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Old Posted May 20, 2009, 9:06 PM
OhioGuy OhioGuy is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: DC
Posts: 7,649
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisLA View Post
Nice city, almost 20 years ago I used to leave very close to this city. It was one of my favorite areas to explore when I had nothing to do. I will be in Chicago next month for a very brief visit, hopefully the weather will be nice and Evanston just might be on my agenda to check out once again.

BTW did they finally finish all of upgrades on the Red & Purple line, or would Metra be a better option heading there from downtown Chicago?
Take Metra. It's a one seat, four stop ride from downtown Chicago to downtown Evanston. It'll definitely be quicker than riding the CTA up to Evanston. Metra gets you there in 25 minutes or less. Even if you caught the purple line express in the morning rush and the return purple line express in the evening rush, it still involves stops between downtown Evanston & the Chicago border, as well as all of the stops between Belmont & the loop. It ends up being 40 minutes (give or take a few minutes). As for the red line, the tracks are vastly improved between downtown and Addison (approximately 18-20 minutes from Jackson to Addison), but it's slow between Addison & Wilson, and of course the red line makes all of the stops up to Howard before you're forced to switch to the purple line at Howard Street (probably about 55-60 minutes total via the red line to the purple line). However if you'd like to be able to enjoy the neighborhood views from downtown Chicago to downtown Evanston, taking the purple line express would be more interesting than riding Metra.

(and now I see Steely already responded while I was typing up my response)

Thanks for the comments everyone!
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