^ I would likes for the city to court some manufacturers in that area. I think having jobs in that area will help it reach it's highest potential. The city is really selling itself short mainly wanting real estate for the rich and professionals.

^You're aware of the whole Solo Cup fiasco?

Explain please.

Red Line South Branch to Reopen Sunday
 

Cheers to how quick and painless this massive project was! Hopefully increased comfort and speeds to the south provides some momentum for economic redevelopment on the South Side. Man, baring that runaway train a while back, the CTA has really had their shit together lately.


http://chicagoist.com/2013/10/15/red...re-open_su.php

Yeah, I took the Chinatown shuttle bus a few days ago... the temporary shuttle system was really nice. There were several buses standing at Roosevelt right by the subway exit, plenty of seats available, and a quick nonstop trip.

The original planners for South Works heard loud and clear from surrounding neighborhoods that they wanted manufacturing jobs. So 280 acres were sold to Solo Cup for a new factory there, and I'm pretty sure the city was kicking in a truckful of money to help. Meanwhile, Solo bought another manufacturer and didn't need the South Works plant after all.

Chicago has spent the last 40 years trying to "court some manufacturers to the area." It's not clear what they can do outside of the sheer bribery they're now resorting to. If you have a manufacturing operation looking for cheap land and easy transportation, you'll probably choose NW Indiana. If you're doing skilled manufacturing, you'll probably choose the northwest suburbs where there's easy access to O'Hare and where the workforce knows what a millimeter is. That makes Chicago—the land in-between—a hard sell.

Hey guys, quick question.

I heard that Metra was looking to work on some sort of suburb to suburb rail service, I forget what I was called though. Does that ring a bell to anyone here?

4 Chicago-area transit boards should be condensed to one, similar to NYC: study
 

http://www.suntimes.com/23190348-761...nyc-study.html

BY ROSALIND ROSSI Transportation Reporter October 16, 2013 7:08PM

A consultant Wednesday recommended that the Chicago area move to a New York City-like transit structure that would replace the RTA, CTA, Metra and Pace boards with one board driven by a “regional” focus rather than parochial concerns.

The result of a $380,000 study by Delcan, a Virginia-based independent international transportation consulting firm, was delivered to both the RTA, which commissioned the study in the first place, and a gubernatorial taskforce that released its own hard-hitting initial findings Wednesday, but no specific interim recommendations.

And, it followed the Regional Transportation Authority board’s approval of next fiscal year’s long-awaited funding allocations to the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace. For two months, insiders say, the allocations have been held up by the kind of Chicago vs. suburbs squabbling Delcan’s recommendation was designed to avoid. A similar holdup in last year’s funding allocation prompted the RTA to hire Delcan to study how other transit agencies divvy up their money and structure their boards.
Initial findings of the Northeastern Illinois Public Transit Task Force released Wednesday provided ammunition for a New York City-like solution recommended by Delcan. The taskforce found that “the present system was created to represent political and geographic constituencies rather than to provide excellent transit service for the whole region.’’

It lamented that “authority, responsibility and accountability for the transit system are highly dispersed.’’ It noted that 16 elected officials appoint 47 members of four different boards.

Delcan, whose largest practice area is mass transit, instead recommended that the four transit boards be replaced with one board that would include gubernatorial appointees. The structure would reduce the number of board members selected by county or other local officials who may feel obligated to put parochial concerns above regional goals, a Delcan official said.

CTA, Pace and Metra could operate as “operating arms or subsidiaries,’’ with their own presidents or executive directors, but no boards, Delcan Vice President Richard Mudge told transit task force members. A similar model is used in New York City and Philadelphia, he said.


The next best alternative, the Delcan report said, would be to keep the current board structure but to give the RTA the authority it needs to carry out its current legislative responsibilities.

“We like an integrated governance, with a single board of directors,’’ Mudge said. “[It] is the easiest way to meet regional goals.’’

