Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
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The recent mayoral election exposed the resentment that outlying areas have towards the constant re-investment in downtown. The near-downtown neighborhoods served by the Circle Line are targets of the same resentment. Because of this, I think neighborhood-focused transit projects will dominate the next decade.
Already on the table are the two Red Line projects and the Orange Line project, which I'm fairly confident will be started before the decade is out. Beyond that, there are the recurring efforts to start Rapid bus/BRT service on major corridors like Jeffrey, Western, and Ashland.
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I think you need to add a "percieved" to that. Objectively, I don't think there is a case to be made that downtown has proportionally received too much funding. It's classwar-driven perception, continued by politically-motivated, intentional fostering of class divisions. Look at the Pink Line. Objectively the Douglas Branch could have been torn down and replaced with enhanced bus service just going off ridership numbers. But not only was it rebuilt, it was kept open (unlike the Green Line), and split into a separate line to enhance service flexibility and yet all of that was still attacked at various points by political figures in its service area. It's hard to take "neighborhood groups" seriously when stuff like that happens.
At the same time, the Loop itself has never been rebuilt, is the heaviest-used part of the system, and yet is still not fully ADA-compliant. Objectively, Downtown does NOT receive too much investment and I think that in a purely objective world where politics were not played for purely personal gain that it would be clear Downtown needs MORE, not LESS investment. It seriously does worry me that the neighborhoods are going to continue to be getting a lot more investment at the expense of downtown. Pink Line, Orange Line, Brown Line, even back to the Green Line, Blue Line O'Hare branch tie replacement, all these neighborhood lines have had significant investment in the past 20 years, while Downtown has gotten what? Tie replacement in the subways, some necessary rehabilitation of subway stations and ... what? Even for the first proposal for BRT, all the proposals were for BRT in neighborhoods. Now there's one in the Loop, but originally, they were ALL in the neighborhoods.
Downtown gets a lot of grand proposals, but what's
actually happened downtown? Next to nothing, despite it being the clear leader in population and business growth over the past 20 years. That's not a sustainable trend - throwing investment in declining areas while ignoring the growing areas. Something will give - either Rahm or his successor will face down the partisan actors who are only interested in their own local rabble-rousing and not in the long-term health of the city, or downtown will choke and growth will stall due to a lack of infrastructure. We have maybe 20 years to work it out, which given the history of planning in Chicago really isn't very much time at all.