cool my only suggestio would be to continue that extended blue line further north to run into yellow line..effectively creating a tertiary super loop

I wanted to do that actually, but I was tending to keep my new lines within city limits (yes, I know several CTA lines actually do leave city limits). I'm not sure what would be the political ramifications of extending that line further up the Edens and more importantly, how and where to connect it with to the Yellow Line.

I'll re-post the link since what we're talking about is on the previous page.

My only suggestion would be to completely eliminate the East 63rd Branch of the Green Line. The neighborhood hates the thing anyway. Instead, run the Green Line southeast along South Chicago Avenue to 71st. Then cut east and run the Green Line along the South Chicago branch of the Silver Line.

That way, the community around the East 63rd branch is happier, and you can run higher train frequencies on the Main Branch of the Silver Line. Basically, it just simplifies operations.

I'm pretty sure the Silver Line Proposal (or some form of it) will be the cornerstone of the city's Olympic transit plan. The secondary components would probably be Airport Express and either the Cicero Line or the Circle Line. The city may also attempt to link the Silver Line to the Red/Green Lines by using the St. Charles Air Line after it is vacated, which is a bit more feasible than your Roosevelt Road alignment.

Also - the Kenwood branch cannot easily be connected to the Metra lines on the lakeshore - Lake Park Crescent was built where the end of the Kenwood branch used to be.

Thanks for the suggestions, Ardecila. I've never been a big fan of the East 63rd branch either, but I was trying to build upon what exists as much as I could. However, should the stretch of new Green line on 71st between South Chicago and the Silver line be subway or 'L'? Subway would be more expensive to build, but I can't see the community there being any more receptive to new over-the-street L, or worse, demolishing homes along 71st. It's a short stretch, but it's a problem.

I too feel the Silver Line will be central to the Olympic proposal. It would provide service to most of the south side venues.

Forgive me, but is the St. Charles Air Line the stretch of rail that runs just north of 16th street? I wanted to use that, and I would have had I known it was going to be vacated. I'll make that change.

Finally, by "Kenwood Branch", you mean my Gold Line run between King Drive and LSD? Most of that used what I thought was an old ROW, but I thought there might be an issue crossing Drexel Blvd due to new developments. Google really needs some new pics!

Thanks again!

It would be a quick and dirty, cut and cover subway, like the one they built on the Blue Line under Kimball to connect the Milwaukee L to the Kennedy Line. There's even a convenient vacant lot at South Chicago & 71st for a tunnel portal.

Yes it is. It is currently used by mostly Amtrak and some freight trains to access the IL Central lakefront tracks. A new connection is planned at Grand Crossing that will allow Amtrak and freight trains to bypass those lakefront tracks, so they won't need the St. Charles Air Line anymore. If Google Earth is to be believed, that connection already existed, but was torn out. All they need to do is rebuild some existing bridges and lay track.

Agreed on the pics. After checking in Google Earth, I found that Jazz on The Boulevard AND Lake Park Crescent stand in the way of the Kenwood branch. The upside is that those developments are all small-scale houses, so not too much has to be torn down to build 3 blocks more of elevated tracks.

Canadian National to buy EJ&E
 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...0,750826.story


$300 million deal eases urban routes
By James P. Miller | Tribune staff reporter
September 27, 2007

What will this do to the planned STAR line?

^^^

Can someone refresh me about this STAR line proposal or send me a link or something?

Somebody mentioned the Mandarin Hotel project preserving a ROW for a transit line. Does anyone know any more about this?

When are the new CTA rail cars scheduled to arrive?

^ Interesting. I'd love to know when the city plans to implement this. Isn't the Central Area TIF supposed to pay for this?

Last I heard the Blue Line was scheduled to start putting the new cars into use in late 2008 - early 2009.

Great! I am very hopeful this thing moves forward and is executed well, as the pace of development along the river is obviously roaring right now. This transitway will help buildings like Waldorf-Astoria become a reality, among other obvious benefits.

I really hope a forumer or two can make it to this meeting and report back to us with the good news!

Thanks, Looks neat, I hope they actually do this. If they did this, got rid of the slow zones in the El, built a circle line on the El, and actually passed an adequte funding bill, then Chicago's light rail would be awesome.

I'm going to plead ignorance, but where is Carroll Ave. and what exactly is being proposed? Some kind of light rail? BRT? Is this a CTA project? Metra?

