That's not happening.

You'd put the new third track east of the existing Chinatown station, on cheap solid fill, with an adjacent platform. The old northbound track would now be a center turnback track. The current station is virtually level, and so would be the new track. The old Alley L between 16th and 18th is another good option, but it would mean half the North Side trains wouldn't serve The 78 or Chinatown.

Can this be paid for by CTA next year, with the rent money from a new Dunkin Donuts downstairs? No; but we're comparing it to an $2.3 billion nearly useless five-mile extension to a sewage treatment plant, which will also waste hundreds of platform hours every day.

A major, costly (feels like 100-150M) project to increase north side Red Line frequency that doesn't extend benefits to the south side is likely to be a considerable political problem. Adding turn backs to the Blue Line doesn't really raises any eyebrows because it's cheap to simply do. This would be noticed.

Jarrett Walker has a good analogy for this: the Fishing Pier Distribution Problem. How is it fair to put all the fishing piers in oceanfront neighborhoods that are mostly well-to-do, rather than distributing them equally among all neighborhoods?

Rail transit serves dense areas. The north lakefront is 30-40,000 persons per sq mile. Gresham, Chatham, West Pullman, Roseland are 8-10,000 persons per sq mile, with no demand for any additional units.

Edit: missed some of the previous discussion and answered my own question

Can we all be incredibly honest here:

A lot of the "support" for the Red Line extension seems to be always cloaked in some "equity" framework about providing service to "disinvested" South Side. As a casual observer, I haven't seen any numbers on why it is needed so much or potential ridership, at least from its vocal supporters. It's more of a "well this is GOOD because of its investment on the SOUTHSIDE."

I hear a lot of that type of mentality in school and from articles. However, the other day in my spatial theory class we were talking about built form is a reflection of culture, economics, technology, and values of a generation(think old Boston vs suburban strip mall). Then I started thinking about the "controversial" building going up on Milwaukee(I think) in Logan Square. Does the potential of displacing some lower-income people in 2020 trump the fact that it's net positive will be paying us back even in 100 years? I guess with that thinking you could also argue that a Red Line extension is worth it because it could be a catalyst for future positive development in the far future. However, the current want for the extension seems to be more of a political move and investing that money in other more dense areas will probably pay off more in 5 generations.

^RLX isn't a bad corridor but it's not the best in the city of course. I'm not sure it's so much "equity" but "politics" that prioritizes it. As mentioned earlier, the red line needs a bigger yard and that community was promised the RLX many years ago. Improvement of the MED would be a much more cost efficient way to bring transit to that area but it doesn't solve the yard issue.

In other news, apparently the CTA is finally doing a real all-door boarding pilot on the J14 (and by extension, the bus I ride most often, the 192, which uses J14 buses): https://chi.streetsblog.org/2020/02/...rnizing-buses/

For the 192, which picks up a lot of people from only a few stops this will probably make a big difference. I imagine the J14 has the same property at least on southbound trips and probably on the limited-stop portion of the northbound (although I've only been on the J14 like once so I know how peaky northbound boarding is).

Why let the tail wag the dog? If CTA needs more yard space, they should simply expand their yards.

Just a quick glance an an aerial image shows several ways in which the two Red Line yards at 95th and Howard could be expanded, at a small fraction of the cost of the RLE project.

Honestly I don't know why the existing 57/94 diamond interchange can't accomodate a vastly larger yard. Look at a satellite, it would obviously take strong coordination with IDOT to replace some of the embankment sections with aerials or just a few cross-unders to allow expanded yards to the southwestern part of the right of way, but it seems imminantly doable.

Do anyone know the update of the cta Green Line Damen/Lake station when do construction start on this station

This is the most recent thing I've seen on the Damen Green Line. Haven't seen anything on here about construction at the site.

https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/7/9/...p-perkins-will

I wonder when do the new cta 7000 series go into service and when do the proterra electric bus going into revenue service

The 7000s come first to test for a period of time non-revenue I believe and then sometime after that. Best guess 2022. The Proterra's will roll sooner.

