(Not sure why we're discussing RLE here rather than in
the transit thread.)
^But it's plain and simple
a bad transit project, with a cost per new rider that must be approaching $100 ($6 was historically the general FTA threshold for worthwhile projects). The cost has somehow soared from $2.2 billion in 2018 to $3.6 billion now. Transit should be put where there’s density (of residents or jobs). Not where it’s cheap; or to pay political debts, or as an incredibly inefficient form of reparations.
It's a back-asswards way to do planning to pour billions of dollars into the most expensive possible solution to having built Altgeld Gardens in the wrong place. Just because CHA made a huge mistake in the 1940s doesn't mean we should just keep pouring money into it. Every single household within a mile of the new 130th terminal (about 3000 households) could be built a new $300,000 home within walking distance of an existing Green Line station for a
quarter of the cost of this boondoggle—and the Red Line wouldn't thereafter be wasting countless service hours running empty trains back and forth to the forest preserve.
Let's see. In what parts of the city might new transit investment
actually result in usage?
