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Originally Posted by ardecila
Simple - nobody walks on at 95th from the surrounding neighborhood, they transfer from 14 different bus routes that cover the whole South Side and a good chunk of the suburbs going all the way out to Palos Hills. If Addison had 14 bus routes that converged there, covering a similar territory, it would be the busiest station on CTA's network by far.
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Okay. So you have 79th and 87th, the 2 stops north of that, that have 1-2 million boardings a piece too. How to explain that. The fact is that transit ridership in these areas is actually fairly high.
The investment is obviously a lot of money, and I think it would be good to spend the money more evenly in other ways. However, I think from an economy standpoint and some of the people who actually support a good number of jobs downtown and also potential future development and migration patterns, I think there's a lot of potential there to help bring some vitality back to some of these areas that have lost it over the last 10, 20, 30, etc years.
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As others have noted, there are much better ways to spend $2B on the South Side. Revamping Metra Electric could be done for less than half this cost, and it already runs through the neighborhoods in question. Allowing CTA bus transfers to the Metra line could be done tomorrow, for almost no cost.
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Well I never stated my opinion before. I was merely saying that this thought that "nobody lives down there" is actually not true. Actually I think there's something like 35,000 people or more that were counted in the 2020 census that live in census tracts directly adjacent to the rail line.
I think that revamping Metra Electric into more of a rapid transit line would actually be a better use of money for sure vs. the Red Line extension. Some of the neighborhoods it goes through already are actually growing too (i.e. Douglas, Oakland, Grand Boulevard, Woodlawn, etc). It also goes right near the future home of the Obama Library too. So yes my vote is for that way more than the Red Line. I was just addressing this thought that these stations aren't used and "nobody lives down there." There are still enough people who live there, as well as some of the surrounding suburbs who would use this quite a bit. But yes, ME revamp is better.