i hated strollers. one of my first memories is being claustrophobic in one.

Rail News - CTA awards $25.6 million contract for O'Hare branch rehab project
 

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=...EgHHlJW0Vr7u2Q

The Chicago Transit Board last week awarded a $25.6 million contract to construction firm F.H. Paschen and S.N. Nielsen to renovate five O'Hare branch Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) stations.

The renovation is part of a $492 million modernization project known as "Your New Blue," first announced in December 2013......

Transit riders are warned to brace for possible service cuts, fare hikes
 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...ry.html#page=1

By Jon Hilkevitch
Chicago Tribune

Transit officials Wednesday laid out a grim scenario of service cuts on buses and trains, fare increases, layoffs and commuters returning to their cars in droves as early as summer if lawmakers approve Gov. Bruce Rauner's plan to cut nearly $170 million to Chicago-area mass transit.....

it looks like we're going to have plenty of nice stations and no trains to service them

^^^ I have a feeling it will all be magically resolved after Rahm wins reelection.

i wish i was that optimistic

Race Card being Played: And after he does win reelection Louis, the Black Community B E T T E R have a good 4 year supply of Industrial Strength Lubricant; and lots of pillows to very gently attempt to sit down on (Ouuuccchhh).

WAIT, NO -- I am not playing any damm "card" -- It's THE GAWD DAMNED F 'King T R U T H ! !

Are you saying transit, specifically CTA rail improvements over the past 4 years, haven't been equitable?

No, I don't think he's making that specific claim (but I welcome his argument if he is).

Most likely, the argument he is making doesn't have a place in the Transit thread.

See the fourth image on this page: http://www.grayline.20m.com/photo4.html it is a geographically accurate map of the city, with pretty colored lines representing CTA "L" routes; except that the lower right part of the map has no "L" service anywhere east of Cottage Grove Ave..

There is a lot of Chicago population east of Cottage Grove Ave. (N O T equitable, and I'm tired of not pointing it out - as it should be accounted for, and acting like it's OK, and acting like I don't know the reason for it)

Bonus Question Class: Does anyone know why the Dan Ryan Expy. alignment is where it is along Wentworth Ave.?

Notice how even on official CTA Maps the large SE unserved area, with a convenient CTA Logo to fill up the space (N O T equitable):
http://www.transitchicago.com/assets...tatrainmap.png

But alas, there is no solution......

I take it his argument is that the administration is racist because it isn't building the Gray Line, which is flawed logic considering the amount of money going into rail transit improvements on the south side/black communities over the past 4 years. I really hate when people play the race card on illogical bases it just comes off as extremely ignorant.

At least they have metra coverage. The Green Line use to serve the community much further west, but started to be scaled back around Harold Washington's term.

Given population densities I've always thought the northwest side of the city was the most screwed as far as L lines. You have the blue line and then that's basically it except for the tail end of the brown line.

Most of the current administration wasn't even born when the Dan Ryan was developed. The mayor was a baby.

Because most expressways were routed along rail corridors, and they needed an expressway going south. Putting it in the narrow swath between the Rock Island and the Chicago & Western Indiana railroads was logical, since that area was blighted and did not contain major business districts or neighborhood centers. It was admittedly a racial boundary, but putting the expressway somewhere else would have been more destructive to existing communities and expensive. If we were planning the expressway today, we'd probably put it in the same place, regardless of the skin color of the politicians and planners behind it.

Think about it this way: would the communities in the Black Belt have been better served by a huge hulking viaduct running down the center of King Drive, or a depressed expressway (with a new transit line!) skirting the edge of their neighborhood?

The big exception to the railroad-corridor alignment was the Eisenhower, the first radial expressway, which was built in place of the old Garfield Park branch of the L (imagine tearing up the North Side today with a block-wide trench where the Red Line used to be). That ended up being horrendously expensive, so the planners shifted to the lower-cost land next to noisy, smoky railroads for all future expressways.

Has anyone been by Wilson lately? Has demolition work started?

Yes, quite a bit.

