Pace Construction

[Busjack]

Pace's I-90 page links to a new notice and map.New is

"Parking Control
October. Islands will be modified and parking control devices will be installed."

So, you guys were correct on what the "CTA Islands" were.

The page does say, though, that bus lanes from the Tollway will be realigned.

Also says that charter buses will be only allowed to use the Cumberland station.

[west towns]

Working on east side sidewalk torn up and lots of construction workers and trucks

[Busjack]

13 hours ago, Busjack said:

Pace's I-90 page links to a new notice and map.

Darn.. the link I posted changed, and now is this.

[west towns]

Pace website says rosemont kiss and ride relocates today to north end parking area.

[Busjack]

Looks like the DesPlaines city council paved the way for the pharmaceutical co. to get the Salvation Army site (Daily Herald). So, Pace is back to the drawing board.

[west towns]

Maybe for the best.  The sal. Army site seemed to have issues with the residential surrounding the property.   It would hve been a fight to get a  cng garage there.    

[Busjack]

2 hours ago, west towns said:

Maybe for the best.  The sal. Army site seemed to have issues with the residential surrounding the property.   It would hve been a fight to get a  cng garage there.    

It's pretty unlikely that NW is going CNG, since it has essentially an all new fleet, but you brought to mind another issue:

The article on the CNG facility, which BH posted, shows not only the usual "gas station" style canopy, but a natural gas tank and apparently other gas handling and compression equipment in the background to the left.

(embedded from Fleets and Fuels).

Thus, the issue is not only that the garage has to be remodeled to eliminate open flames in the furnace and the like,but that the compression equipment is not consistent with being in a residential neighborhood.

On the previous stewing about what garages could be converted if Pace decided to exercise the 159 options in the contract, that would seem to disqualify North, which is in a residential area (map). Southwest is in an industrial zone, but, unlike South, does not seem to have much vacant land to build this (map).

Getting back to the NW topic, I still maintain that Pace should forget DesPlaines and look for abandoned industrial land in Elk Grove Township. But I'm not their (so far ineffective) real estate department.

 

[west towns]

Land is not cheap in the nw burbs. Maybe the land is too rich for their budget, they are the smallest funded agency

[Busjack]

31 minutes ago, west towns said:

Land is not cheap in the nw burbs. Maybe the land is too rich for their budget, they are the smallest funded agency

As noted at the beginning of this topic, Pace has $60,000,000 in bonding authority for this project (same source as the South Garage project). So, assuming that either the farebox or RTA distribution covers the bonds, money is not an issue.

Also, as they almost said about Super Chicken, "Besides you knew the job was expensive [dangerous] when you took it " And as I previously indicated, there seems to be lots of abandoned industrial land in the northwest suburbs, such as when United Airlines pulled out.

As indicated in various articles, the mayors and ex-mayors on the Pace board do not want to offend fellow mayors. It isn't like when Evanston sued the RTA over the North Shore garage in both federal.and state courts (at least as far as the current Pace board is concerned).

[BusHunter]

One would wonder why the Dundee garage is not going to be CNG. It's new construction, far from residential or anything else. Maybe there are no suburban/highway CNG's??? They could have actually cheated a little and put everything that ends up west like #208, #606, #696, or something that ends around the tollway (rosemont hint hint) or #226 out of Dundee. They could have halfed NW garage put in a CNG facility, modernized it and wholla, you have a new CNG facility and a rebuilt one on existing real estate. That idea has pluses, no one to fight you on existing garage land, no additional purchases just upgrades. I hope Dundee is built to house more than 40-50 buses. I think that's a mistake if they do. Suburban sprawl will eventually bring them more service. Worst case scenario it could temporarily house nw buses while nw is rebuilt.

[Busjack]

15 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

One would wonder why the Dundee garage is not going to be CNG. It's new construction

Already you are going in the wrong direction. The article at the time said they were renting space in an  existing warehouse building (original post).

