Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
Personally, I think the most responsible choice is the "Renovation with Transfer Stations" option. CTA says it will only last 20 years, but that seems like a huge underestimate to me. If they suspend Purple Line service during construction, then they can completely rebuild the retaining walls with stronger tiebacks and a better blend of concrete, and it should last for another century. The steel sections should be replaced altogether to reduce the noise.
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Agreed—I was puzzled why they’d get rid of the embankment and replace it with a concrete structure. Also, we would be able to keep some of the historic structures without weirdly grafting them onto the new elevated structure à la
10 S. LaSalle (okay, it probably wouldn’t be that flamboyant, but it would still have an ersatz feel to it). Any word as to whether this option would have space for ten-car trains on the Red Line at some point in the future?
Some of the station consolidation did make sense, though, especially on the Evanston Branch and with Granville-Glenlake. Can they not do this in the basic rehab option because the ADA won’t allow for new narrowish stations?
There’s also the argument that you don’t need to get rid of stations. Even though it’s the least-used station on the Gold Coast Thorndale has ridership comparable to a lot of the Brown Line stations, so it would also make sense to retain it, even if you could conceptually put a new entrance a block away (and it also offers the possibility of my favorite Chicago transit idea—some kind of public art tribute to the Bob Newhart Show
). And taking away Jarvis didn’t make much sense to me either—even with a new Howard entrance at Rogers (resulting in a platform large enough for 16-car trains, or maybe Congress-style ramps?) it still leaves a big gap in the system, and that station still gets more ridership than a lot of the remodeled elevated stations on the Cermak Branch. And I’d really love to see both local and express services preserved—the north side corridor’s really one of the few places outside New York able to support overlapping metro services like that, and I’d like to preserve that richness and build upon it.
I still really like your idea from a couple of pages back, though—having a subway between Belmont and an Ainslie-Argyle station. After all, if there’s no way to get a Brown Line flyover approved, the next best thing is to have the north side mainline fly under (and it would get rid of the Sheridan curve to boot). So, in summary, this would be my ideal plan, from north to south:
Evanston: Basic rehab, but extend platforms to allow for eight car trains and do the full modernization option for Noyes, Davis and Main
Howard-Argyle: Basic rehab with Loyola transfer station, maybe consolidating Granville and Thorndale into Granville-Glenlake.
Argyle-Belmont: Do full rehab at Argyle to make new Ainslie-Argyle station, then merge Red and Purple lines to go underground to a new tunnel with stations at Wilson, Irving Park and Addison before rising again to Belmont, getting rid of the Clark Junction.
South of Belmont: Run both through the middle tracks of the four-track segment to the State Street subway, with the Red Line going south along the Dan Ryan and Purple Line going Southwest to Midway, replacing the Orange Line.