Carroll Avenue is a wide alley that runs just north of the main branch of the river. It starts underneath the Merchandise Mart, and runs behind 300 North LaSalle, Quaker Oats, Marina City, IBM, and Trump. It ends on Lower Michigan. The Transitway would continue from the Mart across the river and then south to Union Station and Northwestern Station. On the east end, it would fork into three, and continue down Illinois to Navy Pier, up Michigan Avenue to Water Tower, and up Fairbanks to Northwestern Hospital.

The Transitway proposal is just that, a transitway. It's still conceptual, so they have not yet chosen a transit format. Given the low cost, however, most people have assumed that BRT will eventually be chosen. However, light rail and heavy rail are in consideration.

Has there ever been talk of putting a Red Line station in at Kinzie Street? Kinda redundant given that there's already a station 1/4 mile both north and south from there, but it would make transfers to / from Carroll Avenue a lot easier.

No. The Red Line is on a steep incline at Kinzie to get under the river.

No. Infill subway stations are absurdly expensive. There would be a transfer facility to Brown/Purple at Merchandise Mart, and a branch of the transit way might link up to the Grand/Red Line stop depending on the technology chosen.

While I agree its unnecessary, expensive and would never happen, subway stations on inclines do exist and are pretty interesting. The Rector Street station on the R line in New York is my favorite of any I've encountered. Because of the incline caused by the tunnels' decent under the East River, the station serves as a geographical marker much more than other stations do. I find that interesting:

http://images.nycsubway.org/i71000/img_71782.jpg
nycsubway.org

New York subway cars have air brakes. Chicago rapid transit cars only have dynamic and track brakes.

Mega Bus service expanding
 

Perfect price for College students!!!

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=50741&src=143

Megabus is expanding its offerings of bright blue bus rides from Chicago to include Bloomington-Normal. The express bus service launched in Chicago last year will begin offering daily service to and from Bloomington-Normal on Monday. Megabus officials say tickets can be had for as little as $1. All booking for Megabus must be done online at www.megabus.com Megabus operates daily rides to 13 cities in the Midwest, including Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

Brownline "L" platform mistake? Handicapped Accessibility?

First does anyone know if the floor height on the "L" trains is a set height throught the system?

Today at the new Belmont "L" station the operator had to come out of the cab to get a ramp (which doesn't fit the train door and had to be used backwards) because the train is about 2-3 inches too high for the wheelchair to get over.

Will they be putting one more layer of floor on the new platform to make it so the trains are really accessible?

How could CTA make such a design blunder?

It's no design blunder, it's the joys of full handicap-accessibility on the rail system. There is of course a design height for platforms, but over the centuries the structures have settled somewhat so its not always precise (the old platforms at Sedgwick were probably a good 4 inches lower than the railcar floor), and further the height of the floor varies depending on the load on the car (it's supported by air shocks, just like an auto). The protocol is that when a handicapped passenger boards, the operator asks where they are getting off to radio ahead so the customer assistant at that station can be ready with the gap-filler. You'll notice every station has a narrow, upright square shaped metal box where the gap-filler is stored. The 1-3 minute delays everytime a wheelchair-bound passenger boards/alights is an oft-ignored factor that affects service reliability (imagine what this does your schedule, cumulatively).

The new railcars on order are supposed to have an active suspension that raises/lowers the floor height upon berthing at a station, but I'm not sure if that will reduce the requirement for the gap-filler.

But this is Belmont which is totally "NEW". And other rails I have been on have a lip that drops down each time the door opens...covering the hole and drop.

Please discard - Double Posting

Thanks!

i swear to god i hate this state's democratic leadership.

CTA to detail severe cuts
New changes would take effect Jan. 1

Jon Hilkevitch | Getting Around
October 8, 2007

The Chicago Transit Authority this week will unveil a new and more severe round of service cuts and fare hikes to take place Jan. 1 unless the stalemate over state transit funding is broken.

Link, Chicago Tribune

The realities of transit

By Richard F. Harnish
October 7, 2007

Why have Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the Illinois General Assembly had such a difficult time agreeing on a transit budget?

When a dispute turns deep, bitter, personal and prolonged, something more than just disagreement over ways and means and outcomes is going on. Mere negotiation -- "You give me a little more of this and I'll demand less of that" -- doesn't work anymore. The parties are out of touch with reality -- probably because it changed while they weren't looking. To help get our leaders back in touch, here's the transit reality check they've been missing.

Link, Chicago Tribune

^^ Words to live by.

I've been thinking, where's the pro-transit rally? Us Chicagoans on this forum all seem to really care about transit. We need to take this message out there and make it be known that people who vote these clowns into office actually DO care about transit funding. They have no problem throwing gobs money at highway construction so we know they aren't strapped for cash. And it's OUR money they refuse to spend on US they way WE want. Where's the outrage?

