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Originally Posted by chitowngza
 Great job on the map; I don't recall ever seeing that before tho I've heard much of it, as well as J. Daley's idea of tunnelling the Loop--something I think is absolutely nuts simply to ever consider. The Distributor plan is cool in concept to me as someone who (for reasons even I don't know) prefers heavy rail. But don't you think it's a somewhat relatively short-ish for the cost in the current US dollar? You don't believe a light-rail method of going most of these places would be just as useful for cheaper?
And the "informed and insightful"  comment actually pertained to my query on the proposed Evanston Express reroute into State's tunnel. That's something I don't get. |
Yeah that distributor was almost the Central Area Circulator, a light rail project of the late 90s that more or less stalled and fizzled when Daley freaked at the size of the Light Rail vehicles (or thats my understanding at least). But the distributor is the best way to connect the West loop Metra stations to the rest of downtown.
I'm pretty sure the State Street subway can theoretically operate with headways as low as about 90 seconds, and the red line at its peak has headways of 3-4 minutes, so theres some capacity left. Rerouting the purple down there would ease the rush hour crush the red line currently has (not to mention act as a more traditional "red line express"), and let the CTA play with the loop routing some, eventually running 2 lines out to Kimball on what is now Brown (possibly through-routing some Orange line trains), which would also give the flexibility of coming in and out of the loop in different directions to extend all day.
I mean, its not a necessary switch (purple->subway), but its doable operationally especially if CTA has something specific in mind with the added loop capacity.