Pace suburban bus service will lease a portion of a building in East Dundee to use as a bus garage until it can build a new permanent garage in Des Plaines or elsewhere in the Northwest suburbs, officials said.

THIMK.

 

[BusHunter]

10 minutes ago, Busjack said:

Already you are going in the wrong direction. The article at the time said they were renting existing warehouse space (original post).

Pace suburban bus service will lease a portion of a building in East Dundee to use as a bus garage until it can build a new permanent garage in Des Plaines or elsewhere in the Northwest suburbs, officials said.

THIMK.

 

Well no one told me anything. I can't think if I don't know!! Sounds like Pace is the one who needs to do some thinking. This garage plan seems to be imploding. Why rent a warehouse after the state put out all this money for a express network on the tollway? They don't intend to stay or they think the service will fail???  Sounds to me more like a money issue or a time issue.

How do you puts pits and lifts on rented land? Next you'll tell me you don't, you send the buses to NW for maintenance!!

[Busjack]

8 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

Well no one told me anything. I can't think if I don't know!!

Well, I posted a link to where it was discussed.

Except somehow, the paste didin't work, so, I'll correct that link to the post. You also replied to that post, so you can't say you didn't know.

[BusHunter]

5 minutes ago, Busjack said:

Well, I posted a link to where it was discussed.

Except somehow, the paste didin't work, so, I'll correct that link to the post. You also replied to that post, so you can't say you didn't know.

Ok next time I'll ask you about something you read 8 months ago and quiz you on it. Be reasonable!! This is where the problem lies.

[Busjack]

15 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

Ok next time I'll ask you about something you read 8 months ago and quiz you on it. Be reasonable!! This is where the problem lies.

There's always the question of having a senior moment (understandable) vs. using a search engine."East Dundee" was searchable as a phrase. Even Dundee.

Besides that, I never head of a situation where the board approved a contract in January for something being used in August for "new construction." How long did the rehab at South take before they presumably were just recently able to garage CNGs there? Melissa Metzger discussed that in a board video.

27 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

How do you puts pits and lifts on rented land? Next you'll tell me you don't, you send the buses to NW for maintenance!!

First you said you had to go to East Dundee to find out what was going on.

Also, there are precedents. 7 buses spend a week in the fenced area at the Lake Cook Metra station, which does not have facilities, but are rotated in and out. Someone once posted that Academy fueled up at a service station, presumably using a Pace fuel card, so Pace could do it itself (that's what the paratransit contractors do). Whether there is a bus wash there or at a nearby truck stop probably is another question.

Anyway, River Division would be closer.

 

[BusHunter]

I don't run Pace either so I can only suggest. But this warehouse gig sounds even worse than the NW troubles. Questions arise also like was it a vehicular warehouse or a goods warehouse. If so I hope it's properly vented for bus exhaust. Legally i wonder if renting a warehouse has less regulations than owning one. The only reason I see them doing this is speed. They must not be able to build a garage in time. Is this the first rented garage at Pace?

I don't know the term "Warehouse" sounds so fly by night to me. They need to call this a garage. But then again a warehouse is a place that stores goods and a garage stores vehicles, so I might have answered my own question.

[Busjack]

17 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

But this warehouse gig sounds even worse than the NW troubles.

One is proximately caused by the other. Obviously, though, this is not a "garage" (only you have used that term), but a place to stash buses. Maybe like the CTA "garage" on Goose Island.

 

18 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

it's properly vented

Given the Roomplace $70 million dollar loss when the whole warehouse went up because a disgruntled employee set a piece of paper on fire, Pace's first concern should be that it better have  a fire suppression system.

[BusHunter]

2 hours ago, Busjack said:

One is proximately caused by the other. Obviously, though, this is not a "garage" (only you have used that term), but a place to stash buses. Maybe like the CTA "garage" on Goose Island.

 

Given the Roomplace $70 million dollar loss when the whole warehouse went up because a disgruntled employee set a piece of paper on fire, Pace's first concern should be that it better have  a fire suppression system.

That's why I was talking about regulations like fire inspection safety inspections and the like. Because Pace is not labeled as the owner do they get a free pass? I hope not.

