^Yes, you may remember that close clearances in the Kimball subway required guards on the windows of the old 6000-series cars, to keep riders from sticking their arms out the window.

I was in town over the weekend and ended up riding in one of the new 5000 series cars from Howard down to Belmont. I snapped a few photos with my cell phone camera, so please excuse the blurriness of these photos.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3373/...e85810b4_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3301/...b6f7af59_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4030/...3189e9bb_o.jpg

It was interesting to watch the facial reactions of everyone that board that train car as my friend & I progressed southward from Howard. Everyone looked rather wide eyed as they stepped in, paused briefly to inspect the train, then when they'd figured out where to sit, they spent a good amount of time just looking around.

blah, the CTA shouldve gone balls out and gotten a fully LCD train map screen, ala the MTA in NYC:

http://infosthetics.com/archives/subway_led_screen.jpg
source: infosthetics.com via google search

if the CTA adds new stations/changes the colors of lines, like it has done in the past 5 years, instead of just a simple software upgrade, youd have to replace that entire panel. thats probably quite costly.

Whoa whoa whoa. Slow down my friend. We're just getting on the AC current bandwagon. Give it another decade or two and you'll have your fancy shmancy full LED map!

CTA awaits word on federal funds for faster bus system

$150 million from feds would help fund bus rapid transit

Jon Hilkevitch
Getting Around
5:17 p.m. CDT, May 2, 2010

Officials at the Chicago Transit Authority are hopeful that the Federal Transit Administration believes in second chances.

After winning, then losing, federal funding a couple of years ago, the CTA is again competing for a $150 million grant to introduce rapid-transit-style bus service in Chicago.

The system would begin operating on 50 miles of arterial streets and eventually expand citywide to connect with dozens of other bus routes as well as CTA and Metra rail lines.

The CTA and city transportation officials envision bus rapid transit as a tool to transform Chicago's transit grid and spark a long-term surge of new riders who enjoy the advantages of being whisked ahead of traffic on bus-only lanes.

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In addition to the potential congestion-relief benefits in the nation's second most traffic-clogged city, air quality would be improved by luring many drivers out of their cars and onto buses, officials said. It all can be accomplished at a fraction of the cost of building new rail lines, and in much less time, they added.

The CTA applied for funding over the winter and the Federal Transit Administration plans to award money this spring to at least one bus rapid transit project that is ready to get under waysoon, FTA officials said last week.

CTA officials have set a launch date of early 2012, assuming their application for $150 million is approved.

The first four corridors of a planned 20-corridor bus rapid transit network are on 79th Street from Ford City to South Shore Drive; Chicago Avenue from Austin Boulevard to Navy Pier; Halsted Street from Waveland Avenue/Broadway to 79th Street; and Jeffery Boulevard from 103rd Street/Stony Island to Jefferson/Washington Streets.

The CTA effort comes after a first attempt that was successful in winning a $153 million federal grant in 2008 from the Bush administration. But the grant for the pilot project was rescinded when City Hall missed a deadline to raise downtown parking meter rates as part of a "congestion-pricing" strategy to discourage driving into the crowded central business district during peak hours.

Meter rates eventually soared, without the benefit of offering bus rapid transit as an alternative, under a still-controversial deal in which the Daley administration privatized street parking.

The new grant program does not include a congestion-pricing requirement. But it does mandate that applicants meet "livability principles" that include showing how the new bus service would impact areas of the city that are currently underserved by transit; major employment centers and high-density residential areas; as well as helping to reduce pollution.

This time around, a total of $193.4 million, including $43.6 million in state and local matches, is needed to acquire 131 accordion-style buses; establish dedicated bus-only lanes during rush periods; install traffic signals that give buses priority to proceed through intersections ahead of other vehicles; and construct special bus stations where passengers will prepay their fares, as they do on the CTA rail system.

"If funding is secured for bus rapid transit, it would allow us to speed travel for riders," said CTA President Richard Rodriguez.

