There hasn’t been a rail expansion in Chicagoland....like ever in my adult life.

I won’t hold my breath. None of this shit ever happens. NW Indiana has been planning their little expansion for so long that it has become a joke.

Just live near an existing Metra or South Shore Station—-simpler solution than waiting a century for the stars to finally align and the train line gets extended 5 miles to your town—which benefits your great grandkids, but not really because they already moved on to Colorado.

Wasn't SWS extended to Manhattan like 10 years ago? I can't imagine why, it seems like basically nobody boards there.

According to Wikipedia, that station gets 29 boardings per weekday!

I know this is not the Indiana line, but in principle we don't need to expand lines out further until the existing stations are being utilized to their capacity

Jesus, what a waste of money. I guess there are probably new subdivisions in that area, but the RI line would have been a decent option for most.

I guess the problem with Metra is that the existing lines all go far enough. The only extensions I can think of that makes sense would be UP-W to Dekalb to serve NIU and maybe MED to Kankakee.

https://capitolfax.com/2018/10/29/wh...in-to-chicago/




Who’s gonna pay for Foxconn’s commuter train to Chicago?



Woo also said 75% of Foxconn's 13K future employees in Wis. will be "knowledge workers" and 25% factory workers. Tight labor market means the company will recruit in Chicago, and Woo wants to see "a commuter train all the way from Chicago to (Foxconn's site).” #MegaRegionSummit



Monday, Oct 29, 2018

Claire Bushey @Claire_Bushey

Foxconn exec Louis Woo said today at the Chicago Fed that he was "very surprised" the company's plans had caused controversy. "I would imagine people would throw out the red carpet. ... But not everyone."

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/29/...-scott-walker?

Um, doesn't the Hiawatha already go there (with a stop at Glenview that wouldn't be too bad for any one transferring from the 'burbs)? I mean, sure, more Hiawathas would be good though, but not just for Foxconn. I take the Hiawatha often (in-laws live in MKE 'burbs), and it's always pretty well patronized.

Wisconsin since they're the ones armpit deep in this boondoggle.

There’s already a plan to expand Hiawatha service, but Rauner shelved it after wealthy Glenview, Northbrook and Lake Forest residents complained about the new sidings necessary for the expansion.

Not sure how we could get Metra levels of service to Foxconn campus without even more controversial changes in privileged, second-tier North Shore suburbs. The UP-N corridor is really too far away from Foxconn to be useful even if it was extended past Kenosha.

Hopefully our next governor puts this back on. The bellyaching, particularly from Glenview, is extremely irritating and not based on any significant real world concerns.

HAHAHAHAH!!! Sure, right, American "knowledge workers" who have chosen to live in Chicago are going to really clamor to take a job in bumf*** Wisconsin that requires an hour+ commuter train trip each way, because that's what people dream of when they dream of working in Chicago ...

How stupid is Foxcon? If they want Chicago workers, here's an idea, OPEN A CHICAGO OFFICE.

But yeah, if they want the train extended, then either Foxconn or Wisconsin needs to pay for it.

So apparently they are really, really stupid. All that pollution in China seems to have affected their logic.

You mean you weren't already like 40 when they extended the Blue Line to O'Hare? ;)

At the same time they extended a line to Elburn out west and I believe from Elgin to Big Timber.

Places that were in the direct line of the expanding suburbs - which of course just never happened when growth stopped.

Elburn and Manhattan were expecting to grow by tens of thousands of people from the Mid 2000's to today. Instead everything ground to a halt.

Places like Manhattan and other south suburbs are always seen as a second choice compared to western and northern suburbs. The only reason to build homes there is if the market is too white hot in those other regions.

Plus, SWS service is somewhat limited, and will remain so until the 75th St megaproject is finished and they can divert SWS trains into LaSalle Station. The Rock Island already provides a much higher caliber of service and because it roughly parallels I-80 running east-west, it's convenient for most of those suburbs (yeah, you have to drive a few miles north, but the traffic is almost always light). No real reason to take SWS from Manhattan or New Lenox at all unless you work in the West Loop and want a shorter walk downtown, and even that advantage will eventually go away. SWS is really more valuable for closer suburbs like Oak Lawn, Palos and Orland Park.

Thanks, that makes sense.

Read this gem today:

CTA drivers caught on video urinating, defecating on buses, face little action

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/ct...linary-action/

At least piss in a bottle and throw it out the window like a decent citizen. Whizzing on the floor of your own bus is getting kinda crazy, but dropping deuce on said floor is mental territory. Though, we might not have all the facts. I've been there, maybe time was of the essence. Did the article say anything about consistency? Yeah I didn't read it.

I sympathize with the idea that they might be sick... but I'm sure he could just have called in sick. The CTA is not a job that will fire you for calling in sick... and there's no way you can safely operate a bus while trying to hold it in anyway.

What's the bigger transgression, soup dookie at the back o the bus or soup dookie while driving the bus? Think it through, let me know......

That reminds me of the time my condo association had to find a new chimney sweep because I caught the one we'd been using for years pooping into a hidden partial gangway and wiping - obviously since he had toilet paper with him, it wasn't some accident or unavoidable, sympathetic bout of illness.

Yeah that sounds like a trangressive pooper. These deviants are more common than you might think. When I was a kid there was another kid my age that lived down the block that would walk down the alley to sneak into our garage to pinch one off. Diabolical. We never knew why he did it. He was also a bed wetter so maybe there's some kind of thing there, I don't know.