I'm understand that CTA looked at QR and a couple of similar codes, but the targets would not fit in the available space on the sign blades, and it's not yet clear which particular flavor of them will become a widespread standard.

Why are there red Toronto streetcars?

Because the designers wanted to suggest the possibility of light-rail platforms in the future, and Google's 3D Warehouse happens to offer a free model of the Toronto streetcars.

Chicago doesn't have any streetcars or trams currently, so it's not like there's a more accurate model they could use.

I do agree that the positioning of the streetcars in the image is a bit odd, but as I said - it doesn't represent an actual design, just a future concept.

Interesting. At first I wondered if Chicago was planning to buy the old units when Toronto's new ones arrive lol!

I've never heard of the 3D warehouse before; I'll have to check it out.

Is extending the Red Line really a good idea?
 

Would it be a boondiggle?

Please refer to my angry rant at SSC in response to a suburban style development, including a gas station, proposed adjacent to the Garfield stop on the Green Line.

Considering this, as well as that worthless 'Metropolis' development near another L stop on the South Side, on top of the already suburban shopping development that has pervaded the south side near the Red line (87th St, I believe), in addition to the obvious failure in getting any sort of dense, mixed-use projects to come to fruition (47th St projects which are basically hanging onto life), let me ask this question:

Why are these areas served by heavy rail? If you're seriously going to acquiesce while some developer puts a gas station and a ocean of parking near a heavy rail stop, then why are you trying to extend that heavy rail into a part of town that clearly will not support dense development?

The Orange Line is yet another example of what I'm talking about. Especially closer to Midway, it has had the marvelous effect of supporting strip center after strip center development, with perhaps a few decent projects popping up as one gets closer to downtown.

I leave this as an open ended question to anyone out there: why extend the Red Line, given all of this?

It all depends on your view of transit. The stations on the Dan Ryan Red Line and the Orange Line don't anchor New Urbanist transit villages, but they DO have substantial ridership. The South Side is full of transit-dependent, low-income people who do, in fact, ride buses to the train. The 87th Street bus is the busiest line in the city, and many of those riders are transferring to the Red Line.

The Dan Ryan Red Line has an average ridership of 5,118 boardings per station per day. The Brown Line has an average of 2,346 boardings per station per day. Which one serves the denser, more urban part of the city?



Granted, the South Main Line (Green Line) has an average of 1052 boardings per station per day, and is arguably a huge waste of resources. But even this bolsters my point about the counter-intuitiveness of transit service - two lines serve the same corridor, and the one in the expressway median has higher ridership.

Among transit-dependent populations like the one on the South Side, it doesn't matter whether there's a dense, walkable environment surrounding transit stops. In fact, creating a dense walkable environment is probably not possible without gentrification. The rents charged on the South Side aren't able to justify the cost of new construction without significant subsidy - and I doubt you want your stations surrounded by dense buildings full of Section 8 tenants.

I see where you're coming from, but I just don't think it's possible to generate the kinds of development you're looking for around transit stops on the South Side, given the economic conditions down there. Even those retail developments are often quite challenging to pull together, since the developer not only has to convince the banks to lend in an impoverished area, but he also has to convince the retailers to serve that area.

I'm all for putting in transit-oriented zoning restrictions in areas closer to downtown or the lakefront that are likely to gentrify - areas where significant new residential construction is likely in the next 15-20 years. But further south is just too much. If anything, these areas should have as many restrictions removed as possible, to try and generate some spontaneous economic activity that might be stifled otherwise.

^ While true, there is more to seeing the value in heavy rail than just transit ridership.

When I look at the return on this investment, I think about "what will this expensive infrastructure generate in the form of real estate development for this part of town?" I would argue that you can get developers to build that kind of crap (gas stations, strip centers, etc etc) even without the transit investment. So why make the heavy rail investment at all?

For example: if Developer A is going to build a strip center at the intersection of x and y that is designed to be automobile-friendly and pedestrian hostile, and you can get it without the infrastructure investment, then why spend hundreds of millions of dollars extending a heavy rail line to that intersection if that very same developer would end up building that exact same project anyway?

And that ties to my analogy of extending the Red Line. Generating a few extra thousand rides cannot possibly be the only incentive to extending that line, considering the cost. If there is no real estate investment of the type that CANNOT happen without that line extension, then what's the point?

That kind of logic doesn't work politically. The mission of the CTA is not to generate land development, it is to provide affordable transportation to the residents of the city. CTA has a market on the Far South Side that is currently underserved by transit in proportion to its population and its level of transit dependence.

