Chicago as far as I've heard IS the central rail freight hub in the US. Perhaps what you are observing is smaller or consolidated rail yards in Chicago proper. Remember, rail freight is alot more efficient than it used to be so there are less rows and rows of boxcars sitting for days in a yard. Plus, many intermodel facilities have been constructed outside the city that eliminate thru-routing into and out of Chicago entirely. CREATE will continue the process of improving speed and efficiency of in transit rail freight thru Chicago, cementing Chicago's role in the nations movement of goods by rail. Plus, HSR will define it as THE midwestern passenger hub as well.

Chicago is what it has always been, the national rail hub.

The reason there are fewer active lines nowadays is because 1) there are fewer Class I railroads maintaining those lines and 2) there are fewer intracity passenger services in the US. But what services there are do go through the Chicago area, or Illinois in general.

This Cottage Grove LRT idea is intriguing and odd.

it seems like a great way to encourage development in a stretch of the near south side. BUT it seems like it would make more sense to implement the Grey/Gold line proposal, and add new stations.

To make this a reality, it would have to be incorporated into plans for the Lake Meadows, and Michael Reese developments. I haven't seen that thus far.

Lastly, it would seem more beneficial to encourage development around an existing transit line, which has the ability to increase capacity to match that of the Brown Line.

So, I just don't see this happening, and honestly don't think it would be the best use of funds.

For a lot less money, they could improve capacity and service levels on the #4 Cottage Grove Bus. Many times I've stood at Cottage Grove and 58th and waited far past the published schedule interval with nary a bus in sight, and then had two or three buses come down the street either together or a block apart. The buses are almost always so cram-packed that it's difficult even to find room to stand without being jammed up against other riders.

Often it's so frustrating that I choose to walk to the E63rd/Cottage Grove Green Line station and wait for a train. As an old white guy sometimes I'm the target of remarks that make me feel unwelcome walking there, but I've never been directly threatened with physical harm. Recently there seem to be fewer young men along that stretch with nothing to do but hang around the street corners.

Whether that's because crime is down, they've found employment or that neighborhood's population keeps dropping is undetermined.

A couple of reasons that railroading is less visible now than 75 years ago:

First, many of the big yards are now in outlying locations where you don't see them: Bensenville, Northlake, Bedford Park, Markham, Hammond, or south of Joliet.

Second, all the passenger, mail, and express car facilities, which completely filled the South Loop from State to Clinton, are no longer needed.

Third, railroading today is about moving bulk cargo such as coal and grain, or long strings of auto racks and containers. All these get unloaded in remote industrial locations rather than at team tracks or industrial sidings. "Loose-car" railroading, which requires sorting of individual cars in classification yards, is nothing like the volume it used to be.

One curiosity of containerization is how many of them are transferred in Chicago from one railroad to another by what's called drayage: driving them from one yard to another. Interchange facilities in Chicago are so overwhelmed and congested by grade crossings that it's much faster to unload the container, drive it across town, and reload it.

Ah yes... hence the reason for much of the ongoing highway expansion.

Chicago is the country's biggest hub for rail traffic as measured by the number of cars, while Kansas City is the biggest if you measure by tonnage. When visiting KC last summer, I was baffled by a sign at their Union Station claiming that KC was the country's biggest freight hub... now I know.

The reason is that traffic through KC tends to be more bulk cargo-oriented; the railcars there often contain things like oil and grain. In Chicago, there is much more emphasis on auto transport and container shipping - cargoes that take up a lot of space on railcars, but don't weigh as much. These cargoes also tend to be value-added, so Chicago is also tops if you measure by the value of the goods that arrive/depart by rail.

^What highways have been expanded as a result of drayage? After all, 400 loads a day would only increase traffic on the Dan Ryan by 0.125 percent.

Not the Ryan, but the Tri-State... heavy truck traffic was one of the main rationales for the expansion, and drayage contributes to that, I imagine, especially on the Tri-State which directly connects 5 or 6 major rail yards. Also, possibly, the I-55 expansion in Will County.

At one time, Cottage Grove had one of the best transit systems, when the streetcars were still around. Yes, incorporating it into both, Lake Meadows and the Michael Reese site along with going to McCormick Place and through Central Station and its possible eastern extension would be quite beneficial to all.

At the December 2009 plan commission approved a plan to increase density and build TFD (Transit Friendly Developments) along its routes. There is also that plan (which I don't know much about) to do alot of redeveloping along 63rd Street from Cottage Grove on west.

Screw the #4. Got I hate buses. If anything, they need to eliminate some stops on these routes to speed things up. Seriously! Every block doesn't need a stop.