They have demolished a few buildings, and started to lay foundations but it doesn't seem like much has been done tbh. Demolition of the west purple line tracks is imminent.

.

Im curious, how much does everyone think it would cost to install sound walls across the platforms in the highway median stations?

^ I've thought about this a bit. For sight lines, you probably want transparent sound walls.

http://www.acrylite.net/sites/dc/Dow...n%20Bridge.pdf

In that link from 2003, it was $2.8M for 1550' of acrylic sound wall, or $1806/foot. A 10-car CTA train platform is about 500' long and you need both sides, so you'd spend about $2.3M per station in 2015 dollars. Not insignificant, but you could do the entire Dan Ryan branch for only $20M, half the cost of one new station.

Nearly two grand a linear foot is insane. You could probably install inch thick bullet proof glass for that. And you know it will look like shiz after a few months with all the road grime, salt and brake dust. What they should have done was build a walled off station structure when they did the rebuild that essentially made a tunnel like station completely insulated from the sound and filth of the expressway.

I'm sure retrofitting and instillation would bump up the cost a LOT more then that but at those prices you quote it would be a relative bargain and much needed in my opinion.

Exactly. Basically line they plan to do to the 9th st. station and what the D.C. Metro Orange Line has running through the highway median in Virginia is all that would be needed. Just a brick or cement barrier that would at least direct or absorb the exhaust smoke/noise upwards and outward.

And a real barrier that would keep the stations even just 5-10 degrees warmer in the winter by blocking the wind and making the heat lamps much more efficient/effective by having a quasi-cocoon trapping at least some of the heat.

Again, a very shortsighted move not including such aspects in the Blue Line rehabilitation plans.

I doubt it. They might need an annual cleaning, but similar walls have been installed in cold climates before - there's one on the Marquette Interchange in Milwaukee, it's never looked awful.

Yeah the one in MKE always looks good. They kind of remind me of hockey dasher boards

Open Gangways
 

Why doesn't the CTA do this?

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/8/8365805/open-gangways

are you kidding me? people claim their precious little spot near the train car doors and do not want to move, period. even with the newly configured cars with plenty of overhead bars and straps to hold onto, i'm still pushing past passengers who do not want to move further in (due to their precious little spot near the door).

why would this work any better when you'd have to beg and struggle to get people to move out of your way in order to get someplace where there is more space? i don't know about europe, but here, i'd say good luck.

CTA historically has been very conservative in the engineering and design of railcars. Over the decades, that has meant we seldom had the sexiest looking rolling stock—but it's also avoided a lot of big headaches with fancy prima donna equipment built by aerospace companies who thought the transit market would be easy to get into.

It's also seemed important for all lines to use the same equipment pool, which can be maintained at the same shops, which have pits and transfer tables the size of a married pair. And a lot of the network was running two-car trains until fairly recently, so not much point in ordering equipment that can't easily be broken down that far.

ok, the two car train thing makes sense... and if it is only two cars, the benefit is negligible...

While open gangways may have been a whizbang technology 20 years ago, it is not anymore. It is a very mature technology. Light rail vehicles here in the US have been using it for a very long time.

That phrase to me says that this may be the right time to start looking at open gangways.

Notwithstanding, you could still place an order for X 4-car trainsets and Y 2-car trainsets. That gives the flexibility of building trains to basically any length. The benefits of 2-car open gangway trainsets are not as great as that of larger sets, but they are not entirely negligible.

One thing I wonder is why the specifications used for bidding for railcars in the US tend to be so prescriptive. Maybe the agencies own the designs and hope to save money. But I think they would save even more money by giving manufacturers more flexibility, thus allowing then to bid with more off-the-shelf equipment.

I will acknowledge that the CTA will absolutely need stainless steel due to the proliferation of freeway median lines and the inevitable impacts of salt spray, which I suppose disqualifies many existing designs so maybe that plays a role, but I still think giving manufacturers some leeway would result in better vehicles and more competition.

^But where would you repair these new four-car trainsets? The wheels have to be trued every few weeks, so you'd need new four-car pits at Skokie, 54th, Midway, and possibly Forest Park.

