If CTA switched to letters for rail lines

[Pink Jazz]

Currently, CTA uses colors to identify its rail lines.  However, if there is ever a need to switch to letters due to being too many lines, I wonder, what letters would you assign the lines?

The lines can still use their existing colors on maps and signage, however, here are my letter assignments for the rail lines:

• Red Line - D for Dan Ryan
• Blue Line - O for O'Hare
• Green Line - H for Harlem
• Pink Line - C for Cicero/Cermak
• Purple Line - L for Linden
• Orange Line - M for Midway
• Brown Line - K for Kimball
• Yellow Line - S for Skokie

What letters would you assign?

[Busjack]

No point. Besides, the reason for the color lines is that the Vietnamese and Koreans can figure out which train goes to miKllab (which is probably how some perceive Kimball)

While you are at it, why don't you substitute letters for colors for MBTA, WMATA, and the London Tube?

3 minutes ago, Pink Jazz said:

What letters would you assign?

.No, I'm not engaging in such a senseless exercise.

[artthouwill]

2 hours ago, Pink Jazz said:

Currently, CTA uses colors to identify its rail lines.  However, if there is ever a need to switch to letters due to being too many lines, I wonder, what letters would you assign the lines?

The lines can still use their existing colors on maps and signage, however, here are my letter assignments for the rail lines:

• Red Line - D for Dan Ryan
• Blue Line - O for O'Hare
• Green Line - H for Harlem
• Pink Line - C for Cicero/Cermak
• Purple Line - L for Linden
• Orange Line - M for Midway
• Brown Line - K for Kimball
• Yellow Line - S for Skokie

What letters would you assign?

What about Howard,  and the 63rd branches,  and UIC Halsted and Jefferson Park short turns, 

[Juniorz]

Why even think to try to mess with success? The current arrangement WORKS! #Why

[BusHunter]

The way this city and state works you won't have to worry about a new line in the not too distant future. More likely Pace is going to swallow up a few riders as it expands it's Express and Pulse network. So if I-55 goes toll in the express lanes (future plans) why wouldn't you just ride the bus. It does the same thing. It would be interesting if something went downtown from the NW.

[Busjack]

25 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

The way this city and state works you won't have to worry about a new line in the not too distant future.

Since the only thing mentioned lately is RPM and maybe Red South, we won't see anything else in our lifetimes, and that probably includes Skylar's lifetime.

[Pace831]

2 hours ago, BusHunter said:

The way this city and state works you won't have to worry about a new line in the not too distant future. More likely Pace is going to swallow up a few riders as it expands it's Express and Pulse network. So if I-55 goes toll in the express lanes (future plans) why wouldn't you just ride the bus. It does the same thing. It would be interesting if something went downtown from the NW.

There isn't a need for an express bus to downtown from the NW suburbs, since the new Pace service on I-90 is taking care of that market. The current I-55 routes, in contrast, serve an area without easy access to Metra or CTA rapid transit, so direct to downtown is the better option.

[Busjack]

59 minutes ago, Pace831 said:

The current I-55 routes, in contrast, serve an area without easy access to Metra or CTA rapid transit, so direct to downtown is the better option.

They could have dumped the passengers at the Ed Burke (Pulaski) Orange Line station, but must have decided that it could not be marketed, and the express lane is supposed to be extended to the Dan Ryan. On the other hand, there is no sense to adding an hour of travel time on the Kennedy for the I-90 routes, when overhauling the Rosemont terminal was a better option.

[Pink Jazz]

4 hours ago, artthouwill said:

What about Howard,  and the 63rd branches,  and UIC Halsted and Jefferson Park short turns, 

In the case of Howard, since I am using H (for Harlem) for the Green Line, the Red Line would have to be something else.  Dan Ryan is the opposite end of the Red Line.

[Busjack]

4 hours ago, Pink Jazz said:

In the case of Howard, since I am using H (for Harlem) for the Green Line, the Red Line would have to be something else.  Dan Ryan is the opposite end of the Red Line.

Or it could just be ignored, since it is the heaviest route. Consider the logic of that.

