Conscious Choice: Getting Around, Today and Tomorrow

August 2002

Getting Around, Today and Tomorrow

Transit Options in Chicago

by Tom Judge

Millions of Chicago area citizens board buses and trains every working day. How is the area’s transit system preparing to carry us tomorrow? Will those of us who don’t want to spend hours daily battling traffic and don’t want to contribute to pollution and depletion of fossil fuels be able to get around? How will local transit agencies cope with changes in ridership and population? Can we look forward to getting where we want to go without cars, or will we be left stranded at the bus stop or rail station?

According to Frank Kruesi, president of the Chicago Transit Authority, work that will keep transportation arteries fluid well into the twenty-first century is scheduled, in the planning stages, or going on right now.

Ongoing work

Currently, the CTA is rebuilding the Douglas Branch of the Blue Line from the ground up.

"It’s really remarkable the way we’re doing this work," Kruesi says. "It’s one thing to build a line, and another to rebuild it while keeping it open. The choreography has been incredible. Watching the crews at work on the Douglas Branch is a great way to spend a weekend. They use a torch that heats to 2,000 degrees and cuts through the steel columns like butter. Then they remove the steel with a crane and replace it with a brand new section of track. It’s choreographed in a way that’s just remarkable. We’re up to six bents a weekend and we may eventually get up to eight. That means disconnecting everything, taking the structure down, putting the new section up and reconnecting so everything is ready for Monday morning rush hour.

"The sound of the new versus the old is really different," he notes. "The neighbors are ecstatic."

There is a big difference between the Douglas work and the rebuilding of the Green Line.

"The Green Line was rebuilt exactly as it was," Kruesi points out. "We took a very different approach for the Douglas Branch. We said as long as we’re doing it, let’s do it right for the next hundred years. Part of that is putting in center platforms wherever it can be done. The columns we’re installing are the most beautiful I’ve seen, with beautiful relief work. We’re in good shape on budget, time, and everything else. We’re very pleased with the project so far."

The Brown Line, formerly known as the Ravenswood Line, is moving toward a full funding grant later this year. CTA will extend the platform length at each station to handle eight-car trains.

With that change, every station in the system will be able to handle at least eight cars. Many stations on the Red and Blue Lines can handle ten-car trains. The agency is also working to make those stations accessible under ADA rules.

"We’re also doing a lot of improvements in the track," Kruesi says. "We’re about to get under way on track work on the Red Line South, the Dan Ryan Line. We’re working to get that work done before we start work on the Brown Line so we have a fully functioning Red Line System as we rebuild the Brown. We’re also providing additional power substations for the Red Line because we’re now running a lot more trains than it was designed for."

CTA is doing work on the O’Hare Branch of the Blue Line as well. There are slow zones where trains have to slow down due to track or other engineering problems. The work will remove those slow zones and reduce the time it takes a train to run between downtown and O’Hare.

The agency is installing plastic crossties around the system.

"One tie equals 1,000 milk cartons, so it’s environmentally friendly," Kruesi notes. "And they’re actually much better than regular ties because you don’t have the problems of creosote and they’ll last a lot longer, if not forever. With a normal tie, we would expect to get somewhere around twenty-five years of service. The Green Line uses ties made of azobe, a very hard wood from Africa, that will last about forty years. But we expect plastic ties will last longer than that. We’re big users of plastic ties and great believers in them. Structurally, they work very well, even helping us defeat stray current problems."

CTA also is working on an O’Hare Express, an effort to offer express service from downtown to O’Hare for travelers.

"Travelers could check their bags and get their boarding passes downtown, hop on the train and get to the airport in about twenty minutes, passing local trains along the way," he notes. "They would arrive at the airport ready to go, with boarding pass in hand and luggage already checked."

Circle Line

CTA’s proposed Circle Line basically connects all its transit lines to one another in what amounts to a Super Loop. It also connects the Metra lines to the CTA and other Metra lines.