Everyone, Streetblog Chicago wrote an article talking about the dire situation for the CTA(well, all public transit really) because of Corona. There is a link to send a message to your rep for a "bailout" for public transit(70% decrease in ridership!).

Streetblog: https://chi.streetsblog.org/2020/03/...ed-protection/
Link to message rep:http://action.smartgrowthamerica.org...tion_KEY=27006

Yeah, I also sent a message regarding intercity buses/trains. If the airlines get bailed out, all transit modes should.

Stating the obvious but this really is the worst possible scenario from a sociological POV regarding the benefits of mass transit. It's irrational but those who want to take a hatchet to it will use the epidemic to hammer PT. Conveniently overlooking all the downsides of individualized transport of course.

Have any of you ever seen an analysis of the impact of the 1918 flu on mass transit use? Did it accelerate the transition to the automobile, for example?

Interesting question. I doubt there was a large 1918 transition, however, as the U.S. was still really poor at that time, cars were expensive, and jobs were still hyperconcentrated.

I think post-WW2 recovery was the era of transition to automobiles. For the UK as an example, car modal-share in 1952 was still the minority, but 10 years later it had nearly tripled to 171 billion passenger-km.

https://i.imgur.com/5FewvjG.png

The New York Subway ridership data for the 1910s-1930 shows it was still strongly growing. Perhaps what the 1918 flu did was accelerate the move away from living in central city cores with rail (and later on by car).

http://web.mta.info/nyct/110Anniversary/ridership.htm

^ NYC's system also expanded continuously through the 1920s and 1930s, so I'd be surprised if ridership didn't grow, no matter what else was going on.

Remember that Chicago 100 years ago was plagued by frequent outbreaks of disease - cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, etc. People already assumed that city living was unsanitary and their baseline expectations for health and sanitation were much lower. I doubt the 1918 flu had a major effect on public opinion one way or the other, including when it came to transit ridership.

There also wasn't a feasible way to social distance - people were forced to continue their daily commutes to work (on transit) if they wanted to earn money and eat, the government certainly wasn't gonna do a bailout in that era.

Do anyone know when are the CTA going to start construction on the Green Line Damen/Lake station

^ Is this guy a bot?

You can't come here every 2 weeks and post the same question word for word. There is no news on the Damen/Lake station, especially with CTA and the City focused on coronavirus. When there is news, one of us will post it.

Who knows? If they're a bot I'm not sure what they're angle is. If they said "does anyone know about the Damen Green Line station... Killary, the Clinton Foundation and George Soros are trying to take the money away and use it for the new world order and pedophilia dungeons" I think the agenda would be more clear cut...

LOL that was funny.

Man, I just imagine he/she is like 14 years old and is into urban planning and lives next to the station, so they REALLY want this to start!

Yeah I wish the city would get off their a$$ and build the damn station, it's been like 3-4 years since it was announced... but that's just not how transit projects work. The process is intentionally designed to make new projects move as slowly as possible.

And in Chicago especially there's no transparency in government, so we'll never get an update until there's a piece of good news that a politician can take credit for.

Transit agencies are getting a "bailout" from the Feds. I wonder if it is enough?

CTA says no, but that's because they're not willing to furlough anybody or reduce service levels (which, basically, means the same thing). I'm not sure how much cutbacks they're allowed to actually make with union rules.

Certainly I wouldn't want to see permanent layoffs, the city will need the transit system at full strength once we pull out of this and training new people is lengthy and expensive.

Are other agencies still running full service? From what I saw everyone from NYC to DC to San Fran is cutting back on service, which certainly makes sense during rush hour.

I mean why are they running headways of three minutes on the red and blue lines now when there's no on on them? I've seen the trains, they're all almost entirely empty at rush hour.

Why not just run every 8-10 minutes all day at this point on all lines?

