and find enough land for a decent-sized garage. If the Blue Line uses the CA&E alignment, it won't be adjacent to the highway where drivers can see it, so you'd have to go all the way to the Tri-State to set up an effective park-n-ride, and it would still require new exit ramps.

^
I agree, but I am unsure about removing freight tracks. Before the economy crashed, the amount of freight being transported across the country was expected to have continual growth and effectively double by mid-century. We might need those tracks to take on the increased load in the future as the trains are shuffled through the Chicago yards. The grade separated nature of the tracks makes for great storage or layover space that will not block any street crossings. Ferrara Pan Candy would also need to give up their railspur, and require more deliveries to arrive by truck.

Maywood courthouse makes perfect sense as an extension, but for the blue line to truly serve as alternative to add capacity to the corridor, it must go to at least Oak Brook along I-88. This has many advantages, as it would introduce heavy rail transit to an area not already served by Metra, and it would provide a quick means of commuting to suburban job centers from the city. The West Side would turn into a sweet spot location where one could take the CTA to one of 3 major regional employment districts. The suburban job centers have the fastest growing amounts of entry level positions, which transit dependent people in need of work have a hard time accessing.

^I don't know that the Altenheim Sub serves any particularly important purpose (other than making possible Atomic Fireballs. Non-Chicagoans will puzzle over why that's considered beneficial to society). It's abandoned east of BRC and some of the bridges have load restrictions. CREATE proposed extensive reconstruction but CN no longer needs it now that it has the J, and gives up the WC for commuter service much of the day.

^Yeah the entire Central Corridor improvements have been dropped in the latest CREATE plans. T

Not necessarily. The Altenheim Sub is 3 tracks west of Austin. Ferrara Pan only needs one track.

You could preserve one CSX track and then convert the other two tracks into a 2-lane reversible managed-lane facility (36' wide, using the Kennedy as an example) with entrances at Central and Desplaines, where the reversibles would move into the median of the Ike in a Kennedy-like setup.

What do you guys think of my Blue Line Extension proposal? I wanted to practice my Illustrator skills... but I think this is what we should be pushing for if CMAP/RTA are serious about extending the Blue Line westward.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=...ZmYzN2Nk&hl=en

The idea is that it would be built in three phases: to Hillside, then Oak Brook, and then Yorktown.

A new yard (required to accommodate the large number of new trains) would be built adjacent to the Hillside station, all of which would be on the Congress Landfill site. I don't know if building there is feasible, but people have built atop landfills elsewhere. It's really a perfect site for a major park-and-ride: it sits right where 290 and 88 merge, just before the heavy traffic starts. Mannheim is a high-capacity interchange that isn't choked with traffic. The landfill site is big enough to accommodate serious quantities of parking.

There is a settlement risk; this could be okay for parking lots or garages, but not for trainyards. An alternate yard site would be near the Maywood station on a redeveloped industrial property.

I think it's safe to assume $3 billion for this thing, in 2010 dollars. Of course, that's a paltry sum compared to the Second Avenue Subway, so I remain hopeful.

^ Seems they make you create an account to view your link...

Not to be buzz kill, but I have a hard time seeing white collar commuters riding the very long distance between Oak Brook and downtown on noisy, rickety CTA railcars, through very questionable neighborhoods. Especially since now people want to use their commuting time on the cell phone or an iPad, etc.

This is out of left field, but what about a Metra spur to Oak Brook? Maybe a shuttle train that goes back and forth between the new terminal and the new junction with an existing Metra line. Maybe something down IL 83 to Hinsdale? Or make it light rail? Is this just naive dreaming? It's much less distance than the Blue Line would be.

$3 billion would pay for either all of the Circle Line or a good chunk of the Clinton Street Subway/West Loop Transportation Center, either of which would have FAR, FAR higher ridership than what you're proposing would.

If anything is built that direction, it should be run as commuter rail, by Metra, and not as an extension of Chicago's metro-style "L" system. The RTA really needs to evaluate how each system is used and how to align them to compliment each other.

Yeah, Oak Brook is too far to ride on what are basically streetcars. But the big problem in my mind is the last mile. A rail line has to terminate in a specific place, which is still a mile or more from various Oakbrook destinations. So if you can find the right of way, why not simply run BRT out there, and then circulate the buses to various office buildings and campuses in the area?