Average bus speeds would increase by as much as 48 percent over buses operating in traffic on regular routes, according to the application Chicago submitted to the Federal Transit Administration.

Bus rapid-transit systems, which are operating in cities ranging from Cleveland to Curitiba, Brazil, go far beyond the service provided by existing CTA express bus routes.

The rapid-transit buses would make limited stops, at intervals of a half mile to a mile. Passengers board through the front and back doors of buses after paying their fares at bus rapid-transit kiosks at the stations.

Travel times would be slashed compared to normal bus routes. The 50.4-mile startup network would include 17.1 miles of dedicated lanes that would be open exclusively to buses during rush hours, then revert back to use by all vehicles in off-peak hours.

"Dedicated lanes for bus service during rush periods would help to move people faster through the system when it is most critical — mornings and evenings, when the largest number of people are headed either to or from work," Rodriguez said.

While federal officials have not tipped their hand about the CTA's chances of recapturing the lost grant, local urban planning officials are optimistic, saying the transit agency submitted a competitive bid.

"I think the CTA has a pretty good chance of receiving federal funding because bus rapid transit makes a lot of sense for the city and suburban areas," said Randy Blankenhorn, executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

"People want to get from place to place as efficiently and conveniently as possible," he said, "and bus rapid transit fits the bill at a much lower cost than building fixed rail systems."

Is this a change from previous plans? I may very well be remembering incorrectly, but I don't remember anything about BRT from the Waveland Avenue/Broadway area of Halsted?

The photo in this morning's Trib shows Halsted buses trapped in the traffic through University Village, south of Roosevelt. This is an area, like Greektown and Boys Town, where the only way to have dedicated lanes would be to completely wipe out the street parking. That would make the area much less attractive to merchants and, more importantly, unpleasant for pedestrians.

no change: http://www.transitchicago.com/assets..._Sept_2008.pdf

Oh, now I know why I didn't recall the BRT service extending up through Lincoln Park and into Lakeview... the main core with actual dedicated lanes ends at North Avenue. North of there it's essentially BRT-lite. I'd be more exited with continued lane exclusivity and preferably traffic signal priority.

What's the advantage of BRT without dedicated lanes?

Marketing.

Depends. If the other improvements, like prepay fare stations, continue after the dedicated lanes stop, then there would still be a speed increase. Crowds of people getting on at busy stops wouldn't slow up the bus as much.

I'm not too worried about the effect on merchants or pedestrians. The dedicated lanes are only in place during rush hours, and IIRC, only on one side of the street (peak direction of travel). Outside of rush hours, cars will still be able to parallel park.

In general, bus-only lanes are a very easy sell for the morning rush when many retailers aren't open anyhow; for example, Clark Street between Diversey and Fullerton has a bus-only lane that's only in effect 7AM-9AM M-F. In general, I'd say a good place to start with bus-only lanes are those arterials that already have rush-hour parking restrictions. Taking out roadspace that currently serves metered parking for businesses in the PM rush would hit the double-whammy in the political realm of both (a) hurting retailers and (b) compensatory action to the metered parking concessionaire, meaning either paying them or putting in new meters or higher rates elsewhere to compensate. (a) or (b) alone would probably be enough to kill any proposal, so I have trouble seeing how both could be overcome unless there was some major carrot/benefit in exchange.

I got to the Belmont train station this afternoon to go downtown and they had these displays which listed each train, their arrival times and the next two after when they arrive(I think 2). Me being the dork I am timed it and purposely missed the first train to see if the estimate was right for the subsequant trains. It was.

^ long live dorks

Did it list them by line and/or destination (like the test samples posted earlier) ?

haha, awesome. good to see these displays FINALLY going up after being in the works for years

No expansion buzz for CTA
 

I'm going way off topic here, but after a month of discussion on signage I'm about to lose my mind. No disrespect to any of the contributors here cause everyone brings up some salient topics. We collectively in Chicago have got to look at the state of the CTA and get fired up at the complete lack of visionary planning and active implementation of a rail system for this city.