"This is a profoundly important initiative," Kruesi points out. "We’ll be presenting it as a new start proposal for the reauthorization of the federal Transportation Efficiency Act for the Twenty-first Century (TEA 21) next year. We don’t know yet how many new starts we’ll propose, but the Circle Line will definitely be one of them. Metra is excited about this system as well. Customers are going to save lots and lots of time from area to area. This represents not hypothetical advantages, but things that are really, really important. This project will do as much as anything to assure the competitiveness and desirability of the city of Chicago for the next several decades."

Today’s CTA rail system is centered on the Loop. This works well for Loop-bound trips, but it means indirect service for customers making crosstown trips.

Creating a new rail line that connects CTA and Metra outside of the Loop will improve CTA’s competitive position for serving cross-town trips and improve access between the region and the city via CTA and Metra.

The proposal is a way to link all of CTA’s rail lines, and all of Metra’s lines with only 6.6 miles of new or rebuilt elevated and subway tracks.

The proposal calls for adding three short segments of new track and eleven new or rebuilt stations to the CTA system. Eight of the eleven stations would create connections between CTA and/or Metra lines where none currently exist.

The Circle Line would be built in three phases. The first phase involves restoration of the Paulina Connector, which is the structure that now connects the Blue Line to the rest of the system. At Ashland Avenue and the Medical Center on the Blue Line Douglas Branch, a piece that runs just east of the United Center will connect to the Green Line at Ashland and Lake as Phase One.

Phase Two will connect the Blue Line to the Orange Line at Ashland.

"This will allow us to double the amount of service for both Forest Park and the Douglas Branch of the Blue Line," Kruesi notes.

Phase Three, which will take longer and be more expensive than the first two phases, would connect the North and Clybourn Station on the Red Line and the nearby Brown Line to the Green Line at Ashland and Lake."

CTA has figured examples of potential time savings. For example, with the Circle Line, time to get to O’Hare from the Lincoln Park/North Lakefront area would drop 10-20 minutes, from the Medical Center, 10-15 minutes, and from North Michigan Avenue or Midway, 5-10 minutes.

"We’re also looking at the proposed Carol Street line that would connect Streeterville and North Michigan Avenue with the big suburban stations, running part way along the north side of the main stem of the Chicago River," he notes. "There’s a bus version and there’s also a rail version. We are working with the Chicago DOT (department of transportation) on that. River North and Streeterville are areas that definitely need substantial improvements in transit because it’s getting really tight in there.

"We’re also getting an awful lot of interest in rail expansions from suburban communities that we serve," he says. "For example, Skokie is very interested in having the Yellow Line extended from Dempster up to Old Orchard. We’re looking for potential alignments for that. That would count as a new start."

Kruesi continues: "The Village of Schaumburg and communities between the village and the City of Chicago are interested in having the Blue Line extend out to Schaumburg. In fact, in Elgin, the city council has passed a resolution to extend the Blue Line all the way to Elgin. That brings back old memories, I’m sure, of the time when there were such interurban rail connections."

Some communities are interested in having the Orange Line extended from Midway Airport to Ford City, or having the Red Line extended further south. There have been various alignments proposed and looked at.

"Public transit is now viewed as an amenity that people want to have," Kruesi says. "It once was something people wanted to keep away. The change has been exciting for us to see." Noting that Chicago has been getting more congested, Kruesi says, "that’s not helpful to the competitiveness of the region. Air quality is another challenge. Transit is viewed as a key way to deal with both.

"The mayor’s charge to me was to make transit viable and competitive again," he says. "That’s something we’re working really hard to do."

CTA and bicycles

"When I came in, there was an absolute prohibition on bicycles on trains," Kruesi recalled. "I heard all sorts of explanations why that was. When I was assistant secretary for transportation policy for U.S. DOT, I traveled all over the world and rode transit all over the world. I saw plenty of bicycles on transit systems and commuter rail. And I never heard of anyone having serious injuries. People got around fine with bicycles, both standard and fold-up models. I said we should go forward and work with bicycles more. We worked closely with CDOT and the Chicago Bicycle Federation, which has been very, very supportive and helpful as we worked through different ways of doing this.

