CHICAGO: Transit Developments

[J_M_Tungsten]

So does anyone know at which end of the Eisenhower they are going to start the 27 miles of repaving at?

[ChicagoChicago]

Originally Posted by pip

All my bitching about the service cuts and I don't even notice a difference from before. I don't own a car so the CTA is my means of getting around except a cab here and there. I am on the CTA almost everyday and so far to me nothing has changed. Thus certainly were some targeted cuts.

I've noticed a difference, particularly on the #9 bus. The drivers are a little too cognizant of the bunching problem now. In the mornings, the #9 Ashland bus going South will stop at green lights to slow down. Even at 5:30am, it takes 30 minutes to get from Belmont to Harrison, a whopping 4.5 miles.

[ChicagoChicago]

Originally Posted by J_M_Tungsten

So does anyone know at which end of the Eisenhower they are going to start the 27 miles of repaving at?

http://www.dot.il.gov/I290/i-290.pdf

It actually looks like it's going to be a bunch of separate projects and they are going to do them all at once. Done by the end of October.

[Mr Downtown]

Originally Posted by ChicagoChicago

In the mornings, the #9 Ashland bus going South will stop at green lights to slow down. Even at 5:30am, it takes 30 minutes to get from Belmont to Harrison, a whopping 4.5 miles.

Arriving early at a timepoint ("running hot") is considered a pretty serious offense for CTA drivers. Sitting through green lights in early morning hours is the price you pay for schedule reliability. Should the run cutters shave a few minutes off the 5:30 am run? Maybe, but in most cases it wouldn't actually "save a bus" over the entire route (allowing another trip with the same number of vehicles). So all you'd really be doing is giving the drivers longer layovers at the end of the route, with less slack if there was a problem en route.

[mwadswor]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

Arriving early at a timepoint ("running hot") is considered a pretty serious offense for CTA drivers. Sitting through green lights in early morning hours is the price you pay for schedule reliability. Should the run cutters shave a few minutes off the 5:30 am run? Maybe, but in most cases it wouldn't actually "save a bus" over the entire route (allowing another trip with the same number of vehicles). So all you'd really be doing is giving the drivers longer layovers at the end of the route, with less slack if there was a problem en route.

More importantly, people who get to a stop on time might miss the bus because the bus went through the stop a couple minutes early.

[ChicagoChicago]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

Arriving early at a timepoint ("running hot") is considered a pretty serious offense for CTA drivers. Sitting through green lights in early morning hours is the price you pay for schedule reliability. Should the run cutters shave a few minutes off the 5:30 am run? Maybe, but in most cases it wouldn't actually "save a bus" over the entire route (allowing another trip with the same number of vehicles). So all you'd really be doing is giving the drivers longer layovers at the end of the route, with less slack if there was a problem en route.

I understand...but it does nothing to add riders when a bus averages 9 miles an hour with noone on the streets. That's why the express buses were important, particularly on Ashland, where there's clearly a need for them.

[J_M_Tungsten]

Ugh I am not looking forward to the traffic on the eisenhower during the resurfacing project. what does "expect major delays" mean in terms of time?

[Mr Downtown]

Probably an extra 30 minutes, Post Office to Mannheim at 5:30 pm.

[Chicago Shawn]

Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280

Well when it gets to parts of the system that don't have GPS available it should be even easier. For example they could even use the cellphone receivers installed in the subway to tell exactly where the car is. The receivers are installed at equal increments so they could just install essentially a cell phone onto each car that would tell which antenna its closest too and then just send the location of that antenna to the traintracker system. When above ground they could just have the traintracker system triangulate the location of the car, or not even since the train travels along a fixed route, you have no need for triangulation since you can only be moving in one possible direction so the subway technique would work well here too.

Also, I don't see how this is that challenging. I mean I've looked into the booth at Howard that shows all the switches and train locations. Their signaling technology clearly knows where every train is, how does TrainTracker not know it? If they had to they could just hook whatever that computer I see is up to the TrainTracker.

CTA already has a software system tracking trains, probably using proximity switches intergrated into the signaling system. I see it on in the attendent's booth of the Roosevelt Red Line Station all the time. A public version of train tracker would just have to convert this information into time estimates for display in stations. A Satilite based GPS is not needed.

[Mr Downtown]

I've actually seen CTARailTracker operating on a CTA employee's smartphone, so we're not terribly far away from rollout.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by ChicagoChicago

http://www.dot.il.gov/I290/i-290.pdf

It actually looks like it's going to be a bunch of separate projects and they are going to do them all at once. Done by the end of October.

Crap, I always thought the resurfacing was just from Mannheim to the Circle! I had no idea that the resurfacing would extend west of Mannheim, much less up to 94 at Woodfield, or down 355 to Army Trail! Damn, this summer's gonna suck. They're basically resurfacing half of the IDOT (non-Tollway) system!