I looked into the NYC transit thread and was amazed (and then embarrassed for us) at the level of expansion that the NYC transit has on track. Right now they are boring a new tunnel for the 2nd Ave subway. They are constructing more new stations and extensions and widening river tunnels and building bridges. And they are in D.C today lobbying for funds for 7 transit lines extensions.

And it is not just NYC. Seattle, LA, Charlotte, Minn all have new transit lines. Our last new CTA line was the Orange line back in the 1993---17 Years Ago;

Meanwhile the CTA is constantly fixing slow zones. True enough, they are also reconstructing stations, but NYC is doing that also while undergoing expansion. And while Chicago built the unused Block 37 station, NYC is building a new LIRR station underneath Grand Central Station.

We have accepted a level of inertia that is appalling to me. It seems that Chicago has a mayor who seeks to appease unions and is uninterested in rail transit. Or maybe there has been too much depopulation in the outlying neighborhoods to justify expansion. Or perhaps we have invested in other areas like school buildings and tiff's for high rises. I don't know, but as a transit fan the current state of affairs at the CTA is troubling and depressing.

OK now back to our signage debate.

This may give you an idea of why the CTA seems to be perpetually behind the times:

CTA board Chairman Terry Peterson says he has not ridden a bus or train in Chicago in "a couple of years" but added he plans "to become a tourist in this city on public transit."

Its been my belief for years that the CTA is essentially run by people who, like Amtrak in the beginning at least, have little to no knowledge of how to develop and operate a modern rail transport system. And thanks to generations of entrenched cronyism, we've gotten rebuilt lines and one expansion, but in the larger scope of things, an ambitious comprehensive vision for an integrated rapid transit network that propels not just the city but surrounding suburbs into an optimistic, robust and evolving future is more or less completely absent. I hate to say it but sometimes I wonder if we should tap some foreign talent to head up the CTA. The ambitious plans for the Paris Metro alone makes the 'L' seem like a creaky old relic.

^Hey, don't forget the new tunnels under Block 37 :cool:

... or more seriously, what about rebuilding nearly every Brown Line station, the Howard terminal, completely reconstructing the Pink Line (plausibly an actual New Start project, not as enormous a stretch as the Brown Line).... all in the last 10 years...

As I frequently cite, the Toronto subway has significantly fewer route-miles, track-miles, and stations than CTA rail, but has approximately twice the ridership (depending how you measure). Again by any measurement of system scope such as route-mileage or stations, CTA is far and away bigger than systems like Boston or Philadelphia, though those systems aren't too far behind in terms of ridership. And the issue is not poor ridership on the Red, Brown, or Blue Lines.

How often do you use the Pink Line and experience it's brand new stations and structure? What about the modern stations along the quick and smooth-operating Lake Street Elevated?

Also, police stations, fire stations, and streetscaping programs. While it's not enough to support a whole new line, TIF funding could certainly make a large dent in the condition of station facilities and such. For whatever it's worth, I think TIF funds are paying for the new Morgan infill station.

Viva, your right. I realize that the recent Dan Ryan station remodeling and Brown and Pink rebuilds are nothing to scoff at (Pink being executed exponentially better IMO), but whats missing with the CTA are real, active plans to foster interconnectivity between lines that works for residents and tourists. I believe if the CTA was really spears out serious about the Circle Line, we'd be under construction already. I also have a lack of faith in the CTA admin's knowledge of the systems of their contemporaries. And yes, the next train countdown displays is actually an excelent example. Technology that has existed on foreign systems for a generation, the CTA can't seem to even get right present day. How hard is it? Where is the competent aesthetic eye? Just copy someone else's sign and install! As a graphic designer, not transport engineer by trade, the Cta is overwhelmingly poor at understanding not just brand and information design integration, but in transport aesthetics/presentation in general and how that translates to rider comfort and the ability to attract and sustain increased ridership.

