Tcmetro

There is a new show called "The Red Line" which may be what was filming.

They're going to have to move the bus stop to the rental car facility because the ATS stop at the parking lot is supposed to be closed, IIRC.

Niles looking to add a station to the MD-N line at Touhy Ave. Supposedly funded by the Village. https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/niles/news/ct-nhs-metra-station-study-tl-1206-story.html

Caught #4136 on Michigan today displaying "605 OLYMPIC-/ATLANTIC" which is a Los Angeles local bus route.

Hertz, National, Avis, Budget, Payless, Advantage, Sixt, Fox, Thrifty, Enterprise, Alamo, Dollar, and EZ are in the new consolidated rental car facility. There is a fleet of white D40LFs serving the rental car shuttle. Continental is the contractor.

Pace will move to the rental car facility once the ATS extension opens. IIRC, the regional buses will also move over.

CTA is planning to have the power upgrades completed on the O'Hare branch by 2021.

Wikipedia says that the O6s are due to be replaced with upcoming Axess deliveries. It also seems that their other contractors are running various NABIs and New Flyers that are part of larger LACMTA orders. The O6s are also the only diesel buses in the fleet, so there might be an issue with changing the contract or getting a CNG facility available for the contractor.

CTA still needs to replace the 100 6400-series Novas that are still around. The 8325s and the electric buses will probably take care of half of those in 2019. The CTA budget suggests an order of 50 with an option of another 50 in 2020 to replace the 6400s. I would imagine that the options could potentially begin to replace the New Flyers. The first order of 150 buses to replace the New Flyers isn't budgeted until 2021-22, so chances are they'll be around for a while.

Steven Vance shared this image of #8011 with an new interior sign that shows alerts and next stops.

Finally, the city is willing to make at least a token change to streets to improve bus service. CDOT needs to do a complete re-think, and get rid of some parking spots and create more standing zones for Uber/Lyft and deliveries and whatnot (although that's complicated by the parking meter operations). Bus lanes on Chicago Ave should be relatively easy to implement from Noble to Fairbanks, but I'm not really familiar with 79th on the east side so I can't comment on that. I hope that they also get rid of some stops and improve the remaining ones.

Looking further into this expanded service, the news for the reverse commuters is the new early AM train leaving Chicago at 5:35 AM. I believe that a few years ago, Metra and Pace collaborated (unsuccessfully) to create the early morning 638 bus to serve this market. Also, these reverse commute improvements enable some regular commute improvements. The afternoon express trips from the north suburbs to downtown will probably also be well received. I did some internet sleuthing, and it looks like Abbott has their own private shuttle system that connects to the Metra stations. So, they may be planning to take advantage of the new run to get people into work for the 7 am hour.

A lot of the north suburban office shuttles are jointly funded by Pace, Lake Cook TMA (private sector partnership) and the companies. https://tmalakecook.org/shuttle-bug/about-the-shuttle-bug

Pink Line could benefit from six-car trains at peak. Is there any reason CTA can't do it?

The Fast Tracks project page specifically mentions power upgrades on the O'Hare branch.