CHICAGO: Transit Developments

[emathias]

Reading the ridership stats for the CTA, I was pleasantly surprised to see January's numbers. Every type of service showed increased ridership, but Sunday 'L' ridership was up over 15% in 2012 compared to 2011.

[J_M_Tungsten]

I don't doubt that one bit. Every time I take the L, I'm crammed in like a sardine. It's great for the system, I just hope the city can keep up with increased demands.

[emathias]

I'm a big fan of public transit, but there are some things it's not that great for ... like bank robbery getaways.

[untitledreality]

Originally Posted by J_M_Tungsten

I just hope the city can keep up with increased demands.

It would be nice to see increased ridership and demand redistribute out to the underutilized lines. Sure, the Howard Red, Brown and Ohare Blue are all packed during rush hour... but at the very same time you have half empty Forest Park trains arriving downtown and 3/4 empty Pink and Green line trains. The ridership is slowly growing, but for a newly refurbished line like the Pink to have carried 1,000,000 less riders this past January than the similarly sized Brown is ridiculous. The city and CTA should be all over promoting development activity in those neighborhoods.

btw - looking up those January ridership numbers was shocking, to see the entire system at a +10.77% change from last year is remarkable.

[ardecila]

I took the Pink Line from Clinton every day last summer. Never was the train 3/4 empty. Frequency is lowered so that CTA is not running empty trains.

Ridership from these areas is lower, though. I want better distribution of ridership too, but consider how fast the population in these areas is declining. This particular decline is not the benign shrinking of household sizes that the North Side experienced; it's real hard poverty and crime driving people out. Plus, the remaining population in these areas is heavily transit-dependent and the price of gas is quite high.

Because of those factors, I don't know how rail ridership from these parts of the city could be improved - the L is already the fastest and cheapest way to get downtown, and anybody from those neighborhoods that's heading downtown is probably taking the L.

Faster limited-stop buses might be able to drive up the bus ridership by making new kinds of crosstown trips practical on transit - the guy living in Austin who works at O'Hare might use transit if the Cicero bus offered reasonable travel times up to the Blue Line at Jeff Park Montrose.

[Buckman821]

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact....dObONNLuggg%3D

from Alderman Pawar

Many of you have been contacting our office regarding speeding cars, cut-through traffic and community safety. We have been working with the Mayor's office and CDOT to identify innovative ways to increase pedestrian safety in our neighborhoods. Mayor Emanuel and CDOT recently released the Bike 2020 plan - simultaneously, our office has been looking at ways to increase safety, keep traffic moving effectively and make our ward more bicycle and pedestrian friendly. The result: we are studying the possibility of installing a Neighborhood Greenway on Berteau Ave from Clark Street to Damen Avenue. This stretch of Berteau has a high volume of traffic safety complaints and intersects four existing recommended bike routes. What's a Neighborhood Greenway? It is a residential street where pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers can all share the road safely.

I'm seeing this greenway concept referenced in many places. Yet I can't seem to get to the bottom of HOW it actually differentiates itself from a typical street. I get that the idea is to slow or inhibit vehicular traffic, but how? Can anybody shed some light on this? These overly vague descriptions are getting me nowhere.

[paytonc]

Also known as a bicycle boulevard (but that name gives the incorrect impression that cars aren't allowed)
http://www.ibpi.usp.pdx.edu/guidebook.php

[manchester united]

Does exist the possibility to have another line ( beyond the Red and Blue lines ) open 24/7 ?

[Beta_Magellan]

The big issue with having lines running 24/7 is that you have to pay someone to run the trains 24/7—that’s why only the two most heavily-trafficked lines get round-the-clock service. I’ve heard people wish the Brown Line operated at all hours, but there simply aren’t enough people taking transit to justify operating the whole line past ~1:30 AM—past then, the CTA saves money by only running trains down to Belmont for another hour or so and having people make a fairly easy transfer there. It’s less expensive to run buses in most cases—Lawrence Ave. and Evanston both have Night Owl routes to subsitute for the Brown and Purple Lines, and while the Green and Pink Lines don’t have exact substitutes their catchment areas either benefit from parallel buses or the Red and Blue Lines plus a Night Owl transfer.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by manchester united

Does exist the possibility to have another line ( beyond the Red and Blue lines ) open 24/7 ?

As Beta said, there's currently not demand for it. If there was, the CTA would probably add it - they're generally pretty responsive to increased demand on existing routes.

Also, it's not just the reduced cost of operating runs that save money when not operating 24 hours. Having hours of no operation each day allows necessary maintenance to be scheduled more easily, which saves money.

[stevevance]

Originally Posted by untitledreality

It would be nice to see increased ridership and demand redistribute out to the underutilized lines. Sure, the Howard Red, Brown and Ohare Blue are all packed during rush hour... but at the very same time you have half empty Forest Park trains arriving downtown and 3/4 empty Pink and Green line trains. The ridership is slowly growing, but for a newly refurbished line like the Pink to have carried 1,000,000 less riders this past January than the similarly sized Brown is ridiculous. The city and CTA should be all over promoting development activity in those neighborhoods.

I agree.

It does not seem that promoting development around train stations is a priority.