I don't like certain aspects of the plan - UP's insistence that the line be built outside of their ROW is complete bullshit, and CTA should fight them in the courts and in the press. Why should hundreds of Chicagoans have to lose their homes for a new transit line when a corridor already exists, and it has open land? Such a move might also lower the land acquisition costs of the line substantially, thereby increasing its cost-effectiveness and likelihood of Federal funding.

One big reason why the strip center is being built at Garfield is because of its easy access from the Dan Ryan, and because there's so much open land. Ditto for Metropolis up at 40th. The Red Line extension won't be running through urban prairies, or along an expressway. Of the station sites chosen, only one has major open land available for redevelopment (Michigan/115th). CTA has already noted that site's possibility for TOD, and has initiated a planning process. IIRC, they mentioned a grocery store, which would be a welcome addition to the neighborhood. But, since the project is being publicly planned, you have every right to attend the meetings and to voice your disapproval.

What a bunch of whiny people. Ever heard of the Purple Line?

I would guess that UP-N and the Purple Line largely serve different central area markets. People for whom the Purple Line is faster probably already take it. And for those for who it isn't (primarily people in the West Loop), the time difference can be nearly 50%.

A big part of UP-N selling point is that they provide better service than the CTA Purple Line does. So of course people are going to complain when that higher level of service is reduced. Plus, probably very few UP-N riders are truly transit-dependent, so it's in Metra's best interest to keep people from defecting to cars, even moreso than it is for the CTA.

I have little sympathy for an affluent suburb with redundant rail links to downtown being temporarily inconvenienced for a major infrastructure project that will only ensure that continued level of access for decades to come.

Certainly taking the Purple Line isn't optimal for some of those riders but it would still faster than making the drive (as threatened in the article) at rush times.

Can somebody make these North Shore people aware that $80 million is all it will take to maintain uninterrupted service during construction AND give Metra a third track to allow for future expansion?

I'm sure the $80 million would magically materialize from somewhere, with all the influential people who ride that train.

9 years is "temporary" ?

Yes, unless they want to have the line shut down for a couple years to complete the work faster or go with ardecila's suggestion for another 80M.

You can't do this kind of work on an active rail line without compromising schedules. Maybe CTA will revise the routing of the Purple Line to speed operations and pick up some of these customers.

I don't understand why it takes so long to rebuild a rail bridge. IDOT rebuilds road bridges all the time with traffic going over them. They are currently rebuilding the Lawrence ave bridge over I-90 and it only takes a year with all the traffic going over it. They completely rebuilt miles of expressway recently in only a couple years with cars going over it every second. This rail bridge is only 100 ft long too. It should only take a weekend to replace. Take out the old bridge and pop in a new one.

nevermind.

^What do you mean by "this rail bridge?" Metra is replacing 22 bridges on the UP-North line in the city. At the same time, they're elevating the track grade to increase clearance, and spreading the track centers at UP's insistence.

http://i55.tinypic.com/2yuhe21.png

On the Bi-Level

^ Buttload of work. I think Metra has failed, though, in its PR mission with the public: Why don't they just say they are rebuilding X thousand feet, or X miles, of track? All newspaper articles refer only to the number of bridges, and don't mention improvements in vertical clearances or horizontal clearances. People would appreciate the scale of the project a little more rather than just envisioning magical "pop-the-bridge-out" teams swooping around the northside.

Some sexy renders wouldn't hurt either, of what people can expect to replace all the ancient viaducts / vehicle underpasses. Complete with happy families with strollers out for an evening walk along Ravenswood, etc.

Oh I see now. Every article I've read about it just says they are replacing the bridges and nothing else. It didn't say anything about redoing and realigning all the miles of tracks along that length too. Metra should of said all that they are going to do. I don't have the inside info like you guys seems to do.

Are they rebuilding or changing all the viaducts as well?

Why do they have to spread the track centers?

Metra hasn't been very clear about this to the public.

^Wishful thinking, but maybe they're making room in between the tracks for future catenary;)?

I'm not sure what you mean by "viaducts." Every place where the railroad crosses above a street is getting a new through-girder bridge to span the street.

I'm unclear on the rationale for the wider track centers, but I suspect it's a UP systemwide standard. So they're insisting on it here even though there are no curves where freight trains might meet and tilt due to speed, and even though it's unlikely they'll ever carry enormous windmills or pressure vessels through here on flatcars.