Gov. Pat Quinn formed the taskforce amid the tumult that followed the Metra board’s decision to award ex-CEO Alex Clifford an up to 26-month, $871,000 severance deal with only eight months left on his contract. Quinn had said he hoped the taskforce would issue interim recommendations by Oct. 18, in time to influence the upcoming veto session.

However, marquee taskforce member Patrick Fitzgerald, the former U.S. Attorney who prosecuted two Illinois governors, said the taskforce was tackling issues that had been “developing over years’’ and needed more time to get their recommendations right. Therefore, the task force only issued findings, not recommendations Wednesday.

“If we thought there were simple fixes, of course we’d be doing that,’’ Fitzgerald said.

Meanwhile, RTA board members Wednesday finally broke through a partisan logjam that caused them, for a second year, to blow a Sept. 15 deadline for doling out funding to the three transit agencies they oversee.

The dispute was resolved by agreeing, among other things, to allow the RTA to cover the annual debt payments on a $56 million loan it provided to the CTA in 2009. The decision cancelled a resolution passed last month with the help of non-Chicago RTA board members that ordered the CTA to repay the money.

In addition, bickering over the RTA’s discretionary pot of operating funds was resolved by giving 98 percent of next fiscal year’s roughly $190 million to the CTA and 2 percent to Pace.

However, the 2015 and 2016 discretionary splits were left up for grabs. with only an agreement that whatever split is used each year would also be the basis of any surplus funding allocation in those years, RTA officials said.

“Trust me, no one got what they wanted. Everyone is slightly unhappy,’’ one RTA source said. “Nobody went home and popped champagne.’’

Email: rrossi@...

Twitter: @rosalindrossi

It was called the Star Line (this link is from CMAP's website): http://metraconnects.metrarail.com/star.php

Interestingly, this is the only thing left in a search on Metra's website about it: http://metrarail.com/metra/en/home/u...sanalysis.html

STAR Line

If the aughties-style web design doesn't give it away, it's very dormant.

March 1st, 2016

Northeast Illinois Public Transit Commission -- NIPTC

The new Public Transit Agency formed to provide service to Chicago, and it's Suburbs.

+ Providing Fixed Route bus service in Chicago -- Fixed Route, Rush Hour Feeder, and Dial-a-Ride bus service in the Suburbs.

+ Providing Paratransit (ADA) service in Chicago and the Suburbs.

+ Providing Commuter Rail service in the Suburbs.

+ Providing Rail Rapid Transit in Chicago on the 'L' system - and the South Side's Electric District


NO Fiefdoms, NO idiotic Competition and Duplication in Operations, NO Competing for Capital and Operating Funding, NO Duplication of Planning, Accounting, Administration, and Executive Boards.

Tell me again W H Y our present "4-Headed-Hydra - Chicago Politics Style" system is working better then a NIPTC would??

Unless they're recommending that ISTHA (the Tollway) --- and control of its revenue stream and rates --- would also be rolled in, the proposal is certainly not like the New York MTA.

CTA chief calls proposal to put transit agencies under one umbrella ‘crazy’
 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/2328136...lla-crazy.html

BY ROSALIND ROSSI Transportation Reporter October 21, 2013 8:06PM

CTA Chairman Terry Peterson (left) and President Forrest Claypool spoke with the Sun-Times editorial board Monday afternoon. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

Updated: October 22, 2013 2:14AM

“Forget about it.’’

That was CTA President Forrest Claypool’s assessment Monday of what to do with a consultant’s recommendation that one regionally-focused transit board oversee CTA, Metra and Pace.


“I would never work for such a crazy governance structure,’’ Claypool said of one of the key recommendations of a $380,000 study by Delcan, a transit consulting group.

“Power flows from the ballot box,” Claypool told the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board Monday. Voters’ ability to hold Mayor Rahm Emanuel accountable at the ballot box if they don’t like CTA decisions is the “model’’ governance structure, Claypool said.