"We started out on a pilot project, and it worked out fine," he says. "We expanded the hours, so now, basically, you can take your bike on the El in all non-rush hour periods. If you have a folding bike, you can take it any time. That’s something I hope catches on more in this region."

The agency also added bike-rack-equipped buses to several routes, including Number 72 on North Avenue and Number 63 on Sixty-third Street, both of which are key access points to the lakefront.

"CTA had a tendency to pay attention to segments of a person’s trip rather than the entire trip," Kruesi notes. "We’re working hard to think more like a customer who chooses to use public transportation and needs to make a complete journey. We shouldn’t be providing undue impediments to that. That’s true for bikes or any other way of going.

"For example, we’re working with the park district to get our buses closer to the lakefront or right on the lakefront. That makes it easier to use public transportation to get to the lakefront instead of having the frustrations and difficulties of driving to and trying to find parking there. That’s been a helpful cooperation as well."

Overall passenger comfort is an issue, too. Fewer than three years ago, less than half of the CTA bus fleet was air-conditioned. Today, the figure is 91 percent, and next year, the fleet will be 100 percent air-conditioned — and accessible.

Green Buses

Many years ago, all Chicago buses were painted green. Today, the CTA is working toward a more important greening — in both materials and fuel. The agency is trying out buses made of composites, which weigh about 7,000 pounds less than a regular forty-foot bus. These offer savings in fuel and less road wear.

"We use clean, number one diesel, all year round," Kruesi points out. "That costs us $1 million more per year, but it burns much cleaner and reduces emissions. It’s an environmentally sound way to proceed. When we rehab buses, especially engines and transmissions, we keep reducing emissions in mind."

CTA also tested a fleet of hydrogen fuel-cell buses manufactured by Ballard of Vancouver, B.C., Canada. "We were the first to use them," Kruesi notes. "People were literally coming from all around the world to see them. We went through a couple of generations of motors, which became lighter and more efficient. Ballard had a team of engineers in Chicago working very closely with CTA’s technical staff. We developed a special area for fueling and storing the buses at our Chicago Avenue garage." It required both CTA and Ballard to learn to handle large amounts of hydrogen. Evidently, the experiment was successful. "We have signed up for the first production models, which we expect to be out in about a year and a half," says Kruesi.

CTA is also working on express bus service. "We can’t replicate [the efficiency of] a rail line, but express bus service with fewer stops can provide an experience approaching rapid transit on major routes. We started with the Western Express, the X49, and we have added Cermak Road, Irving Park, and Garfield Expresses. The Irving Park route connects the Red, Brown, and Blue lines to Metra Lines. There are limited stops to enable people to ride to the El quickly. We believe the Irving Park service will be an O’Hare feeder. Down on the South Side, the Garfield service connects the Museum of Science and Industry, a Metra Electric stop, the Green Line, the Red Line, and Midway Airport. I think those tie-ins are going to be very attractive in an express service.

"I’m a great believer in trying out pilot projects to see if they work," Kruesi says. "If they work, we figure out ways to put them into service. If not, then we figure out ways to deal with that.

"It’s exciting for me to see that public transportation is being used a lot at all times," he says. "After all, the City of Chicago is one of only two cities in the country that run a twenty-four-hour transit operation. New York is the other one. The fact that it’s being used now in ways that it hadn’t been when I got here almost five years ago means we are paying attention to ridership and we’re able to build on that. That’s part of the reason why we’ve been able to get strong support from public officials at all levels of government."

The car may still be king in Chicago, but commuters here have always had choices, even if they were limited. With Kruesi’s initiatives in place or on the way, public transit — and the public life it supports — may someday eclipse the car culture that eats away at our air quality and our public space.

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