I searched for "CTA TOD" and found that Jones Lang LaSalle has three properties listed, abutting train stations (all PDFs):

• Garfield Green Line
• Belmont Brown Line
• 63rd/Ashland Green Line

The Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) has a lunch time seminar coming up called "Place Stations: Creating Fun and Functional Transit Centers" that I'll be attending and writing about on Grid Chicago.

[stevevance]

Originally Posted by Buckman821

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact....dObONNLuggg%3D

from Alderman Pawar.

I'm seeing this greenway concept referenced in many places. Yet I can't seem to get to the bottom of HOW it actually differentiates itself from a typical street. I get that the idea is to slow or inhibit vehicular traffic, but how? Can anybody shed some light on this? These overly vague descriptions are getting me nowhere.

Portland, Seattle, and Davis, California, are the leaders in building neighborhood greenways. They use traffic calming techniques to slow traffic and prioritize safer movement of bicycles and walking over automobile traffic, and they (sometimes) use landscaping to address stormwater management.

For more information, follow this topic on Grid Chicago. I've also written about this on my personal blog.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by emathias

As Beta said, there's currently not demand for it. If there was, the CTA would probably add it - they're generally pretty responsive to increased demand on existing routes.

Also, it's not just the reduced cost of operating runs that save money when not operating 24 hours. Having hours of no operation each day allows necessary maintenance to be scheduled more easily, which saves money.

It becomes complicated if we think about the shared infrastructure the various lines use. Operating one of the remaining lines 24/7 would require the Loop to be activated at night, or it would require expensive new connections to shift trains into the subway for a nighttime service pattern.

The CTA should perhaps do a better job simplifying and improving the Night Owl system, maybe creating higher-frequency night lines paralleling the closed rail lines (Archer, King, and Cermak come to mind). Maybe this could be combined with the BRT efforts to create better-lit, safer places to wait. I imagine Bus Tracker has also improved safety for those trying to ride night buses.

[N830MH]

Originally Posted by manchester united

Does exist the possibility to have another line ( beyond the Red and Blue lines ) open 24/7 ?

Yes, it is. They are always opened for every 24 hours.

[Rizzo]

Originally Posted by emathias

I'm a big fan of public transit, but there are some things it's not that great for ... like bank robbery getaways.

Great job to the cops for noticing the dye and catching the guy. The big risk here is thieves running up or down the stairs and knocking people over.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by ardecila

I took the Pink Line from Clinton every day last summer. Never was the train 3/4 empty. Frequency is lowered so that CTA is not running empty trains.

Ridership from these areas is lower, though. I want better distribution of ridership too, but consider how fast the population in these areas is declining. This particular decline is not the benign shrinking of household sizes that the North Side experienced; it's real hard poverty and crime driving people out. Plus, the remaining population in these areas is heavily transit-dependent and the price of gas is quite high.

Because of those factors, I don't know how rail ridership from these parts of the city could be improved - the L is already the fastest and cheapest way to get downtown, and anybody from those neighborhoods that's heading downtown is probably taking the L.

Faster limited-stop buses might be able to drive up the bus ridership by making new kinds of crosstown trips practical on transit - the guy living in Austin who works at O'Hare might use transit if the Cicero bus offered reasonable travel times up to the Blue Line at Jeff Park Montrose.

Average weekday ridership growth on the Pink Line was 9% year over year. Seems pretty damn good.

[intrepidDesign]

This one is going to be beautiful!

[Nowhereman1280]

It really is turning out well. It's just depressing to realize that you have such a beautiful station now that will probably be gradually defaced by the CTA over the next 50-80 years until they finally will just tear it apart and completely rebuild it, probably with some horrible pomo-revival shit.

[tintinex]

It looks like good momentum on this

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune....-transit-.html

Rockefeller Foundation backs city's push for bus rapid transit

Less than a week after Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an "infrastructure trust" that will bankroll public works projects, the effort is getting help from another source--a big foundation that's giving nearly half a million dollars in grants to back development of a bus rapid transit system in Chicago....

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280

It really is turning out well. It's just depressing to realize that you have such a beautiful station now that will probably be gradually defaced by the CTA over the next 50-80 years until they finally will just tear it apart and completely rebuild it, probably with some horrible pomo-revival shit.

I wonder if the area businesses can establish a fund for routine station maintenance? In New York, various districts have established organizations with a small tax funding source. They've learned that the city can really only afford to provide a basic amount of services, and they need to pay for anything above and beyond that - especially if the improvements entice people to come in and spend money. Station maintenance seems like the perfect use of such funding. If small problems are fixed as they crop up, they won't have a chance to become big problems.

It's not even a funding issue with CTA per se, it's just an issue of management. If you have to maintain 144 stations, lots of things are gonna slip through the cracks. If you're only maintaining one, it's gonna stay pretty nice. Why do you think Metra has such nice stations? Each suburb pays to build, maintain, and police its own station(s).

Plus, Ross Barney and CTA have probably learned from 50 years of experience how to make modernist design properly vandal-proof and tolerant to Chicago's climate, so the station should be starting from a pretty good place. Most of those premium finishes are out of the easy reach of graffiti artists.