CTA Update: Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Red Line North

The Chicago Transit Authority held two public open house meetings, one in Evanston, and one in Edgewater at the Broadway Armory this past Tuesday evening, to update the public on plans to rehabilitate and reconstruct the north branch of the Red Line and the Purple Line.

There are four alternatives under discussion: Reconstruction and consolidation of some stations; reconstruction without consolidation; minimal rehabilitation; and no rehabilitation, with only minimal repairs.

Reconstruction will involve completely rebuilding the Purple Line except at stations where the roadbed has been replaced already, and the Red Line north of Addison. The plan calls for a new elevated structure with four tracks, the replacement of several stations with new ADA-compliant stations with 24'-wide platforms, elevators, and escalator; rebuilding the Wilson and Loyola stations as transfer points on the Purple Line; and the possible elimination of the Lawrence, Thorndale, and Jarvis stops on the Red Line, and the Foster and South Blvd stations on the Purple. Red Line platforms would be extended to accommodate 10-car trains and Purple Line Stations would be extended to berth 8-car trains.

It's hard to think of a more critical issue for the city than the rehabilitation and expansion of our century-old rapid transit system, which has been allowed to become extremely degraded while ridership has grown rapidly in the past decade. Ridership of CTA trains in the city has boomed, and in 2010, ridership on the Red Line reached the level of 1927, it's previous peak, hauling nearly a quarter-million people per day, for 38.5 million riders in 2010, surpassing that of the previous peak in 1927.This increase has mostly been on the north branch of the line. The three major north side lines- the north branch of the Red, the Brown Line, and the O'Hare branch of the Blue line, together haul 59% of the CTA rail system's passengers.

The boom in ridership is no doubt due to the sharp uptick in fuel prices in the past decade, with the promise of many more increases and possibly shortages to come, as the peaking of liquid fuels gains traction and car ownership becomes an unbearable burden for urban denizens. This development is likely to be permanent, and the next decade will most likely see steeply reduced rates of auto ownership along with swelling demand for public transportation. Cities will need improved public transportation in order to remain competitive. Therefore, it is imperative that any major overhaul and reconstruction of the system be planned to allow for the addition of new lines and greatly increased population density in Chicago as people abandon their car-dependent lifestyles in the auto suburbs of the 20th century and return to cities and towns where they have access to public transportation and can live within walking distance of services and jobs.

The plans made so far do not project increased ridership greatly increased over current levels, and what is being planned at this time is the replacement of the line between Addison and Howard. The rebuild would merely replace the existing decrepit structure with a greatly improved line, and while it will permit longer trains and feature greatly improved comfort and safety by building wider platforms and larger stations with improved egress, it will not permit more trains than can currently be safely run, and most of all it is "closed" in that no provisions are being made for new lines to connect to it, such as a connecting line that runs over Touhy Ave between the Cumberland or Rosemont stations on the Blue Line and the Howard station on the Red;  or- dare we dream- crosstown lines over Belmont and Lawrence to bypass the nightmarish congestion on these narrow, heavily traveled throughways. Another timely addition would be a spur on the Brown Line into West Rogers Park, another high-density neighborhood, to run from the Lincoln/Western station up Western to Howard. This would relieve overcrowding on the Red Line, and it might be that a whole new line is justified here. Yet more rail lines, including a another "loop" track to handle extra lines into the downtown area, should be figured into any plans we make now, even if it is another two decades or more before we actually build them. Failure to allow for upgrades and additional service means greater costs down the road, as we can see from the newly built stations at Belmont and Fullerton- will these stations need further expensive expansions to accommodate 10-car trains, which CTA has never run before? If planners had allowed for greater train lengths when designing these two stations, this rebuild would be a little cheaper.

The reconstruction of the Red Line is a once-in-a-century opportunity to plan for demand that does not exist yet but that could materialize very quickly given the trajectory of energy supplies and prices, which foretell an epic economic shift that will likely reverse the social and economic trends of the past 60 years. This shift will most likely bring more people into the city, for much greater population density than exists at this time. The planning process should allow for more retail/transit/mulitfamily housing hubs, where mixed use retail/commercial/mulitfamily housing could be built around rail stops and adjacent bus plazas.

Whatever we do here, it is imperative to seize the moment to make cohesive plans that will enable Chicago to handle higher population densities and supply housing, transit, and services for many more people than we have at the present.