If I was at the helm I'd be pushing for a top to bottom reorganization and repurposing—a dramatic shift in how rapid transit in this city is addressed, operated and presented. And I'd start with a way to get from Kimball to O'Hare on the L without going downtown, something that should have been done decades ago. Another would be making sure new railcars delivered in 2011 don't look like new railcars delivered in 1993. Those things matter no matter how many say they really don't. In many respects image is everything.

You do realize that the planning for East Side Access, et al. all began 20 years ago? The complexities, both physical and political, of building such extensive projects in the midst of the continent's densest city. Hell, the Second Avenue Subway has been on the drawing boards for 80 years.

Massive infrastructure projects in cities with a dense population and a complex political culture take decades to get off the ground. And that's IF they serve a pressing transport need. The 7 extension didn't take as long, but it was driven by politically-connected developers who see billions of dollars in profit to be made developing the West Side - if only it had subway service. Of the projects under consideration in Chicago, none serve a crucially-important transport need, and none have the strong backing of influential developers.

Meanwhile, CTA's been using its hundreds of millions in New Starts money to renovate the system top-to-bottom. The only un-renovated lines are the North Main and the Blue Line.

Alright I was venting a little out of jealousy of the projects going on in NYC.

I will acknowledge that the CTA has been reinvesting into existing infrastructure and rebuilding most of the lines. That stuff is not sexy and doesn't make the headlines that a new start would. I ride the Brown and Red lines so I haven't experienced the Pink or Lake St.

But where is the leadership or vision for the next 10-20 years. What agency will take the lead for the WLTC? Where is the Airport Xpress or the Clinton St subway on the timeline?

Give me my Western Ave Subway damnit!....

Ok I am OCD on this......and delusional but I can dream and be compulsive about it can't I

A non-comprehensive neighborhood sample that focuses on the northside (so far) of what a western ave subway would serve either directly or via easy transfer to brown or blue line and green line

Name Density
Rogers Park 35,000 / sq mile
West Ridge 21,000/ sq mile
Lincoln Square 17,500 / sq mile
Albany Park 30,000 / sq mile

North Center 15,400 / sq mile
Avondale 21,500 / sq mile
LOgan squarew 29,000 / sq mile
Irving Park 19,000 / sq mle
West town 19,000 / sq mile
Humboldt Park 27,500 / sq mile
East Garfield 10,700 / sq ml
West Garfield 17,900 / sq mle

all densities approx
Just these neighborhoods serve a population over 685,000
try and do southside later

Well that's it, in a nutshell; no regard for the proprietary technologies and build dates among the systems being compared. Doing such things right (e.g. Bus Tracker, having a sound and cost-effective fleet replacement cycle, etc.) takes time to design and implement a robust, scalable architecture. Doing things wrong can be done very quickly (those Titan LCD screens, replacing over half the bus fleet in a year thereby ensuring the fleet gets old at exactly the same time while reducing your future ability to pay for it because of interest on the debt issued to buy the buses).

When London first put up next bus LED screens way back when, they were just tied to a schedule and could be manually updated from a control center. Many of the early next train arrival screens worldwide were the same. Is that useful and robust? Next train arrival screens on CTA required fully replacing the entire signaling systems on the entire 200+ track miles of the L system, which has been done on an ongoing basis over the past 30 years at a cost measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as installing new communications infrastructure along the entire right of way to support, among other communication needs, each component of the signalling system communicating instantaneously with the control center. This all had to be done under an incredibly constrained capital project budget, in an environment with fungible money that often went to pay for operations for political reasons rather than in necessary infrastructure investment. The notion that this is all some cut/copy/paste process that should be done yesterday, rather than a decades-long, incremental, systematic project is just absurd.

For the record I agree that design is very important as part of the overall user experience and functionality, and is far too often ignored; not just in transit, but in many areas of civic life. But that's much more a reflection of the culture and politics than of the people involved. There's no need to enumerate some of the more obvious design deficiencies (e.g. Brown Line canopy placement, the old website before the redesign, passenger circulation around railcar doors) other than as an academic exercise, since believe me, there are technical people at CTA, CDOT and others that are quite aware of them and importantly, the history behind how things came to be the way they are.

