Do any Straight Dope people have updates on plans to improve north side CTA service and the El in general? I have been interested ever since reading Cecil and Chicago Reader’s analyses from 2011. Has their been any progress? This was Cecil’s/the Chicago Reader’s proposal at the time:
And here is the Chicago Reader article:
While Cecil’s proposal would improve commutes for many thousands of (1) people who currently board on the Purple Line at or north of Howard and (2) people who currently board the Red Line at or north of Berwyn, it would also make service worse for lots of people who live closer in to the city whose commutes are already abysmal.
Just as Cecil asks why ‘suburbanites get the special treatment’ with the Purple Line currently skipping every Red Line stop north of Belmont, I would ask why his plan merely shares this special treatment with people living on the northern fringe of the city proper. The article plainly admits that service would be halved (from every 3 minutes to every 6 minutes) at the Berwyn, Argyle, Lawrence, and Sheridan Red Line stations without the redeeming hope of being able to switch to an express train that will save any time.
Furthermore, commuters who who currently board Brown/Purple Line stops south of Fullerton and north of the loop currently have the choice of taking the Brown to the west loop and the Purple to the east loop. On their return commute they take the other color to head back north directly without having to circle the loop in the wrong direction. Under cecil’s plan, all trains would head to the west loop and proceed counter-clockwise, meaning nearly every single one of these commuters would be screwed on either their way into, or their way back from the loop. They would have to circle around the loop in the wrong direction in the mornings if their office is in the east loop and in the afternoons if their office is in the west loop.
Finally, Cecil’s plan does nothing to improve the tortuous service on the Brown line north of Belmont. There are so many stops and switching to Cecil’s proposed Red/Purple line at Belmont doesn’t help for people commuting to the west loop.
Service is also slightly degraded at the Diversey and Wellington stops but not by enough to complain about if there were real benefits to enough others. As the plan is proposed, I’m not sure that there are.
I understand that Cecil was proposing a solution that wouldn’t require a radical change in El infrastructure, but I don’t know if that’s possible while providing a transportation solution that works for anything besides commuting. And the current system only competes with commuting due to rush hour road congestion and high loop parking prices, not on its own merits as an efficient, clean, comfortable, or fast service, of which it is none of those things. In other countries, their mass transit schedules reliably follow a schedule down to the minute. In Chicago a schedule exists but it becomes completely useless early into rush hour as rail congestion slows traffic. From my stop at Wellington, when I get up early and take a ~6:35am Purple Line into the loop, I can get to Randolph/Wabash in 20-25 minutes. That’s not bad. What’s terrible is that if I take a later train at around 8:15am that same train ride becomes 35-40 minutes. Such delays on a completely grade separated rail system are unacceptable.
To me, it seems like the El has a fatal flaw with the loop itself. The loop is way too small and the stations inside it are spaced way too close together. Combine the loop stops themselves with the stops on the two subway lines and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the loop has the highest number of rapid transit stops per square mile of any place in the world. What a complete waste. People can walk more than 1 block to get from their stop to their office. Its necessary that they do so to prevent the loop from handicapping the entire system. Looking at the best rapid transit systems around the world, its pretty clear that the solution is widen the loop.
Rather than being bound in the north by State Street, make the northern bound Chicago, connecting the Chicago Brown and Red Line stops. Rather than being bound in the west by Wells, extend it out to Clinton, connecting the Blue, Green, and Pink lines without having to travel all the way into the “old loop”. As the southern border, maybe expand it from Van Buren to Roosevelt. Each lines should pass into this expanded “new loop” in such a way with specific intersections between them to provide quick access to all points inside of it as well as faster trips between destination pairs outside of the loop. Check out a map of the berlin S-bahn, U-bahn systems to get an idea of this.