Quote:
Originally Posted by VivaLFuego
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1) restoring the Paulina Connector
2) Block 37
3) the Dan Ryan connector subway
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I accept your point about different agencies, although it sort of goes to a larger issue of a lack of coordinated long-term planning. To your other points:
1) While this is a Good Thing as it's a portion of the Circle Line, it didn't really add any new service for downtown, did it? It did increase frequency of service on the Douglas Branch, as well as for the Ashland and Clinton stops on Lake, but it did so at the expense of rush hour capacity in the Loop and I think overall it hasn't really enhanced mobility downtown significantly, if at all. If it ends up being a precursor to the Circle Line, or even just a station at Madison, great, but in and of itself it's not so exciting.
2) This isn't even completed, and there are no plans for it to be completed, and even if it was completed, it wouldn't add much new service. Although, I would LOVE to see the CTA create the Lake Street portal and route Green Line trains through the subway instead of over the Loop, which would free up capacity on the Loop during rush hour. I would think with the new signals and switches, that would be doable without causing too much chaos in the Red and Blue Line schedules. I actually think a West Loop express to the airports would make more sense, and that building a double-cross between the Blue and Red under Block 37 would have been a lot more valuable in the long term, and opened up some interesting Red/Blue routings.
3) You're citing a 20-year-old project that created no new service and allowed the CTA to better match ridership between branches to save costs as evidence of downtown investment? This is another one of those "could be helpful" things that, at present, isn't really adding much benefit for the central area per se.
For the cost of the Orange, Yellow and Red Line extensions, you could make a lot of progress on the the Clinton Street Subway and West Loop Transportation Center, both of which benefit downtown and outer neighborhoods. Or even revive the much-needed West Loop/Streeterville/McCormick Place portion of the 1968 Central Area Transit Plan. Either of those would not only benefit the Central Area, but would create potential for tie-ins for expanded rail service in a number of neighborhoods. If the Central Area Transit Plan portions I mentioned had been built in the 1970s, we'd now be talking about expanding the McCormick branch to Hyde Park, and maybe punching the Streeterville Branch north to Fullerton. But those aren't even options now, because of the lack of vision when it was first (and second and third) considered.
Most of the outlying neighborhoods in Chicago are built to a density that works very well with buses. It just amazes me that we're spending billions of dollars to enhance rail service in areas where existing bus service is either adequate or capable of being made adequate with far less expensive projects. I don't have a problem with the projects, per se - I am always glad to see more rail routes - and if the region had figured out how to do those AND build new routes in the central area, I'd have zero complaints. But if we can only invest in one or the other I think it's just plain mismanagement to invest in rail solutions in relatively low-density areas while doing nothing beyond generating constantly-changing plans for the densest, most economically critical portion of the city.
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