Running full service will help with social distancing, I guess.

I can see the trains very well from my apartment, they are empty. There is no need to run them every 3 or 5 minutes. Social distancing will happen with 10-minute headways.

The south-side Green line is pretty empty under normal circumstances and the orange line is pretty uni-directional in demand. Based on the number of people I see from my apartment waiting for the 12 (or 18), there is some (but not very large) there must be some people riding the trains!

If they have the money for payroll, especially if it's money the Feds have chipped in (I don't know that they do, but if) then it's worth keeping their staff employed, especially if they can work in ways that minimize risk.

Am seeing bus after bus run about empty, including rush hr express buses which cater to people who are working remote. NY and elsewhere seem to be reducing service. It definitely should be happening, if it isn't already.

I looked a bit and I can't find any other city still running at rush hour services except Chicago. During the nice weather I was out in our park almost all day and every single bus I saw go by on Irving Park road had a max of 0-3 people on board.

I go downtown to my office once a week and I actually got stuck on LaSalle because of traffic. People are parking on the sides of the street now and there's really only one solid lane down LaSalle. There is such a crush of rush hour buses still coming down that traffic was backed up pretty bad, and it looked crazy because it was all buses.

I look every time at every bus and I actually never saw more than 2 people on any of the dozens of large accordian or regular buses on LaSalle or passing on any side street. Many of the buses didn't even have their interior lights on because they were never going to have any passengers anyway.

I can see the blue line and hear it from my house, it runs constantly and I never see anyone really on any of the trains.

From a pollution and usage standpoint it's kinda insane they are running as much as they can at this point - almost all entirely empty.

I mean, having 2 people on a bus (or railcar) is really the ideal for social distancing. We'd be polluting the same amount if the pandemic was not occurring.

I'm not sure it makes sense to continue with the rush hour service pattern, though, since the essential workers still using CTA are less likely to be 9-5 and more likely to be shift workers.

I don't know what the city is saying about this, but it makes no sense to me. CTA announced it expects a $551 mil shortfall this year ($1 bil for all of RTA). The federal government is providing some support, but this shortfall will go on past this year. They need to be thinking long term about how stretch the resources

So buses are no longer collecting fares and requiring people to board via the rear door though. The problem is that many buses don't have a way for the operator to open the rear-door, so people have ot pull it open with their hands. That sounds like a very unsanitary thing to do...

That is correct. All passengers must go rear doors, not in front door. Wheelchair still have go in front door. No longer collecting fares. You still have take a rail. I don't think you can pay fares for rail.

Is there a reason riders are boarding through the rear? Seems counter intuitive.

My best guess is that this is to protect the CTA bus driver from exposure

Yeah, I imagine the CTA union demanded this (along with full service). Terrible for revenue but good for social distancing I guess.

Most urban systems were doing this 10 days before CTA finally gave in.

Dick Durban just wrote me back lol It was likely auto-generated but whatever.

Does anyone have the amount the RTA will be getting from the first stimulus bill?

$1.4 billion.

"Durbin" accidentally sent me two identical emails at the same time :haha:

Wow, that sounds like quite a bit. Is that split between CTA and Metra, Pace?

lol Jesus


So, if they are getting 1.4 billion, that means they are good, right?

Yes. Not sure if the actual split has been decided yet, but news stories said CTA was expected to get about $800m.

fwiw: CNN article on transit "reopening." Not much info on Chicago, general info on distancing procedures, financial needs include NYC seeking an additional $4B in emergency aid.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/27/us/ma...ing/index.html

Has anyone heard what's happening with road construction? The I-290 bridge over Salt Creek near Addison/Elmhurst is getting rebuilt. They have a whole section with rebar done waiting for concrete. I'm mostly working from home but I still go into my lab in Elmhurst about once a week, and there has been absolutely no progress, no workers on site for weeks now.

I still see local street work happening. Does anyone know if major road construction projects are shut down?