Quote:
Originally Posted by OhioGuy
I'd love to have a subway line like this, but realistically, the express buses do a decent enough job to getting people to/from the Mag Mile... though continuing travel south along Michigan Avenue and into the loop isn't particularly fast. And if there's a traffic jams on Lake Shore Drive, the convenience of the express buses disappears.
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West through the Loop should be under Monroe, since the city (supposedly) is maintaining ROW under Monroe for future transit development.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
That's pretty good, although I'd run it west down Oak then north up LaSalle with a Red Line transfer at Division.
A lakefront light rail line has also been proposed, which I think is a better use of money - express buses would continue to operate during rush hours, possibly sharing lanes with the light rail.
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Putting lightrail along LSD would be ridiculous. It's 1/4 mile or more from population centers for the majority of the route. Even putting it along Lincoln Park West and Sheridan is pretty one-sided. If we were going to do something along the lakefront neighborhoods, it should be a subway under Clark and, north of Diversy, Broadway. The last
semi-serious plan for such a thing had it turning west under Lawrence.
What are the chances of a new subway similar to that? Realistically it's a bit of a long shot due to the costs, but in the last plan that included it, the other aspects of the plan were to extend the Blue Line to O'Hare, which happened, to build a route that became the Orange Line, which happened, and to extend the Red Line south, which is under serious consideration and planning,
The differences between the ones that got done and the ones that didn't are primarily cost. The Orange Line runs mostly on old freight ROW, and the Blue Line extension is in an expressway median. I think there'd be interest if there were funding, but there's not really any cheap way to run a Clark/Broadway subway.