Does catenary require more spacing?

Mr Downtown, as far as carrying wide-load cargo, presumably they could just do it at nighttime and have all the clearance they want without worrying about passing trains?

The $64k question here is, spreading the tracks is largely meaningless unless ... they're going to do it all the way to Zion or Kenosha or wherever. So, are there plans, beyond the theoretical, to rebuild further dozens of miles?

Catenary would only require more spacing if you put the line poles between the tracks.

Day or night, it's absurd to ever again expect any freight operations along the Shore Line, at least south of Highland Park. The line into Ogilvie is a cul-de-sac. Any freight to or from Proviso moves via the New Line. That's what makes me think the UP is just saying "oh, there's no reason for it; it's just our rule." Same as they're doing with the C&EI down in Roseland.

"Viaducts" I mean the elevated hilly embankment that the tracks sit on. I don't know what that's called. Are they changing that part or just the tracks? I still don't quite understand why they are doing this for an 8 year inconvenience. It's hardly a temporary thing. I think they should wait for more money if they can't do it quicker with the resources they have. At that rate it would take 100 years for them to redo all the track to Milwaukee. I kind of like the old bridges. They look really cool with the old rivets, just need a paint job or something.

Are the bridges really in that bad a shape? What's really going on with this project? There's thousands of these bridges all over Chicago that look the same. If so why aren't they replacing more of them if it's a safety hazard. I still don't get it.

Of course there are capacity constraints elsewhere as well, but it's a shame the new viaducts aren't being built to allow for future (re-)installation of a third track.

The embankments are just fine. They're not retained like the Red/Purple Line is, and the weeds and trees prevent most erosion. They really don't need a whole lot of maintenance, and they're good pretty much forever, unless they begin to subside.

It's the bridges that need replacement, because they're decaying and because replacing the bridges en masse is the easiest way to add clearance to the roadways below.

Since Metra is switching to a through-deck girder design, the plate girder between the two tracks will stick up 5-6 feet, and it will be fairly wide. This may require an increase in the track spacing to make sure the girder doesn't intrude on the train's clearance envelope.

^ I think I understand what you mean though I'm not sure what a "plate" girder is. But more relevantly, is the upshot that they will build no viaducts having supporting columns between roadway lanes or between roadway and sidewalk?

Also, how do you know all this stuff ?

^I don't think there are currently any viaducts on this line with center columns (except the special situation at Lincoln/Addison). Can you think of one? As far as I can tell, the current bridges all are through-deck girders, so the track centers wouldn't need to change on that account. I would imagine that the new bridges will have slightly deeper girders on the sides and will span from abutment to abutment without the piers next to the sidewalk as you currently have at Leland.

Would love to see them do something to the Addison/Lincoln bridge to make it less overbearing. It's a hulking unattractive behemoth.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3403/...0a186d85_o.jpg

Paint would be a start, but that must be WAY tooo hard and expensive.http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/images/smilies/koko.gif

It looks like the bridges south of Montose already have girders that stick up higher and don't have column supports on the side walk. Perhaps, they are newer.

Irving Park and Clybourn have column supports in the middle of the street.

There is an interesting solution to this situation in Evanston at the 5-way intersection of Ridge, Green Bay, and Emerson: After trouble with graffiti, the sides of the giant viaduct were covered with fabric. Presumably it's a quasi-temporary solution, but it really was carried out rather well.

^ Good news here. However, after seeing what is planned near the 55th street stop (Food4Less, gas station) I am becoming less and less hopeful of any "transit oriented development" despite what these architectural planners are presenting at these "visioning sessions", as described in the article.

I would love something like this in Chicago

http://home.rebstech.com/wp-content/...do--renfro.jpg

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/...-downtown.html

September 27, 2010

Daley hopes Asian investors will bet on high-speed rail to downtown

Share | Posted by Hal Dardick at 12:11 p.m.

Mayor Richard Daley returned from his trip to Asia convinced foreign investors might put up the money to pay for fast, high-end rail service from O’Hare International Airport to downtown.

“I think they are very interested — China, Korea, Japan, the Middle East — yes,” Daley said today when asked if business people he met in China and South Korea might fund the effort. “There are many, many interests. You have to have a high-speed train from the international airport downtown. What that would do is that would rebuild our commercial market and our hospitality industry.”

Before leaving on the trip, Daley said looking for rail financing for the effort was one reason he was headed overseas

....