On the plus side, we'll have a shiny new Eisenhower by October... just in time for the pavement to get royally f'ed up by the snowplows.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

In Sunbelt cities, there's a lot of wishful thinking that if I vote for this, everyone else on the freeway will take the train so I can drive to work faster. Chicagoans already have a well-rounded transit system, so there's no slam-dunk idea that everyone agrees is a crying need.

Expand the view, then. What road/highway improvements would be a smart addition to the regional system? I think we can all agree that the Prairie Sprawlway is a bad idea, but what about the O'Hare Bypass, Mid-City Transitway, or anything else? I saw a proposal awhile back for a connection between the Eisenhower and Stevenson along Western, which would allow trucks/regional traffic to bypass the Circle. This would have the nice side effect of improving air quality downtown (at the expense of Little Village).

I do wish there were a way to get the north lakefront buses in and out of downtown faster than mixed traffic on LaSalle or Michigan.

Would the transitway network serve this purpose if built as BRT? You'd still have to get buses from Lake Shore Drive to Carroll at Lower Michigan, but then they'd have a fast link to the West Loop.

Or, in the short term, why not just redirect them onto Lower Wacker/Lake Shore Drive?

[Mr Downtown]

^I'm not talking about getting buses from Union/Ogilvie to Streeterville. I'm talking about getting the North Lakeshore Corridor buses in and out of the Loop. A few years back, CTA moved nearly all of the LaSalle variants to use Wacker/Lake Shore Drive instead of LaSalle. But what if there were a shallow-cut bus subway under Michigan Avenue, using either dual-mode buses or pavement gratings in Michigan Avenue's middle lanes (as found in Illinois Center) to ventilate the busway below?

The Carroll Street Busway goes to the West Loop rather than LaSalle Street so the only tie-in would be one of interlocking scheduling: Lakeshore express buses coming downtown in the morning would end up in the West Loop, then make distributor runs from Union/Ogilvie to Streeterville, then head up north for another inbound line-haul run. Reverse the process in the afternoon. This gives both sets of routes efficient vehicle usage.

I've always thought it was a mistake for the city and the region that the Crosstown Expressway was never built. A Mid-City Transitway built in conjunction with this would tie in nicely to my busway proposal for the Northwest Corridor:

http://chicagocarto.com/NWC.html

[ardecila]

A Michigan Avenue bus subway would be great, but it should have at least two stops, maybe three. Grand, Chicago, and Oak? If the buses aren't gonna provide service to the Mag Mile, then they should just run along Lower Wacker directly to the Drive.

[VivaLFuego]

Not sure exactly how it would have worked in practice (clearly a complete reconstruction of LaSalle between Wacker and Randolph), but a direct connection between LaSalle and Lower Wacker would have been very useful when Wacker was rebuilt. The PM rush is a disaster at Wacker/LaSalle because of such high demand for right turn movements from NB LaSalle to EB Wacker (both bus and auto) and the high pedestrian counts, and there's not much to be done about it at this point. The only plausible solution is to make more widespread use of bus-only lanes, both on streets with no parking and those where there are already rush hour parking restrictions to add an extra traffic lane - bus only lanes are of some value in the few places they exist in the Loop (Dearborn, Jackson, Adams) but of course they are still susceptible to back ups from right-turns. The stripes of paint for bus only lanes also equal some amount of free formula money from the feds, for whatever that's worth.

Some time ago I saw renderings of a grade level busway down the center of North Michigan Avenue, but that's obviously not happening anytime soon between the implied required tulip relocation and limiting of left turns.

[Mr Downtown]

Hmmm. It's pretty easy to go from LaSalle to Lower Wacker via Lake and Garvey Ct. I take a lot of tour buses down that way.

[VivaLFuego]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

Hmmm. It's pretty easy to go from LaSalle to Lower Wacker via Lake and Garvey Ct. I take a lot of tour buses down that way.

We're getting into pretty wonky territory, but I don't think a 60 foot bus can make those turns (both Lake->Garvey and Garvey->LWacker). I know they can't handle the turn from Post onto Wacker, nor can they handle the turns onto the ramps down along N-S Wacker - hence why the 120-series is served by 40ft buses despite being commuter routes more apt for a higher capacity vehicle.

[Mr Downtown]

Lake to Garvey is no problem because it's a left turn. Garvey to EB Lower Wacker might be an issue; my routing always takes the buses WB with a left turn.

[OhioGuy]

I've commented before on my desire for a bus tunnel, similar to Seattle's downtown transit tunnel, under Michigan Ave. There's just way too much congestion on Michigan Ave for good quick service between the north side and the loop.

[youngregina]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Crap, I always thought the resurfacing was just from Mannheim to the Circle! I had no idea that the resurfacing would extend west of Mannheim, much less up to 94 at Woodfield, or down 355 to Army Trail! Damn, this summer's gonna suck. They're basically resurfacing half of the IDOT (non-Tollway) system!

On the plus side, we'll have a shiny new Eisenhower by October... just in time for the pavement to get royally f'ed up by the snowplows.

This will be your chance to use the blue line Take advantage of the transit that it provided !!