Originally Posted by ardecila
^ Well, CTA could do these things with bus routes and I think it's very likely that they will... but how long will that take? I have to say it is frustrating that the transportation planning process for all of these new developments is occurring behind closed doors. I haven't seen any mention of bus route changes to serve Lincoln Yards or the 78. The city keeps hinting at a transitway along the North Branch, but has not launched a public process to plan and fund it. Big flashy projects like new L stops command all the attention and the public debate (if any), but CTA itself has seemingly done very little to respond to all this downtown-adjacent growth with the bus routes and planning tools they have at their disposal.
For all the growth in Fulton Market, all CTA has done is open the Morgan station (which was really a CDOT project anyway)... no supplemental bus routes to better cover the area, no infrastructure investments like bus lanes or prepaid stations to allow the Halsted and Madison lines to work more effectively.
Granted, CTA is working in a realm of limited resources,... finite numbers of buses/drivers and a finite budget with which to pay them. Without an increased budget, adding service one place means taking it away from somewhere else, unless they can work with electeds and the community to find supplemental funding. The best we can really hope for is zero-cost changes like re-routes or route swaps that can bring in more ridership (the recent changes to the California buses being a good example of this).
That's why I'm hopeful The 78 can at least get some bus service, there is literally a route called 24 Wentworth, changing its route as Wentworth is expanded northward seems like a no-brainer, but it means the South Loopers who live along Clark in Dearborn Park I and II, AMLI, etc will have to walk a little further to buses and trains on State... and the frequency of the 24 is a joke since it only exists as an ADA-accessible backup to the south Red Line. Re-routing the 62 Archer bus makes more sense, either instead of or in addition to the 24, since the frequency and hours of service are decent, and its State St portion is already served by the 29 State and the Red Line, so nobody would lose anything. And it would connect The 78 jobs to housing opportunities on the southwest side. If they can find enough resources to briefly extend one of the North Side buses down Wentworth as well, either the 36 Clark or 37 Sedgwick, that would really create a transit trunk on Wentworth with 3 bus routes, frequent service and, IMO, totally obviate the need for a Red Line station in the first phase of development.
Going to Hong Kong was an eye-opener, there are countless highrise estates there that are as big or bigger then The 78, that are served only by buses. Usually it is not just a feeder to subway stations but real decent bus routes that connect to destinations across the city. Pretending like The 78 NEEDS a rail station to function is just snobbery. But - it takes a real planning process and hard infrastructure to enable buses to do this job.
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