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Old Posted Mar 16, 2018, 6:51 PM
emathias emathias is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: River North, Chicago, Illinois
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PKDickman View Post
...
Even using Amazon's 50000 workers (which is very modest considering the whole redevelopment area is 600 acres) and assuming they have a very high transit use of 40%, they will need to add transit capacity for at least 40000 rides a day .

The entire brown line only does 65000.
Yes, but that 65,000 doesn't include the return trips starting in the Loop.

So, for 2016, the last year there were full numbers for, the Brown Line had a weekday average ridership of 63,958 riders. Adding up all the lines that use the elevated Loop, those lines had a total weekday average ridership of 150,991. 63,958 is 42.36% of 150,991. Elevated Loop stations had average weekday ridership of 73,729, and 42.36% of that is 31,231. Adding that to the Brown Line stations brings the total up to 95,189. Which would still be missing Brown Line riders alighting at Fullerton and Belmont, which go full credit to the Red Line. The ratio of Brown Line ridership to North Main Red Line ridership is about one third. One third of total Fullerton and Belmont weekday ridership comes to 8,506. All of these calculations ignore the Purple Line because it has such small numbers and is harder to tease apart, and these estimates also make some assumptions about ridership patterns. But, with those caveats, total average weekday ridership attributable to the Brown Line is likely somewhere in the neighborhood of 63,958 + 31,231 + 8,506 = 103,695 riders.

I also think that 40% transit usage for a place like Goose Island is likely high. I'd be surprised if transit commuter share to Goose Island exceeded 30%. Still, 25-30,000 riders is still substantial. Some riders would use the Division bus, some could use the Chicago Ave bus, some the North Ave bus, some the Halsted bus.

The CTA could add one or more circulator routes, and the City could add a transit-pedestrian-bike-only bridge linking Ogden to Goose Island again, and build the Brown Division station. With those enhancements, these two circulators would add a lot of value.

1) Blue Division east on Division to the middle of Goose Island then north on Halsted to Red North/Clybourn then north on Halsted to Armitage and west to Brown Armitage and west to Cortland and the Clybourn Metra station then south on Ashland back to Blue Division. That route should have buses running both directions.

2) A second circulator could run beween Blue Chicago up Elston to North Ave east to the pedestrian bridge to Goose Island at the river crossing, east to the Red North/Clybourn station, east to the Brown Sedgewick station, south on Sedgewick to Division, west to Goose Island, meander to the Ogden bridge back to the Blue Chicago station.

Some portions of those routes could be made bus-only, or a bus-only lane added. Ideally they'd run express only making stops at the 'L' or on Goose Island, although you could add stops at any major intersections they cross or turn at to add value for local people who don't want to walk 1/2 mile for whatever reason. If ridership was high enough, dedicated ROW could be set up and the routes converted to rail - perhaps streetcars, maybe even partially running elevated or in cut-and-cover trenches to reduce traffic crossings. With lights that gave buses priority, and appropriate use of bus-only lanes, those routes could haul in quite a lot of transit users. They'd need to run at least 18 hours a day, since several thousand Amazon employees would be working very late on any given night. And these routes could even add value for people living near them.
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