LSD Construction?

Saw signs this weekend that the Belmont ramps to LSD will be closed from mid-Oct until the end of Nov. Does anyone know what is going on, I could not find any information? Thanks!

oh yeah, i saw that, too. (at first i thought about the spire work vis-a-vis lane closures, but ... erm ... that wouldn't really affect belmont, would it?)

saw the same signs, but i can't help you.

despite my transit rantings and ravings, i do love driving lsd, especially in the summer with new visitors to chicago. still, lsd is in pretty poor shape, so maybe the belmont closing has to do something with that? also, it gets kind of hairy with the exit/on ramp near melrose, so maybe they are addressing that.

maybe they are beginning work on a brt lane ...

... a boy can dream, eh?

Since CN is going to vacate the entire Saint Charles Air Line north of 95th street, how about this: take the SCAL right-of-way, and just turn it into the Silver Line.

There's a plan actually on the books - the West Loop Transportation Center and the Clinton-Larrabee subway - that your map leaves out. Well, if those plans were to happen, do this:

-Move the Brown Line to the Clinton/Larrabee subway
-Run it underground to Clinton and 14th, and then over the old SCAL bridge (or the B&O but that's probably hopeless) onto the SCAL. Transfer to Metra and Red Line at 16th & Clark; Green and Orange at 16th & Wabash.
-Connect the new Brown Line into the cut-and-cover subway at 71st.

That's all transit geek fantasy, though; more likely, the SCAL will be turned into light rail, or a busway, or a trail.

The St Charles Air Line is only the east-west link along 16th Street, between Y Junction (with the CN/IC) and the Panhandle west of Western.

The Grey Line is a proposal to run the Metra Electric (not the CN/IC) on CTA-style headways with fare integration.

^^^ you're right about the St Charles Air Line and the Gray Line.

The Gray Line is a simple, very pragmatic approach grounded in reality to increasing transit service. It would use Highliner equipment on the existing tracks, but with shorter headways and with CTA fare controls.

The original poster of the Fantasy Map, Dhamp instead suggested building the Gray Line as a CTA heavy rail line, mostly replacing the Metra Electric.

My suggestion was to leave the Metra Electric University Park and Blue Island branches intact, and rebuild the Saint Charles Air Line, the freight tracks in the IC Right-of-way, and the ME South Chicago branch into a CTA heavy rail line. This would be possible as CN will no longer need the IC freight tracks or the SCAL once the Grand Crossing connection is built and the EJ&E is integrated into its operations. Finally, The South Chicago CTA line could then be connected to the southern end of the Clinton-Larrabee subway.

This is just as expensive and just as disconnected from reality as most fantasy maps are. These fantasies probably drive realists and people in the industry crazy. If anyone finds this talk annoying maybe we could start a new thread. Anyway, I'm not even from Chicago and its rail infrastructure fascinates me.

What then takes the old Brown Line elevated tracks through Old Town and River North?

I thought the idea was to move the Red Line into the Clinton/Larrabee Subway, to serve the reverse commuters heading to Metra, and then run the Circle Line through the State Street Subway.

The Brown Line wouldn't change, although I like the idea of combining it with the Pink Line. That way, ridership numbers for the combined line wouldn't seem so bad, it would reduce workforce, and it would simplify operations.

...."CTA-style headways" ?? what does this mean ?

Every 10-15 minutes even in the off-peak, as opposed to every 1-2 hours.

So Daley wants to raise property tax revenue by $100 million per year to pay for libraries.

How many people, how many businesses, depend on libraries?

How many depend on the CTA?

This is getting so absurd.

Libraries? It all just goes to the general city slush fund. Libraries just sound good on tv.

^ Not to me. They'll be obsolete for 90% of the population in 10 years anyway.

Maybe the city should consider allowing casinos if it's in such desperate need for money? The city has so much business & leisure travel each year that I would assume casinos would do pretty well here. Transit could hopefully get some funding from the casinos as well.

That's a really complicated can of worms. Hizzoner has wanted a luxury casino in Chicago for some time, but the financials are a disaster. First off, the quality of casinos (in terms of the level of capital investment) is significantly inversely correlated with the local tax rate on gaming wins. Illinois has the highest in the country (at 50%, compared to under 10% in places like Vegas or even aobut 40% in Indiana), hence why our casinos are about the dumpiest because a casino operator doesn't get additional return on their investment with such a high tax.

The bills currently circulating Springfield call for a city-owned, privately-operated (contracted) casino in Chicago, with a ~$700 million license fee just to have the right to operate the thing.

