New Starts, Environmental Impact Stage

[Busjack]

In looking around for the source of my statement that the Red Line extension would need 78 more cars (which turned out to be a Strategic Planning Report, rather than the AA report), I noted that the Planning and Expansion part of the transitchicago.com site has recently changed.

Some things of interest:

Although the AA slides indicated that Locally Preferred Alternatives were selected, apparently some of the other alternatives left out were not so dead. For instance, the current Red Line page, including linked documents, still seems to indicate that the L over Halsted option is still being studied, although it is difficult for me to see how it gets past environmental review. It also provides a couple of options with regard to the placement of the 130th station (one closer to Altgeld Gardens).

The Yellow Line page apparently contains the information that set off the controversy at the Skokie hearing, previously noted. While only one rail LPA was proposed, I guess that the Transportation System Management alternative is still in play and is what the Skokie mayor was advocating. That certainly would be much more inexpensive to implement--just put a TSP device on a couple of buses and traffic lights.

[Busjack]

Before someone rags me again:

Yeah if CTA doesn't hurry up with a rail extension for the Dan Ryan, Pace is just going to start up a BRT corridor and that will be the end of that. That idea is very attractive and alot cheaper they could even build branch lines to Matteson via I-57 and maybe one on the Bishop Ford to maybe Lincoln highway and still have money left to spare. What would be really attractive would be mid line stations just like the "L". If the I-55 and I-90 corridors are a success don't be surprised if this becomes reality.

The interesting concept raised here is that when the alternatives analyses were initially made, the alternatives include BRT. At the time, I said that BRT only made sense for the 95th station if the BRT loading zone were in the L paid area.

The Yellow Line project got "derailed" when Skokie's mayor said that despite the Locally Preferred Alternative, the village preferred BRT over an elevated heavy rail structure.

Both the Skokie example and your comment suggest that Pace should do it, which wasn't part of the alternatives analyses.

However, I don't think Pace is going to do this, basically because Pace doesn't want to compete with Metra on those corridors (at least to the extent they are close to the ME and RI districts). I-55 and I-90 are justified by that there isn't Metra service nearby. 924 and 925 seem to go against this theory, but they are stopgaps.

Of course, if Pace wanted CMAQ funding for this, it would have to go through the CMAP process, even though planning around here is an oxymoron. Go back to the Lipinski article cited under RTA Governance last night.

[BusHunter]

Unfortunately CTA has already chose rail as the preferred alternative, I don't know if it's possible to go back to brt now. But where are they going to find the money for this? At least brt could be ready in a couple of months not that it's going to get riders at Lake Calumet.

[Busjack]

Unfortunately CTA has already chose rail as the preferred alternative, I don't know if it's possible to go back to brt now. But where are they going to find the money for this? At least brt could be ready in a couple of months not that it's going to get riders at Lake Calumet.

Goes back to what I said to mk that Emanuel has not identified a funding source. And, as far as I can tell, this hasn't even gotten to the environmental review stage. Last thing listed on the Red Line Extension page was an open house in 2011.