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CTA Red Line South reopens
Watched it take place and think it was a great job by CTA. For all the ney-sayers, the full rebuild would be a challenging job - even if not in the median of one of the most travelled interstates in the country. I was in Chicago the first day of the outage, and personally witnessed a well orchestrated execution of the swap to buses by CTA. Can’t vouch that there weren’t a few service failures, but at least they started with a well thought out plan, and certainly seem to have ended the effort as promised.
My, oh my, what will our nut case have to say about this?! You know who I mean: the perpetually grumpy and cynical commentator, the guy so seething with hatred towards the US government that he makes the now dead Osama bin Laden seem moderate and sane. Didn’t he previously write, on this very message board, that any civil project coming out of Chicago will have a cost overrun of 10 times? But here we have the CTA’s massive Red line rebuild completed— On Time and On Budget. There’s no cost overrun here. No delays.
And keep in mind that this isn’t some trivial project in some tiny hamlet, but rather a total rebuild of the south portion of the Red Line, the busiest line in Chicago. Remember, too, that Chicago is the economic engine of the entire Midwest: its productivity generates enough cash to keep entire regions of the US afloat.
Last year over 1/2 billion trips were taken on the CTA. That is not a typo: over 1/2 billion, with a “B”. If you want the economy of Chicago, and hence the Midwest and US, to grow, move more people via the CTA. Conversely, if you want the economy to suffer, have fewer people on the CTA so that everyone is stuck in unproductive gridlock.
I believe this is the biggest rebuild in CTA history, and it’s a notable accomplishment. Even so, it’s still pretty primitive compared to the systems in countries like Germany and Turkey, Japan and France. Meanwhile, China probably completes a similar project every couple of days. If the US is to remain economically and culturally relevant in the 21st century there’s going to need to be some serious soul searching on our priorities as well as major investment in public transit systems. Otherwise we can begin our painful decline into global irrelevance.
@David, good points. I’m one of the 500M CTA riders and while it’s not perfect and can demonstrate customer indifference (the Ventra farecard rollout is a case in point), it does perform it’s function cheaper and more reliably than gridlocked traffic for many (not all) endpoint pairs. Rail transit is an essential part of urban mobility, and the city is where employers and millennials increasingly want to be. Just ask Google or Nokia.
Now…if they would just extend the Yellow Line, which seems to hold the record for the most over studied project in the CTA archives going all the way back to George Krambles visionary NSL post abandonment plan of cross regionalism for the CTA…all the way to Waukegan …in parallel to I-94…In suppose some projects are just a bridge too far.
Now…if they would just extend the Yellow Line, which seems to hold the record for the most over studied project in the CTA archives going all the way back to George Krambles visionary NSL post abandonment plan of cross regionalism for the CTA…all the way to Waukegan …in parallel to I-94…In suppose some projects are just a bridge too far.
Now…if they would just extend the Yellow Line, which seems to hold the record for the most over studied project in the CTA archives going all the way back to George Krambles visionary NSL post abandonment plan of cross regionalism for the CTA…all the way to Waukegan …in parallel to I-94…In suppose some projects are just a bridge too far.
Now…if they would just extend the Yellow Line, which seems to hold the record for the most over studied project in the CTA archives going all the way back to George Krambles visionary NSL post abandonment plan of cross regionalism for the CTA…all the way to Waukegan …in parallel to I-94…In suppose some projects are just a bridge too far.
Now…if they would just extend the Yellow Line, which seems to hold the record for the most over studied project in the CTA archives going all the way back to George Krambles visionary NSL post abandonment plan of cross regionalism for the CTA…all the way to Waukegan …in parallel to I-94…In suppose some projects are just a bridge too far.
Now…if they would just extend the Yellow Line, which seems to hold the record for the most over studied project in the CTA archives going all the way back to George Krambles visionary NSL post abandonment plan of cross regionalism for the CTA…all the way to Waukegan …in parallel to I-94…In suppose some projects are just a bridge too far.
Think of all the money we could have saved if we had built more freeways instead of money losing public transport!! :•}
Good work to Trains and the CTA! CHEERS!
Job well done to Trains and CTA! CHEERS!
Most of these comments are very good, but 6 copies of one of them? Really?