Why does the Brown Line stop west at Kimball?

[Chicago60614]

^ nah, they can build in anything.

When they built it the areas to the west weren't built up, this was over 100 years ago.

Today there's just absolutely no money to build the expension, although I'm sure if funds poped up someone would propose it pretty quick.

Since the 1950's the US has treated mass transit as the ******* child of the country, and big business won in the destruction of a vast majority of our transit infrastructure.

Concidering back 60 years ago every town of greater than 10,000 people had tram/streetcar lines and interurbans connecting the whole thing, it's pretty sad. Even the random interurbans back in the 40's that connected cities of less than 50,000 in Iowa ran at almost 100mph, and could get you between cities faster than anything we have today.

[APPLEI]

[quote=Avengerfire;3677263]Getting the train over the Edens would cost a crapload of money alone and screw up the Edens for a long time.
[/quote/]
how about making the train a subway and putting under The Edens?
i love the idea of extending the Brown Line to O'hara

[Drover]

If you can put a subway under the English Channel or the Boston Harbor, you can put a subway anywhere. There's already a subway on the north side, from the southern edge of Logan Square through the northern edge of Avondale. The issue with building a subway, especially in an area that is already developed and you'd have to re-engineer utilities, is the enormous cost versus simply creating a grade-level line or even an elevated line. And really, you'd have to wreck a whole lot of infrastructure to extend the Brown Line no matter what grade it was built at.

[Avengerfire]

This is a good thread. Anyone have any ideas how much a Brown Line extension would cost?

[Drover]

Dude, what the f#ck is your angle? Why do you keep dredging up these completely ancient and often played-out threads? You've been on an irritatingly bizarre crusade for weeks now. What the hell is going on?

[Lookout Kid]

It's an internet faux pas called "thread necro" to dig up old threads that have been dormant for years. Think about why they call it that, Avengerfire. You're the internet equivalent of a grave robber. Or Ed Gein.

[Chi-town Native]

It's an interesting question though, as I completely appalled at the cost overruns (no surprise, of course) of the Brown Line upgrade a few years back - I would not be surprised if the final tab would have actually covered the lion's share of a new Circle Line.

Comments here are interesting:

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2...ne-renovation/

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

It's an interesting question though, as I completely appalled at the cost overruns (no surprise, of course) of the Brown Line upgrade a few years back - I would not be surprised if the final tab would have actually covered the lion's share of a new Circle Line.

Comments here are interesting:

Chicago Completes Brown Line Renovation « The Transport Politic

"the Brown Line reconstruction was necessary to shore up the structural integrity of the line’s stations and track, which is mostly set along a viaduct."

"Northwest Chicago, through which the Brown Line runs, has been experiencing significant gentrification since the 1980s"

There are some inaccuracies in the story, but it is still a interesting read.

Chicago Completes Brown Line Renovation « The Transport Politic

[paytonc]

This idea's been around for generations, although interestingly not as a Brown Line extension but as part of an idea to replace the Ravenswood and build a Broadway/Clark/Michigan lakefront subway:
Chicago ''L''.org: Transit Plans - 1923 Kelker Plan
Chicago ''L''.org: Transit Plans -1995 Transportation System Plan

Originally Posted by APPLEI

the CTA map for 2055 looks amazing
but what about these neighborhoods... East Side

Low density and low ridership. Mass transit needs a mass.