Daley repeatedly noted that it took him seven minutes to get from the airport to near downtown in Shanghai. “Just think, it’s seven minutes, they can get almost to downtown,” he said. “Seven minutes. That is unbelievable.”

...

And how is NY's High Line like the active commuter railroad bridge at Addison & Lincoln?

Sounds like Daley has seen the light and will realize there is no way you can accomplish rapid high speed operations by a ridiculous passing system on the Blue Line. The airport train requires non-CTA ROW and Stansted Express style operations.

^ :multibow :thrasher:

That would be so incredible if Chicago were to achieve anything close to this

I believe that this bridge is slated to be replaced in the next 5 years. It's part of the ongoing UP-N bridge replacement project being discussed. In other words you won't see any paint.

The best we can hope for is proper zoning so that eventually something transit oriented can be built. At this point, there is not enough spending power in those communities to be able to dictate any kind of building form or land use standards.

Probably old news....

This is the railcar order that will kill off the rest of the StLC Highliners - unfortunately they will look just like the ones that were delivered a few years ago. The Highliners were much paraded for their modern design and were really great looking cars when they were new in the orange and dark brown/black ICRR livery. The new electric bi-levels as you know look just like a standard 40 year old Metra gallery car except equipped with pantographs on the roof. One giant step back IMO.

http://www.railroad.net/articles/rai...a/metra_06.jpg
railroad.net


We'll miss you Highliners:

http://www.davesrailpix.com/ic/jpg/ic087.jpg
daverailpix.com

The existing zoning code is plenty "transit friendly" around just about every transit station, particularly along the south branch of the Green Line. Near the Green line, commercial streets are almost universally zoned for relatively dense (FAR 2.2+) mixed-use, and nearby residential streets are zoned for multi-family (at generally 3-4 units per city lot, which adds up quick if it's fully built out as in the north side). The issue there is that in practice, the bulk of development just makes an end run around the zoning, either as a "Planned Development" or through a zoning change to the C2 auto-oriented commercial zoning to allow the gas stations, drive-thru fast food, and strip malls that constitute economic development in those neighborhoods.

That said, existing zoning in most of West Pullman and Roseland is decidedly less transit-oriented than that farther north in Grand Boulevard, Englewood, Woodlawn, etc., with most far south side residential zoning being for small-lot single family houses and commercial zoning generally only allowing ~2 story buildings.

Shanghai has a maglev for an Airport Express. It cost the equivalent of $1.33 billion dollars - and that's with virtually no land acquisition costs and low, low Chinese labor prices.

Here, the same thing would easily cost upwards of $6 billion to find an ROW and build a guideway durable enough for a Chicago winter.

I'm just hoping we can get investors to fund $100-200 million for upgrades to the Metra NC-S to allow O'Hare express trains and an extension/redesign of the O'Hare People Mover.

I am happy that CTA is putting the Red Line Extension at the top of the priority list... it has a compelling narrative behind it, unlike the somewhat ho-hum, value-engineered, watered-down one-station extensions to the Orange and Yellow Lines.

It provides transit service to poor areas that are fairly dense, so ridership should be respectable. It has the potential for a big park-and-ride off the Bishop Ford at 130th.

The line's design also seems to be in line with its projected ridership - it's not like the Circle Line, where the massive cost of a subway is balanced against only moderate ridership gains.

If the line is successful, it can be used as a tool to pitch further rail expansion in the city. Since the Orange Line was successful, I fully expect this similar project to succeed as well.

As great as extending the Red Line is, I'd rather see them restore the express buses that got cut last year, like the X9, X80 and X49.

Of course, that's not how funding works, but if there was a way to do it, it would be great.

How many Metra Expansions do they have planned? 4-8? Ikno here there restoring alot of lines , is it the same there?

No it is not part of that project. The Addison/Lincoln viaduct is very conspicuously omitted. The first phase is 11 bridges north of there and the second phase is 11 bridges south of there.

In terms of new routes, the only 2 on the drawing board are:
1) the SES (SouthEast Service) through Chicago Heights and Crete: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SouthEa...ce_%28Metra%29 This would be roughly a "restoration" albeit with different routing on the city/terminal end

2) the STAR Line: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburba...te_%28Metra%29 which suburban politicians seem to love and everyone else just scratches their head.

The other major expansions planned are on the UP-W and UP-NW lines, projects which are primarily capacity expansions via signalling, trackwork, and yard expansions to provide greater levels of express service and more frequent peak period service.

If a privately funded express train from O'Hare to downtown is ever built, I will eat my underwear.

Let that be known.