[Pink Jazz]

^

Perhaps by your logic, the Red Line should be H for Howard, while a potential designation for the Green Line could perhaps be U for University of Chicago.

[Busjack]

1 hour ago, Pink Jazz said:

^

Perhaps by your logic, the Red Line should be H for Howard, while a potential designation for the Green Line could perhaps be U for University of Chicago.

No, by my logic, the Red Line should be the Red Line.

The Green Line doesn't go to the University of Chicago. Due to a cutback in about the 1980s, it won't go to the Obama library either.

All you are proving is that this exercise is senseless. The white on green sign says Ashland-63, and the green on white sign says Cottage Grove. Isn't that good enough?

[sw4400]

I think the color lines are the best way to go. Even some of the old ways were confusing to me when I read the descriptions in classic photos. Take Lake-Dan Ryan for example. Lake, to me, is the Green Line, however the Dan Ryan is the Red Line. So, how could the Red Line be merged with the Green Line?

[artthouwill]

30 minutes ago, sw4400 said:

I think the color lines are the best way to go. Even some of the old ways were confusing to me when I read the descriptions in classic photos. Take Lake-Dan Ryan for example. Lake, to me, is the Green Line, however the Dan Ryan is the Red Line. So, how could the Red Line be merged with the Green Line?

The Lake-Dan Ryan was BEFORE the color lines as well as the Englewood-Jackson Park-Howard.  You could say that the Lake Dan Ryan was the Green Line and the Englewood Jackson Park Howard was the old Red line. The sout sides swapped each other's opposite terminals and the colors were introduced at that time.  Hard to believe that the current Red and Green Lines Have Been in existence for 23 years.  I'm old enough to remember the names of the lines like Congress Douglas Milwaukee,  Ravenswood,  Evanston Express,  etc.

[MetroShadow]

After riding BART for the better of the last six years, I can tell you that colors work better than letters. NYC is the only city with a transit system where it works; but for chicago, it's neither feasible nor productive to bring that into a seven line network. 

[Busjack]

12 hours ago, sw4400 said:

So, how could the Red Line be merged with the Green Line?

In addition to what art said, it was noted in the late 1980s that the north and south sides of the Jackson Park/Englewood-Howard were mismatched as far as passenger load, and also that Lake was losing passengers compared to Dan Ryan.

There was in the early 1990s a project to update things, including building the tunnel between the Roosevelt subway station to outside the ramp north of Chinatown (now used by the Red Line)*, putting the platform for the Addison station in the middle (previously Howard B trains had to switch to the outer tracks  and then after serving Addison go back to the inner tracks), and moving the inspection shops from Wilson to Howard. Of course, as has been CTA practice,there was a collision in the tunnel the first day of operations.

Colors were put on the roll signs to match the lines on the maps about that time, as art said, but official designations as the "Red Line," "Green Line," etc. was about in 1996.

___________

*Update: Chicago-l.org's Red Line page has a short history.

[BusHunter]

9 hours ago, MetroShadow said:

After riding BART for the better of the last six years, I can tell you that colors work better than letters. NYC is the only city with a transit system where it works; but for chicago, it's neither feasible nor productive to bring that into a seven line network. 

New York is confusing because they also use letters and lines quit in the middle of other lines and everything branches to different stretches like a huge tree. There are simply to many lines to use colors. 

[jajuan]

11 hours ago, MetroShadow said:

After riding BART for the better of the last six years, I can tell you that colors work better than letters. NYC is the only city with a transit system where it works; but for chicago, it's neither feasible nor productive to bring that into a seven line network. 

You hit at the heart of the reason of why this is a futile exercise. New York uses letters (and numbers) in part because its transit system has 24 distinct rail services (there they use the term services instead of lines to denote train routes while lines refer to the actual physical section of track that the trains run on). Chicago has no where near that and won't because although our city is indeed a large one, it does not cover the type of land coverage that NYC does, so as stated a letter coded system instead of our color coded one, isn't really as efficient here as in New York. Heck, as is it took Chicago locals a number of years to refer to the rail routes by their color names instead of referring to trains as say a Howard-Dan Ryan, Evanston Express. Ravenswood or a Congress train,  The other part of the reason New York has their system by letters and numbers is that the services' predecessor rail companies before MTA takeover used used the letters and numbers and MTA kept and continued that usage pattern.Their A Division of rail services inherited the services from what was once the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and uses numbers, while the B Division inherited the routes from what used to be the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) and Independent Subway System (IND) and uses letters. 

