CTA Red, Purple Line project gets funding boost (Chicago, Addison: 2014, construction)

[Vlajos]

Very welcome news.

Crain's Chicago Business : Subscription Center#

[Maintainschaos]

Good to hear. Any idea if/how many stations will be closed for this project?

[marothisu]

Hmm, I can't read it. Can you sum it up?

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Hmm, I can't read it. Can you sum it up?

Basically there is a very good chance the CTA will get a good amount of funding from the Feds for this work.

[Chi-town Native]

Unless they are doubling the trains this is bunk, it is ridiculous trying to get on a Red Line morning rush hour train south of Addison at this point. Maybe they should use their sky rights and just build double-decker tracks.

In fact, he added, reconstruction could double el ridership on the 10-mile stretch of track north of Belmont, which already is one of the CTA's busiest lines but is plagued by century-old stations and track structure.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

Basically there is a very good chance the CTA will get a good amount of funding from the Feds for this work.

What type of work exactly?

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

Unless they are doubling the trains this is bunk, it is ridiculous trying to get on a Red Line morning rush hour train south of Addison at this point. Maybe they should use their sky rights and just build double-decker tracks.

In fact, he added, reconstruction could double el ridership on the 10-mile stretch of track north of Belmont, which already is one of the CTA's busiest lines but is plagued by century-old stations and track structure.

1) The tracks will be able to accommodate more closely-scheduled trains.

2) The stations will be able to accommodate 10-car trains on the Red Line and 8-car trains on the Purple Line, for a 25-33% increase in capacity even without any other changes.

3) Some versions have re-proposed a flyover for north-bound Brown Line trains, which would increase rush hour capacity of the Red Line by nearly double.

4) Faster speeds along that segment can result in more trains, for more capacity.

In other words, if the CTA gets enough funding to do everything they'd like to, this could result in significantly better capacity for the Red Line, as well as better capacity for the Brown Line (if they get the flyover). They will also be running more frequent Purple Line service (at least outside of rush hour), which also increases capacity. In other words, even if ridership doubled, there's potentially enough good from this project to come close to tripling the capacity of the corridor.

[Pantless1]

Hopefully this means an improvement to the Bryn Mawr stop... which is all I care about

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Maintainschaos

Good to hear. Any idea if/how many stations will be closed for this project?

There are several options, but I think the one in the lead doesn't result in any closures. It seems like closures would be possible, but when you sit down and think about each one, each station has a lot of potential for increased ridership if the City would just be better about TOD zoning near them, so it's really better to leave them and work on getting better density near them.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by emathias

1) The tracks will be able to accommodate more closely-scheduled trains.

2) The stations will be able to accommodate 10-car trains on the Red Line and 8-car trains on the Purple Line, for a 25-33% increase in capacity even without any other changes.

3) Some versions have re-proposed a flyover for north-bound Brown Line trains, which would increase rush hour capacity of the Red Line by nearly double.

4) Faster speeds along that segment can result in more trains, for more capacity.

In other words, if the CTA gets enough funding to do everything they'd like to, this could result in significantly better capacity for the Red Line, as well as better capacity for the Brown Line (if they get the flyover). They will also be running more frequent Purple Line service (at least outside of rush hour), which also increases capacity. In other words, even if ridership doubled, there's potentially enough good from this project to come close to tripling the capacity of the corridor.

All sounds great in theory. And I'm not one to turn long overdue funding from the Feds, no sirree.

However, as CTA bus/train tracker remind me on a daily basis, how frequently buses and trains actually run has as much to do with the human operators in charge as anything else.

Even in the year of our lord 2014, during rush hour the Belmont bus apparently cannot run without another Belmont bus less than a block or two away. Blue Line train spacing is also quite erratic at times. I've been so pissed at the Red Line in the morning I haven't taken it for over 6 months.

The flyover aspect sounds encouraging. I may have glossed over it in the article, do you have any more info by any chance?

And I'd still like to know why the City seems to have given up on a Circle Line.