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Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280
^^^ But it wouldn't be under utilized. It would basically allow people to make trips that are impractical now. For example, ever try to get to anywhere along the near west side from the north or northwest? It ain't happening. Ever try to get from the North Side to the NW side? Not fun. The segment between North and Clyborn and Damen alone would be packed constantly. That's not even considering events at the United Center (which is currently inaccessible by transit from just about everywhere).
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So built a station at Madison on the Pink Line. There - I just saved the City from building a $2 billion subway.
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Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280
Then there is providing actual service to the Museum Campus and opening up new communiting possibilities to the IMD from the N and NW... It would also open up completely different line possibilities. You could set it up so that you could alternate Red and Blue Line trains down opposite sides of downtown
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Roosevelt Station for Red/Green/Orange line is the same distance from the Field Museum as the Field Museum is from Adler Planetarium. I happen to think that doubling trains on the Pink Line and running half of them east along the 15th Street viaduct, then north along the Metra Electric ROW would be a good long-term plan, but mostly because I think it could be done relatively inexpensively. AND that it would only really make sense (given the piss-poor ridership on the Pink Line currently) if done in conjunction with the 1968 plan for a subway from the West Loop to Streeterville, which actually also branched south to McCormick Place. Tying new peripheral lines into a heavily used core enhancement will result in far more riders than simply donig peripheral enhancements. The core-centric nature of Chicago isn't going to change even with additional peripheral lines - nor, it can be argued, should it.
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Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280
which would make commuting to places outside of the West Loop Practical from the growing NW side. Right now I can't go anywhere except the middle of the loop from my house on the train; no Michigan Ave,
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If you don't have a subway in Streeterville, how are rail enhancements getting you to Michigan Ave anyway?
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Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280
no Lincoln Park, no North and clyborn, No West Loop (except the south side of it which I can get to from UIC Halsted), such a line would actually make it possible for me to take trains to visit friends in LP or to go to a job along Michigan Ave or meet someone near the Hancock for dinner. I just drive right now...
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There will be a station at Morgan in May. Transfer at Clark/Lake and now you have the north half of the West Loop covered, too.
You drive to dinner at the Hancock? The mere fact that you illustrate that it's practical for you to drive from where you live to where your friends are and yet want a subway line connecting the two spots illustrates your misplaced priorities. It's not practical to drive between the West Loop and Streeterville. That's where a subway is appropriate. Putting subways in places well-served by cars ahead of places where cars aren't practical is ridiculous.
I don't disagree that other lines would be "nice to have," you and I only really disagree on prioritization. I think places that are, by design, transit-capitve, deserve higher priority than places that are not, by design, transit-captive.
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Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280
Eventually a rail line will be built in Chicago that does something other than go to downtown and we will all be shocked at the amount of demand there is for trips that don't go downtown... Chicago is pretty much the only city with a transit system of this size in the world that doesn't have a train line allowing circulation outside of the CBD...
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You realize that the line you seem to most want - the Circle Line - is essentially a line that services the Central Area, right? It may not be primarily about the Loop proper, but you're not talking about connecting Beverly and Edison Park, you're talking about another primarily central area line - you are just insisting that your central-area line, serving areas with employment densities of about 1/10th of the Loop and Michigan Ave's, anda population density of about half the Near North Side, should be prioritized ahead of a much more dense area - and I just don't see why that should come first. Plus, wouldn't the Circle Line make a lot more sense if, instead of routing into the Red Line subway at North/Clyborn, it ran to Clark, then under Clark to Chestnut to Streeterville to integrate as part of the 1968 planned subway? You could have transfers at North/Clyborn and Clark/Division and maybe a new station serving the North/Clark area. That'd be a lot more win than just the Circle Line brings by itself.
Using your logic, if we DON'T build it, and in 40 more years that area is built up and desperately could use a subway, we should then ignore the area you're advocating for now and, instead, build a subway along Western Ave or wherever the new western edge of intensive new development and gentrification is. We can't ignore the areas that got ignored originally just because they've been ignored so long already.