Point taken Viva.

^ I have been far more impressed with how Ashland has developed in recent times than Western.

I think an Ashland subway would make more sense.

Exactly, which is why Western needs the boost of a subway line. Of course, you'd probably need to connect it to downtown somehow. I can't imagine the ridership being very high if you had to transfer to get downtown.

^ I don't get this logic.

Doesn't Chicago need to build rail lines that will generate high ridership right away, as opposed to building lines that may or may not generate high ridership in 20-30 years?

That's why I'm so in support of many of the mass transit elements proposed in the 2009 Central Area Action Plan (Clinton subway, etc). Maybe the city and nation should actually reward people who are already choosing to live in dense environments, instead of those who don't want to have anything to do with density.

I think you're both wrong and insulting. Yes, a few people in the front office are mayoral appointees whose expertise is not in transit operations, but you don't have to go very far down the org chart to find dedicated transit pros who are quite knowledgeable.

And I think it's telling that you say "operate a modern rail transport system" when CTA is actually an integrated system. Should we really be spending huge amounts of scarce money just because you're too good to take the Lawrence bus from Kimball to Jefferson Park when you go to the airport? CTA goes to two airports. A New York subway rider can get to, um, no airports at all.

As for signage and graphics, the guy in charge is actually quite competent and knowledgeable. He was hired for the job because Huberman saw passenger information as a way to get a big image change quickly and (relatively) cheaply. But he runs into things like having to work with 17 different models of LED displays, having to borrow a programmer to hack a way to get next train times from a control room system never designed to provide them, or figuring out how to predict next train times at stations near the end of a line, when the next train may not yet have even left the storage track.

So do the taxes Parisians pay.

You are both wrong. What needs to be built is a Ravenswood El line. This would closely parallel Ashland, but completely eliminate the need for any digging or ROW creation. The Ravenswood Metra Tracks easily have enough room to be sandwiched by two El Tracks. There would be stations in Ravenswood and Rogers Park where transfers between Metra and the El could be made. This would not only offer excellent access to neighborhoods like Andersonville, but it would act as an excellent collector for the Metra System and vice versa.

Additionally it would be built to hop over onto the Brown line North-South Tracks at Wilson where there is currently a huge parking lot that could easily be the site of a flyover. Then it would join up again with the Metra ROW at Roscoe where the Brown line currently crosses the Metra. From their it could go straight downtown and either break off where the Metra crosses Ashland and follow Ashland south as a subway, or it could follow the Metra all the way Downtown and feed into a Clinton Subway and WLTC.

I would prefer the Ashland route to the South and have it jump onto the Paulina Connector and then back to Ashland and to the Orange Line where it would terminate and provide direct access to Midway from the North Side. It would also build a station at United Center and greatly open access to United Center via transit from all sides of the city.

Additionally the line would swing round where the Metra line passes the Howard yards and be routed through the Howard Yards to terminate in the brand new Howard Terminal. This would also open the possibility of Sending Purple Line Trains along the near west side or express to WLTC or Midway. It could also be made to have stations at alternating streets from the Red Line to provide maximum rail coverage for the zones between the two. It could have stops on streets with bus service that don't have Red Line stops like Devon, Peterson, and Foster, further increasing coverage and integration with the Bus System.


Think of the possibilities of such a route. You could route every other Brownline to downtown via my hypothetical Line X. You could send every other Line X train East to the North Main Line and on to the loop or State Street Subway. You could route some Red Line Trains to Midway via the near west side. The Possibilities are endless. Such a line would massively increase ridership across the system at a very low construction cost. It could also be done in conjunction with the inevitable reconstruction of the Metra embankment in the next decade or two.

That's EXACTLY my logic... Western is currently an auto speedway that is lined with auto-oriented businesses. It's a far cry from being suburban (too much of the pre-war city remains) but it's also a far cry from being North Halsted or Clark Street. If you spent billions to build a subway under this pedestrian-hostile avenue, with virtually nobody living directly above the line AND no direct connection to downtown, few people indeed would ride the thing. They'd continue to do the bus-to-L trips they currently do.