Daley Offers No Alternative to CTA Fare Hikes

Mayor Daley says that the proposed CTA fare hikes and service cuts are "very ugly", but offers no alternative or solution to the the agency's budget problems.

Strange- Da Mare had the funds ($86 Million) to buy the Michael Reese hospital property to be redeveloped as the Olympic Village, but can't find the funds for one of the city's most essential services?

Daley has always considered the CTA to be something of a "frill", and now that the Olympic Games are off the table, he has no interest in repairing or expanding Chicago's once-excellent service, thus condemning our city to second-tier status in the future. There has even been talk of cutting Owl service, which would put at least another 50,000 cars on the streets and put Chicago on the same steep downhill path as other formerly great Midwestern cities such as St. Louis and Detroit, both of whom deteriorated rapidly after all-night transit was eliminated. In St. Louis, the last "owl" ran in 1965, and what had been a gentle glide downhill became a cliff dive into depopulation, disinvestment, and poverty.

Daley was originally opposed to free rides for seniors, but now has nothing to say about this absurdity, and there is no discussion of raising the city's funding contribution to the agency to reflect inflation since the early 80s. Now that we won't need to spend $500 Million or more on costs related to the Games, could we direct some of the TIF slush funds towards our essential services? Our transit, our police department, our schools, and our essential sewer and water infrastructure are in tatters. We need to be replacing 80-year-old water mains, we need to put more police on the street, and we badly need improved transit and to get those improvements in place before the next round of gasoline price hikes, which are coming very soon, and which may come sooner than anyone was figuring if oil ceases to be denominated in the dollar.

While Chicago's transit and that of other large cities is starving, it's competition, auto transit, is more lavishly funded than ever, and at the expense of our largest cities and their needs. Over 60% of the road-building stimulus money being doled out by the Feds is being allocated to the most lightly populated areas of the country to build unnecessary highways. Why are these funds being so allocated? 65% of this country's population lives in the 100 largest urban areas, and 75% of the country's economic activity takes place in them, yet our tax money is being allocated for mega-highways through semi-desert wastes with the lowest population densities in the country. This has been the funding pattern for the past 60 years, to the great destruction of Chicago and other cities.

Chicago is one of the country's largest net taxpayers, behind only NYC and Los Angeles, yet ranks near-to-last in federal givebacks. In other words, we are being taxed to fund mega-highways and heroic water diversion projects in the middle of the Big Nowhere, the better to lure millions of denizens out of livable Midwestern cities to mega-cities in the middle of the high desert that are bound to fail catastrophically as water problems deepen and as the massive water infrastructure becomes impossible to maintian in a fuel-short future- while our services deteriorate and our city, which is one of the world's greatest metropolises, is decimated to pay for all of that. And electing a Chicago machine politician as our president has not helped us get our share.

It's time to get our share of the tens of billions of dollars, or at least get benefits that equal the taxes we send to Washington on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Same thing goes for the State of Illinois- why is the state's largest city treated like a poor, unwanted cousin in Springfield? We need to demand the end of free senior fares and demand that our state and city governments give us something of value in return for our taxes- and adequately fund and manage conscientiously this essential service.

CTA Ad Endorses Public Urination

This ad appeared on a Red Line train I rode on July 6.

This ad was run by Chicago Apartment Finders, a venerable and formerly respectable local concern whose focus is Lakeview, Wrigleyville, and other North Side neighborhoods, and the ad was evidently approved by the CTA, even though ads advertising tobacco products are prohibited by the agency, so the only conclusion I can draw is that CTA and Chicago Apartment Finders think it is OK to urinate in public.

I didn't know that it was ever considered OK to relieve yourself in public, even on your own lawn, or in any other place but a facility designed specifically for the purpose. In other words, a washroom.

But now both CTA and Chicago Apartment Finders have served notice, by this ad, that public urination is normal and acceptable. It's especially surprising that CTA would let an ad like this be run, not only because the agency will not permit tobacco to be advertised on their property or vehicles, but also because they have a massive, ongoing problem with urination in el stations and sometimes even on their trains. It's also surprising that this ad even made it through all the steps between the little genius copywriter's desk to the trains to begin with. Don't these ads have to be approved by the writer's superiors at the ad agency and also by the appropriate people at CTA?

How could an ad that promotes such an extremely offensive, and illegal, behavior be approved by a major local business and a highly visible and important public agency? I'd seriously like answers from Chicago Apartment Finders, their ad agency, and the CTA.