“Any other structure [and] you’re working for a committee, which — forget about it. Just forget about it,’’ Claypool said.

An executive with Delcan, an international transit consulting group, told a gubernatorial transit task force last week that northeastern Illinois needs one regional board to oversee CTA, Metra and Pace to ensure that planning is regionally-focused and not dominated by parochial concerns.


He suggested a model similar to that used in New York City, where the governor appoints several members of a transit board that oversees subways, rail systems, buses, bridges and tunnels that service southeastern New York and parts of Connecticut.

The CTA, Metra and Pace could function as “subsidiaries’’ of the one regional agency, but would not have their own boards, as they do now, consultant Richard Mudge said.

However, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning currently does regional planning, so “The problem [of lack of regional planning] has been overblown,’’ Claypool said.

“What we have works pretty well if we manage it properly, fund it properly and have leadership that’s working together,’’ he said.

Claypool also said the CTA supports a plan to bring dedicated bus lanes to Ashland Avenue but is still seeking input on the best way to do it.

“We are behind it, but the devil is in the details,’’ Claypool said. “We are not saying, ‘This is the plan, darn it.’”

The CTA is still sounding out businesses and homeowners about its initial proposal to put a dedicated bus lane down the center of Ashland for 16 miles, from Irving Park to 95th Street, and only allow left turns immediately onto expressway ramps.

Businesses have complained that the limit on left turns would lead to decreasing customers and require vans and trucks to make three right turns through residential areas to reach some businesses on Ashland.

Claypool visited the Sun-Times Editorial Board to discuss the CTA’s 2014 fiscal year budget, which packs no service cuts and no fare increases.

Claypool said the spending plan represented a significant break with “doomsday” budgets of the past.

CTA's proposed budget continues capital investment push
 

http://www.rtands.com/index.php/pass...ment-push.html

Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) President Forrest Claypool proposed a balanced $1.38 billion budget that maintains transit service and holds the line on customer fares, while continuing investment in projects and programs to improve service and modernize regional transit......

.........Total ridership on the CTA is expected to grow in 2014 from this year to 534.6 million (a jump of nearly one percent), returning to slightly above 2011 levels.

this is that...unique...kind of logic that could only fly in chicago

W E [ repeat -- W E ] E L E C T the People who A P P O I N T these People.....

So who's fault is That?

When was the last time transit was an issue in a political campaign? Chicagoans see transit as a boring service like garbage collection or drinking water. There's no excitement, no vision, and no desire for change. Board members are appointed to maintain the status quo at all costs.

I don't know how to change this, but some well-planned expansions will help. It will also help to stop using such ho-hum design for stations, vehicles, structures, etc. CTA's on the right track, building several dramatic new stations, using transit to lure employers like Google, etc.

I got to set up an appointment soon with Rep. Mike Quigley at the Active Transportation Alliance Summit this AM -- He seemed very interested in letting me lobby for the Gray Line before the Transportation Appropriations Sub-committee in Washington sometime soon ( "Grassroots Activism" ).

I'll pay my own Fare and Lodging......., I am a Mad Dog (Foaming-at-the-Mouth-Excited)

^ Congratulations!

Might yield better results to tone it down a notch or two. I respect your enthusiasm and commitment for your proposal, but sometimes it comes off a bit too strong.

Also, have you recently reached out to various stakeholders along the alignment? I could see McCaffery Interests and US Steel getting behind a plan that brings rapid transit to their South Works site. University of Chicago for providing frequent local service to Hyde Park without having students take the Green Line. The Chicago Park District for providing better service to Soldier Field, and the new marina at 35th. McPier for improved access to McCormick Place (especially if a proposal to connect the Gray/Gold line with other lines in the system develops) Central Station Development Corp for running mass transit directly through their Gateway site. The Field Museum? The Shedd? The Adler? The operators of the Charter One Pavilion?


Either way, congrats and good luck.