If it did go directly to downtown somehow (I dunno how, maybe using the extra space in the Ike median) then the ridership might be higher, as people living along the corridor might venture into auto hell for a one-seat ride to the West Loop.

I disagree with your assesment that a transfer would male this route untenable, people transfer from red to brown and vice versa all the time to get to various areas within the loop / dt.

With western crossing all the radial lines, a transfer to DT could be quite easy as the brown / blue (both) and green lines, orange and the 63rd green line stop if extended to terminate at Western. Effectively creating a super loop around a large part of the city, and reducing the need to go DT to utilize radials

THe western ave bus in the aggregate, 49, 49b, south western, I think are among the busier, if not the busiest line in the system. I would imagine a subway line other Western would effectively make the bus route redundant and unnecessary.


TUP -- I would love an ashland subway as well, I just think the Western shows promise to a far greater number of peop;e; and still on the northside at least goes through some of the more dense parts of the city

Given how the northern portion is so close to the North Main, I would think it would be politically more probable to have Chicago annex portions of the Moon than to get that built. Enough people/wards around the city are nowhere near adequate transit that they would demand construction for their areas first. I love the idea of capitalizing on Metra r-o-w though.

The loophole that could get that built might be to say that, since both Metra and CTA will be rebuilding all their viaducts in the north, the cost could be piggybacked onto Metra's construction - and then try and say you want to shut down the entire north Red Line for 2 years for rebuilding, so the city first needs a new Line X along Ravenswood to Howard. Still wishful though.

It's a cool idea but it's Chicago 2050 at least I'd think (at the pace we're going at).

Hey, what about a bike path along this Metra r-o-w - a bike express High Line / Bloomingdale Line? Safety issues too much an obstacle?

Metra is built on a solid-fill berm with plenty of trees and bushes preventing erosion. No major concrete retaining walls, like the North Main has. The retaining walls it does have, at street crossings, are solid stone and they aren't going anywhere. It's the steel bridges that need replacement, which is an important but relatively minor project with relatively little impact on Metra service. The viaduct is built for three tracks but only has two currently; so single-tracking and shifting trains over is easy.

Really, it's not the type of major project you're envisioning. Moreover, I'm not sure, politically, how you would sell a major and preventable inconvenience to a line that carries 41,000 people a day, many of them numbering among the richest and most influential people in the entire Midwest.

Plus, it's not a Metra line at all. It's a Union Pacific Rail Road line on which Metra pays to have special trains run.

.

Does the station really need side AND aisle platforms? If so, why? Are the side platforms intended for some sort of conventional CTA service, while the center one is meant for airport traffic? (or vice versa) What conventional CTA trains would go through that station?

^ Good questions Ardecila. I also would like to know if this station can tie into WLTC or if it was designed as a stand alone airport express station. If it does not tie into WLTC then it seems to be a competing station.

I think the idea was that there would be tail tracks coming off both State and Dearborn subways, so that trains could terminate and lay up there. The through track(s) would be in the center.

WLTC works better with rerouted North-South trains using a new Larrabee subway, though you could also have some trains come in from the Milwaukee subway if useful. If the connection to O'Hare comes in at Union Station, you might just as well use a Metra-Milw train. The whole reason to bring airport trains into Block 37 is to reinforce the central Loop's importance.

So then:

A) Block 37 airport express service indeed would be a competing service to WLTC airport express trains.

B) Block 37 as planned does not link with WLTC.


UNLESS

C) To synchronize WLTC/Block 37 the new Clinton St subway could have a connection under Fulton/Clinton with the Blue line where Loop bound trains could cross over to Clinton St-proceed south to the WLTC-then turn left at a new Clinton/Congress connection to proceed into the south Loop to finally emerge at Block 37? I'm asking.