[Busjack]

41 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

That's why I was talking about regulations like fire inspection safety inspections and the like. Because Pace is not labeled as the owner do they get a free pass? I hope not.

Since Pace and the government entity where this facility is located are both public entities, you could do a FOIA to find out (1) if Pace did its due diligence, and (2) if there are occupancy permits or the like.For instance, a village (at least mine) will not  let a personal training facility move into an industrial district building without a special permit, and the applicant usually doesn't own the building. At the moment it has referred to the appropriate boards whether a fitness center and a separate teach kiddies how to swim pool could move into a vacant hardware store, but the shopping center owns and rents out the property, and just can't permit any use

As the Evanston litigation shows, a city may have more power to enforce its codes against the owner of a private building than against Pace once Pace buys it. The hiccup in the Evanston case was that the city tried to require a special permit after Pace bought the property. As you well know, that garage is now there.

[west towns]

Pace seemwd to make the right choice given salvation army was on the rocks and 190 service startimg soon..    east dundee gives some breathing space to get service running house new buses and buy some time.    I would guess equipment will be maintained at river for anything then light repairs.  Im sure the village had to approve occupancy permits.

[west towns]

Not familiar with the evanston law suit.   Whats it all about?

[west towns]

4 hours ago, BusHunter said:

Well no one told me anything. I can't think if I don't know!! Sounds like Pace is the one who needs to do some thinking. This garage plan seems to be imploding. Why rent a warehouse after the state put out all this money for a express network on the tollway? They don't intend to stay or they think the service will fail???  Sounds to me more like a money issue or a time issue.

How do you puts pits and lifts on rented land? Next you'll tell me you don't, you send the buses to NW for maintenance!!

I highly doubt the 190 service will fail given current corridor ridership is over 3000 (155 service was what 300 when bos start and its like 1700 now), pace has been trying to expand d service in corridor for decades proposing this service back in the day as alternative to rail and the huge investment being made with park in rides barrington road station buses and the  flex lane.  Plus there is huge market potential for reverse and inbound commuyes to rosemont schaumburg ohare blue line.

[Busjack]

19 minutes ago, west towns said:

Not familiar with the evanston law suit.   Whats it all about?

I provided links, but I shouldn't presume that one can figure out the legalese. Also not reflected in that is that Evanston, having been founded by the church people who founded Northwestern University, can't afford to have any property taken off the tax roll, and fights it tooth and nail.

Essentially, Evanston tried to undo the sale of the property by National Steel Service Center to Pace, and claim that since the money for that sale came from the Urban Mass Transit Administration (now FTA), an environmental hearing was required, but was not held. Essentially the legalese came down to the City of Evanston and the named individual alderman did not have legal standing (i.e. they sued when the laws did not give them the right to do so) and an UMTA regulation said that a bus garage is exempted from an environmental hearing.

I'm sure it was covered in the papers at the time as "Evanston sues to block bus garage," but not reported that they tried twice and failed.

[Busjack]

7 minutes ago, west towns said:

I highly doubt the 190 service will fail given current corridor ridership is over 3000 (155 service was what 300 when bos start and its like 1700 now), pace has been trying to expand d service in corridor for decades proposing this service back in the day as alternative to rail and the huge investment being made with park in rides barrington road station buses and the  flex lane.  Plus there is huge market potential for reverse and inbound commuyes to rosemont schaumburg ohare blue line.

That's correct. Since this is a CMAQ project, Pace should have the usual 3 years to see if it works. Also, the presumption around here is that since the I-55 project was a resounding success, this should work too.

You might also add (and this was brought up with respect to the proposed toll lane on the Stevenson), that one facet of the intelligent traffic management system may be congestion pricing, making it MUCH more expensive to drive from the vicinity of the new Park and Rides.

[west towns]

I used 155 as an example where the base level is more solid for 190.  Just like the old saying a rolling stone gathers no moss,  an established corridor with expansion growth and various underserved markets should grow