Long story short, the financials are terrible; either you allow dumpy casinos to maximize short term revenue, or cut the tax rate to gradually move upmarket and sacrifice your short term revenue, thereby sacrificing the appeal to politicians who usually only care about financial issues within the next election cycle. And either way, the State is simply trying to pass its deficits off to the city by having us simply transfer several hundred million for the privelege of getting to host a casino that will pay the state tax money.

It's all garbage, and though there may be a potentially workable casino solution wherein everyone wins, we're nowhere near it now, so it shouldn't even be considered for fixing the short-term transit crisis.

Marcu,
Daley is selling the property tax hike as a dedicated funding source for the libraries, so I'm assuming this means $100 million per year for libraries. How is it that every single leading politician in this region: Daley, Jones, Madigan, and above all Blago are all out of their damn minds and completely out of touch with reality? You know it's bad when Mike Madigan appears to be the sane and realistic beacon of maturity.

It appears that there's enough opposition in the city council to block at least some of the tax increases. I think this can be attributed to the perception of Daley finally losing his mind (bickering about museums, libraries, etc. while ignoring the biggest problem facing Chicagoans - transit). Chicagoans are just not stupid enough to believe that Daley really cares about landfill space.

Also, if the Cook County sales tax increase goes through, I expect a push by the western and northern suburbs to form a new county. I can't really blame them. County government doesn't do much. What it does do (eg courthouse, hospitals) is funded at the state level.

As a former west-burber I'd agree with that.

I hate reading this thread...makes me depressed. fixing the CTA should be the highest priority for the city. If Daley can't see that, maybe we need a new mayor.

In response to Daley being "crazy" all of a sudden, I don't think that's the case. He has a history of playing tough and doing border line things to get his way. Just look at Meigs field. :whip: He tore that up in the middle of the night and he did it right after he go reelected in 2003. Guess, what? Daley just got reelected (again) this year, 2007. He has about two years of grace period to play tough politics before he has to even think about running for reelection again. So expect him to swing his weight around in the mean time.

In regards to Daley not prioritizing transit funding, I don't think that's true. It's just that there isn't much the city can do about it. The city isn't the only one that uses the CTA or Pace services and it couldn't afford to bankroll it all itself. And even if it wanted to try funding the CTA, Chicago is in the midst of trying to plug a big financial hole.

If anyone should bailout the CTA, it's the federal government. Illinois pays more than it's fair share of taxes and gets only a modest amount back.

From the Tax Foundation (note, I'm not endorsing the Tax Foundation), http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/26.html
That means 46 other states in the country get more money per capita from the federal government! Just doing some math in my head, let's say Illinois with a GSP of $500-600 Billion pays about 25% of what it makes (just a guess), that means we pay $125-150 billion in taxes every year. So 0.27*125-150 billion = 30-40 billlion per year! There's your CTA funding for the next 40 years.

Did anybody make it to the Carroll Avenue meeting at AIA yesterday? I'm interested in hearing what's going on.

Therein lying the obvious problem of high-level centralized redistribution of wealth: someone invariably gets screwed.

I agree that the Feds should send Chicago more capital funds. Those are generally distributed based on population, and we have a disproportionately large amount of rail infrastructure, meaning the federal capital funding available is very inadequate (and the state capital funding is tied to this pie-in-the-sky casino cluster).

But honestly, there's no reason the city can't raise the property tax to support transit operations and even capital. Heck, there's even still a taxing district (the Urban Mass Transit District or something like that) that was put in place to support the central area transit plan back in the 60s but currently taxes at a 0% rate. Why not amend and use that to supplement the capital budget, thus allowing CTA to divert it's own discretionary capital to operating funds?

It's pretty simple. Chicago ponies up for transit service (the $100 million property tax hike as well as the .2% real estate transfer tax to balance the pension would solve the problem for a long time), and CTA shuts down any service outside the city limits unless the suburbs also increase their contribution. I'd even go as far as charging an entrance toll to every driver that doesn't have a $75 city sticker, as a fee for using our streets (e.g. pay $5 for entering, or py $75 per year like the rest of us). Call it a variation on the commuter tax. Proceeds to transit, of course. Enforcement could be either by transponder (tollway) or video-camera with plate recognition (London).

Saw this nice rendering of Grand/State on CTA Tattler
http://img461.imageshack.us/img461/6...zanine2bp6.jpg

^ Not bad, but does the city need to put silhouettes of the skyline absolutely everywhere? Even the Day Ryan now has skyline pictures along the walls. It's a little tacky.