Neither --- I believe the side platforms were for boarding (each for Midway/O'Hare service, with separate fare controls), with the island platform for shared alighting.

I don't think the trackwork as designed would support this; in short, the tunnels and planned track connections were for SB Blue to SB Red and NB Red to NB Blue. For reasons I'm still not clear on, the entire B37 airport express concept was contingent on express service to both airports, rather than allowing for express service to only O'Hare (i.e. building a stub track terminal for O'Hare Express under B37 and possibly utilizing the Airport Express terminal with car rental, parking, and baggage tag/check-in facilities that was already built as 203 N. LaSalle back in the 1980s...)

In theory, an O'hare-only express service could just pull through B37 and lay up on the Roosevelt incline or go all the way to the middle track at 35th street, but that would be quite inefficient and increase the vehicle requirement and non-revenue mileage to operate the service. There were very brief pie-in-the sky concepts floating about a couple years ago to do a Green Line spur at Cermak to McCormick Place and the Olympic Village, to serve as a stub terminal for the O'Hare service, but we all know how that turned out.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, a key part of the Downtown Distributor system (a Madison or Monroe subway) would have served the function of connecting the two nodes... one can almost visualize something akin to the Times Sq-GCT shuttle in Manhattan shuttling between Union/Ogilvie and B37/State/Dearborn to tie the system together, but would quickly run up against the standard constraint of money.

I've never heard of any airport express service from the WLTC. I don't see it mentioned anywhere in the Central Area Action Plan.

^I think the idea is that a WLTC based ariport express would come in the form of a HSR train, possibly as the last leg of a St.Louis-Chicago 200Mph+ service as proposed and advocated by the MHSRA and the newly formed HSR authority.

Shared alighting - that's the opposite of shared delight, right?

The Downtown Distributor system, at least the Monroe portion and the portions between Streeterville and McCormick is still sorely needed. Wish it'd been built back in the 70s.

If all Chicago routes (St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Indy, etc) stopped both at O'Hare and a WLTC, it probably wouldn't take very many additional trains to have frequent (20-minute interval) express service both ways between O'Hare and the West Loop.

Yeah, either that or have a shuttle using the same HSR consist that all HSR arrivals at the WLTC/Union would transfer to. I can see something like this running every 15 minutes.

A bus transitway under Monroe is still in the Central Area Plan, making just as likely as the WLTC.

Smith+Gill's DeCarbonization Plan uses Monroe as a "green spine" across the Loop. Their website has some cool renderings.

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/9533/monroe2.jpg

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/96/monroe4.jpg

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/5070/monroe1.jpg

^ Now that is what I would like to see downtown.

All questions regarding whether the city should prioritize WLTC vs. Block 37 would be resolved by this one project. That is one project that would finally improve access to the east Loop for the north and west suburbs.

I know for sure that, if implemented and well done, I would use that service and actually consider taking the train to Chicago more often for recreation.

The whole reason people visiting Chicago for recreation tend to drive is because all of the trains converge in the west part of downtown, while all of the recreational facilities (Mag Mile, Millennium Park, State St, museums) are on the east part of downtown.

Of course people would use it. It would be extraordinarily popular. The cost would probably be enormous, though - as a low-level subway, relocating utilities would be an incredible pain in the ass. A regular deep subway requires you to relocate utilities only in station zones, but this would require complete relocation along the entire length of Monroe from Clinton to Columbus. You'd also have to carve out a new river tunnel, since there isn't an old one at Monroe, and said tunnel would also have to go beneath the tracks at Union Station. You might be able to get away with an at-grade intersection with Lower Wacker, but that might cause safety concerns.

I'm really hoping CDOT finishes the Alternatives Analysis for the Carroll Transitway sometime in the next year. It would be great to get moving on that. AFAIK, nobody in Chicago is submitting New Starts applications right now, so it's a great time for CTA or the city to submit a modestly-sized request for a busway along existing ROW.

Someone tore down Italian Village and built a new tower. Maybe this is the mystery tower that Pandemonius teased us about once upon a time...