But the first thing to do would be simply to have a link running from Elmhurst to Hinsdale Metra stations via various Oakbrook destinations. Dedicated lanes on Route 83 or Spring Road and limited stops could make this a real extension of the rail network instead of just another wandering, unseen Pace bus. That would allow the (frankly, very few) potential commuters to reach office and retail destinations via Metra and a quick bus ride—exactly the same situation you'd have if you spent $3 billion running a rail line to the shopping center and then ran a birds-nest of confusing and uncoördinated shuttle buses to various office destinations.

There is no way Metra is going to build a new line between BNSF and UP-west. The blue line extension is the only thing that really makes sense in terms of further connecting the city with DuPage (now approaching 1 million residents and even more workers who are not residents). Most of the offices and retail (and the two malls) lie along Cermak except for a few office buildings that go a little further south on Jorie Blvd (still very walkable from Cermak). As far as use, the intended demographic I imagine would be the reverse commuters who live further east, not vice versa (those people already use the Metra lines). I think it's a great idea eventually, but not at the expense of the circle line etc., which should (and will) come first in terms of priority.

Honestly, I think the Blue Line should be extended before the Circle Line. I'd rather see the Clinton Street Subway/WLTC before either of them, though. The problem with the Circle Line is that the densification required to justify the line would likely by stymied by neighborhood politics. For various reasons, the Blue Line extension and the Clinton Street Subway face no such problems.

As far as I can tell, most of what RTA advocated for the Blue Line was a 1/2 mile extension to 1st Avenue. Oak Brook is an ideal terminus, and the idea of an I-88 rail line was even extended to a logical conclusion with a terminus at 355/BNSF. Even the piddling 1/2 mile extension to 1st Avenue poses challenges, though... will the cemeteries accept a rapid transit line at-grade or elevated through what is currently a quiet cemetery, along the CA&E alignment? There's room just to the north of the Ike, but building tracks there will prevent any future expansion of the expressway. I guess you could build the tracks on an aerial structure in the median of the highway.

Of course, I don't think an extension to 1st Avenue has ANY worth whatsoever. If you're trying to improve access to the courthouse, you could run shuttles every 5 minutes for far less than the cost of a transit line.

The first phase of my proposal goes to Hillside, which has strong merits by itself, in terms of its land-use consequences for Maywood/Bellwood and the massive park-and-ride I suggest for the Hillside station.

Maywood and Bellwood are rotting inner suburbs with little potential for growth. They would surely support extensive TOD around Blue Line stations, and their actions suggest this.

Another concept to consider would be to build the Blue Line Extension as a light-rail line, thereby greatly reducing the costs and allowing the possibility of at-grade intersections. Later phases could build express light-rail tracks to the Circle. I believe light-rail vehicles exist now with the acceleration and speed of heavy-rail vehicles.

General question - what are the benefits of heavy rail over light rail anyway? What do you get for the substantially higher costs? Is it basically speed and capacity I assume? (And ability to avoid a catenary I guess.) What are the outer bounds of light rail speeds, assuming a stretch having dedicated/protected r-o-w ?

Are there installed examples anywhere in the world of anything that's in between, that blurs the lines between the two?

:previous: my understanding is that typically heavy rail is separated from vehicular traffic whereas light rail is not necessarily so (like a streetcar). Portland's light rail does both. I don't know the answers to your other questions.

@ardicela: I can't access your render. It saya the document is not available. That said, I think that the circle line route doesn't really need a huge densification to justify it's necessity, because of what it does: integrate the hub and spoke system that we have, while hitting some huge hot spots like the Medical Center (and United Center; if they don't they're retarded). The densification will come naturally, even without the circle line, as that area is just west of high density areas. In terms of priority, I think that is huge (integrating the hub and spoke system) and improving service within the city itself. The Blue line expansion is key regionally though (that corridor is the second highest employment center outside of the Loop (extending from western Westchester through Oak Brook, Lombard, DG, and into Naperville along I 88). As far as the Maywood stop, it's not really the courthouse, but LUMC that really needs it. I worked there as a youngster for three years, living in the city, but drove most of the time because of the hassle of hopping a bus at Forest Park. Lots of LUMC workers and patients would use that stop.