Better yet, why not just build a subway under Cottage? Yes it would be hella expensive, but the potential is endless.

Probably should have done that instead of renovating the South Side L in the 90's, just sayin.

Well, we all know that the southside usually gets the shaft right? That part of the El did need to be renovated, but back in the early 1990's when the project was executed, they shut down the line during construction while subsequent lines have remained open during their rebuilding. The ridership never recovered. It was also a dumb ass idea to tear the line down back to Cottage Grove. Up til 1982 the line went east all the way to Stony Island.

I've heard this countless times, that the ridership never recovered, but I've never understood why? Did the businesses and those living around the el move? Did they all buy cars or discover the bus?

Ridership never recovered on the south side, but it had already been declining. The area around the South Elevated and both of the branches (Englewood and Jackson Park) had been depopulating consistently for 50 years, following desegregation when African-Americans were finally allowed to disperse from the south side ghettos that were incidentally concetrated along the south side elevated.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/...ec6fca96_o.jpg
(density within 1/2 mile of L)

Ridership on the south elevated was strong-ish (about 3 times current levels) as recently as 1990. Since that time, the mainline (north of 59th junction) has recovered a decent chunk of its ridership and is still on a modest upward trajectory, currently at 60% of its 1990 ridership level. However, the 63rd branches have simply seen their ridership evaporate, which was a process that started in 1991 and continued through the line reconstruction. Ridership on each of the branches has stabilized since 1998... but at only 30% of their previous ridership.

Ridership recovered after closure on the Lake Street branch by about Year 2000. Interestingly, Lake Street depopulated too - but Lake Street ridership has been growing steadily since the reopening in 1996. Either way, the success on Lake surely implies that the reason for south side issues is much deeper than an 18-month line closure.

EDIT: it's worth noting, in the above chart, that I didn't "control" for the growth of the Milwaukee/O'Hare branch over the time period. Of course between 1960 and 1970 the line was extended from Logan Square to Jefferson Park, and then between 1980 and 1990 the line was extended to O'Hare, so to a large extent the decrease in density on this branch was only because the line was being extended into lower-density neighborhoods rather than depopulation of existing neighborhoods, as occurred around all the other branches except those on the North Side, which have actually been getting denser.

It was dumb, but it happened due to the local community (or at least one very outspoken component of the local community) basically demanding that it be torn down.

I think the past 20 years have shown its removal to be a bad idea and those who opposed it would grudgingly accept it being returned, especially if it was accompanied by targeted TOD around the new stations. Perhaps it could be tacked onto the list of extensions the CTA is seeking funding for, along with the Red, Orange and Yellow Line extensions. It wouldn't surprise me if the foundations were still in place from the old line, so maybe it wouldn't even cost that much to re-install.

In a dream world, they'd turn back north along the west side Metra Electric tracks (after all, a stop at 63rd and Dorchester would only be a 5 minute walk to Stony Island) and terminate a mile north at 55th and Lake Park, but I think that's just wishful thinking even if it would better tie Hyde Park into the "L" system.

Sweet. It's nice that downtown Skokie will soon be accessible by rail!

That chart is some very impressive research, Viva. Would you mind telling a little about how you produced it? Would I be correct to guess that you brought in the NHGIS data sets for census tracts and used a buffer in ArcMap to count those within a half-mile?

Precisely correct on the data source and technique (though I think I used a spatial join rather than a buffer/intersect, though the result is the same). I exported the spatial join layer (essentially census tract data associated with one or more L branches) to an MS Access database to produce the density figures by branch via a query.

That bit of research (combined with some historical ridership data) yielded some interesting results - as I recall, with the exception of the Ravenswood branch, the propensity of a resident near the branch to use transit (i.e. annual rides per area resident) stayed remarkably constant over the 50 year time period. Not constant throughout the city, but along a certain branch. Declines in ridership were thus attributable to a very large degree to the population near the transit line declining.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4072/...4e995bc93b.jpg
Population density in 1950 by quintiles, i.e. darkest is densest 20% of all census tracts.

Correlation of high density to transit service is striking (check out the density of Logan Square and Woodlawn and even in South Shore where the IC South Chicaog branch ran, and the relative lack of density on the lakefront).

^ A pleasure of the Chicago forums is that we have some resourceful, creative and intelligent contributors...who use facts to make their points..

I think that is largely caused by the presence of parkspace in the lakefront tracts, which in many cases halves the density, or worse in the case of the tract that includes Montrose Point.

Excellent research and presentation, though.