Such agency-specific bid requirements are a pretty understandable reaction to history. After the industry declined so much in the 1960s and 70s, with the loss of Budd and Pullman, there were periods of entire years when no carbuilder had any orders booked, so they couldn't keep the plants open. Then during the Energy Crisis, UMTA/FTA tried to push for standardization and screwed up big time (the White Book bus disaster, or SOAC). Right on the heels of that came the bad experiences many agencies had with the rather naïve aerospace companies like Rohr and Boeing-Vertol and Grumman—and that in turn was compounded by the Buy America requirements and then state and local agency "buy local" requirements that ensured fragmentation of the industry and more work for the spec-writers than the shot-welders.

Operating agencies end up with the headaches of running equipment for many decades after the departure of the politicians who handed over the big fake check or broke ground for the local assembly plant. The wisest agencies have learned to protect themselves, by being extremely picky about acceptance or by gaming the specs to exclude companies they've been disappointed with.

The CTA doesn't need articulated train sets. It needs tracks, signals, traction power, and trains in a good state of repair plus fixing a few kinks that will enable shorter headways.

Fortunately they seem to be largely focused on that in recent years.

....So with Rahm being reelected, is he going to ram the Ashland BRT system through now?

The Cta will consider open gangway trains after they are literally the last transit agency on the planet not already using them. So coming Spring 2050 "NEW innovative walk through L cars with fancy high tech plug doors!!!"

Good point given that it wasn't until the 1950s that they let the conductors stand inside the trains.

with rahm being re-elected he will probably attempt privatizing the entire system.

New topic for discussion - managed toll express lanes
 

Roughly 578,000 people travel into Chicago's central area for work each day. Roughly half of those people take transit. Roughly half of the remainder must drive.

http://www.cityofchicago.org/dam/cit...sportation.pdf

Given that those numbers are for Chicago's entire central area, I'd estimate that roughly 150,000 workers drive into Chicago's core central area - i.e. Loop/East Loop/West Loop/River North/Streeterville - every day.

Here's my question for the forum. On any given day, how many of those 150,000 workers would be willing to pay $30 for access to a tolled, managed express lane that would guarantee them savings of roughly 30-40 minutes round trip compared to congested public lanes? I'd guess roughly 10%, or 15,000 commuters. In other words, on an average workday, I'd guess there are 15,000 core central area commuters willing to pay a toll of $30 if that would cut their round trip drive by 30-40 minutes. Would there really be that many people on a daily basis? I think so. Think rich executives and law firm partners who would use the lane regularly. Even if they took the lane every day, it would cost them about $7,500 annually, which is a drop in the bucket for professionals who charge $1,000 for one billable hour. And non-rich folks would take the lane one way for $15 occasionally as well - think of workers who are running late or who have emergencies.

That's a potential revenue stream of roughly $112 million annually. ($30 x 15,000 x 250 days) And that rough guess is based only on revenue from downtown workers on their commuting trips. Express trips to the airports could offer a substantial additional revenue stream. Personally speaking, I would pay $15 one way to cut 30-40 minutes off a rush hour cab ride to O'Hare. And, these days traffic sucks on the weekend too. How many suburbanites would pay a sizable toll to get into an express lane to get to downtown shopping, restaurants, or theaters?

So, my best guess is that tolled/managed express lanes on Chicago's expressways could generate more than $150 million annually in revenue. I'd guess roughly $200 million. There is at least one American example of a managed toll lane generating significant revenues. The SR-91 managed toll express lane in Orange County generated $43 million in annual revenue in 2009.

http://www.trforum.org/journal/downl...upancyToll.pdf

That's just one toll lane, on one road, serving an area of the country that doesn't have the concentration of traffic and wealth that the Loop does.

So, how much annual revenue do you think tolled/managed lanes on each of Chicago's major freeways could generate?

I have some creative ideas on how express lanes could be added to Chicago's expressways in a cost-effective manner, but first I wanted to see what the forum thinks about how much revenue could be generated by such lanes.

Man this conversation really takes a toll.

Honestly, the easiest way to get suburbanites out of their cars when they come into the city is better Metra service.

Improving the Metra lines to run every 30 minutes during off-peak hours would really increase their utility for those who are at least partially traveling during non-peak hours. UP-N, Rock Island, and Metra Electric would be really easy to do considering those lines have little to no freight.

That's a much better idea than spending money to rebuild the expressways to add a couple toll lanes, and it's also a lot more equitable.

Considering the way things are really ran here, I doubt we'll see toll lanes or more Metra service at all.

His supporters in the wards it runs through have come out against BRT, so he might hold off .

The new 35th ped bridge is moving along pretty well now. Last night they had LSD down to one lane in each direction and were both putting up the steel for the new bridge and removing the old one. As of about 1AM the beams for the eastern span were up, and the old western span was on a truck.

Sorry about the blurry image.
04/11/15

http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a5...D720/ry%3D480/

http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a5...D720/ry%3D480/

That is not actually the bridge - it is temporary supports for formwork. The bridge will be a cast concrete box girder, held up by a cable suspension system. It will span from the "mainland" by Lake Park Ave to the Lakefront Trail with only one large mast in the middle and no other supports.

The details are actually really advanced and thought-out, this will be lightyears ahead of other bridges in Chicago.

http://burnhamplan100.lib.uchicago.e...et_bridge1.jpg

Holy crap. :slob:

Looks like the first block of red concrete bus lanes has been poured for Loop Link! This is integral colored concrete, so it shouldn't fade like the Jackson bus lane or the red stamped crosswalks around town.

http://i57.tinypic.com/313fuzc.jpg

Tolled Highways
 

^The Loop BRT is going to be really awesome. Can't wait for this to be done.

To the discussion of the tolls, aren't all the highways leading into the Loop already tolled? I have only driven on a few of them so I'm not totally sure. But would you be adding an additional fee for these special lanes?

The first thing that comes to mind when reading your post is, how do they add toll lanes without taking away from the lanes everyone is already allowed to use? Meaning, are they going to add additional infrastructure or are they just going to take away a lane that already exists? But it sounds like you've got these solutions already and I'm curious to hear them.

I don't know how many people would really be willing to pay $15 each way. That sounds pretty extravagant for a commute. But then again, people blow money on worse things all the time.

All the freeways leading to downtown Chicago are free. It's likely that converting 1 lane on them to a toll lane is politically unpalatable. New construction would be fair game for tolling, but in reality that will require significant expansion of viaducts, tunnels, trenches, etc and would result in very high land acquisition and construction costs, even for one additional lane.

The other option would be to add a tolled viaduct over the existing expressways, but these would be unsightly, and would probably have to be elevated some 15-20 feet above the ground.

As for tolls, I think that $15 would still attract a lot of drivers. In Minneapolis, where I'm from, the HO/T lanes on two freeways feeding the core have tolls upwards of $8 and are used quite well.

^ You guys talked it up, though this isn't for the city...

http://my.chicagotribune.com/#sectio.../p2p-83314638/

CTA now finished their EA for the Lawrence-Bryn Mawr project on the Red Line.

$1.3B for 1.4 miles of track, at the astounding price of $928M per mile. Every other country in the world can build a subway cheaper than this.

Weirdly, they are talking about preserving portions of the old embankment, even as they build a new, wider, taller viaduct above it:

http://i58.tinypic.com/jturu0.jpg

928 MM /mile is outrageous. $150MM max would be at least understandable & palatable, given costs elsewhere (US & Europe, anyway) -- except for NYC.

Costs here, like elsewhere in the US, are too high - but to be fair, that's the bill not just for constructing elevated track, but demolishing and then rebuilding a structure over which runs a 24-hour operating line.

Yeah, I would guess it would cost half as much, perhaps even less, if they could just shut the entire line down for 2 years, like they did with the Green Line in 1994. But that ain't gonna happen to the busiest stretch of transit in Chicago. A billion per mile is about what the original projection for the subway alternative was for the RPM.