1 hour ago, BusHunter said:

New York is confusing because they also use letters and lines quit in the middle of other lines and everything branches to different stretches like a huge tree. There are simply to many lines to use colors. 

It was a little confusing to me at first too, but what you mentioned doesn't even get into NY's practice that most of the routes have one leg that's express and the other that's local stemming from how for most of the history of the subway system there, on a certain section of track, which again they refer to as a line, one route is the express of another along that section, others being express in certain parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn during day and evening hours and flipping to local overnight to cover local Brooklyn and Manhattan services that aren't 24 hours, and yet other services having one way peak direction rush (toward Manhattan in the AM, from Manhattan in the PM) express service. They have four track sections similar to the Chicago's North Side Main through large portions of their system, both in the subway tubes and along the elevated sections. For their routes that give peak direction express, the track sections are three tracks. And they'll know you're not one of the locals there if you refer to any of the trains by a color instead of a letter or number. It also doesn't count that the PATH subway trains are a separate service from the New York subway system that's run by the Port Authority with its own separate fare structure. PATH accepts MTA single use Metro Cards but there are no transfers made with the New York subway or bus services. You pay a whole separate fare like done here between CTA and Metra.

[MTRSP1900-CTA3200]

A video version of what Jajuan said.

[Pink Jazz]

Just for the fun of it, what about names that represent the colors?:

• Red Line - Fire Line
• Blue Line - Water Line
• Green Line - Grass Line
• Pink Line - Fairy Line OR Jazz Line
• Brown Line - Earth Line
• Orange Line - Carrot Line
• Purple Line - Grape Line
• Yellow Line - Lightning Line

And no, the name "Fairy Line" isn't meant to represent homosexuality, but represent the fact that fairies are often depicted as wearing pink, as well as often associated with the color pink (The Fairy type in Pokémon is represented by the color pink). However, if there is any controversy, the name "Jazz Line" could be an alternate.

[MTRSP1900-CTA3200]

9 minutes ago, Pink Jazz said:

Just for the fun of it, what about names that represent the colors?...

That only really worked for Boston, as each color was significant for each line. Even then, parts of the city dictated the color of the line, instead of the line color creating its own name.

Red Line - Former northern terminus was at Harvard University, which uses crimson as its official color.

Green Line - Passes through the "Emerald Neckless".

Blue Line - Tunnels under Boston Harbor.

Orange Line - Near Orange Street for part of its route.

On that note, only the CTA Purple Line has a relevant color, as it passes Northwestern University.

[Busjack]

28 minutes ago, Pink Jazz said:

Just for the fun of it, what about names that represent the colors?:

• Red Line - Fire Line
• Blue Line - Water Line
• Green Line - Grass Line
• Pink Line - Fairy Line OR Jazz Line
• Brown Line - Earth Line
• Orange Line - Carrot Line
• Purple Line - Grape Line
• Yellow Line - Lightning Line

And no, the name "Fairy Line" isn't meant to represent homosexuality, but represent the fact that fairies are often depicted as wearing pink, as well as often associated with the color pink (The Fairy type in Pokémon is represented by the color pink). However, if there is any controversy, the name "Jazz Line" could be an alternate.

No, they have alternative names on CTA literature

• La linea rojo
• La linea azul
• La linea verde
• La linea rosado
• La linea cafe
• La linea naranja
• La linea púrpura (only one I had to look up)
• La linea amarillo.

BTW, weren't you the one with the futile exercises to name the Phoenix lines, but the pink or fairy line was offensive? Or was that a futile exercise for MARTA? Also, Jazz is not pink, it is negro. Apparently, that word is acceptable en Espanol.

The other thing to figure is that anyone dumb enough to implement this system would incur real costs. I remember when Mayor Daley shut down Kruesi's bus route renumbering system, even though Kruesi said all the corner bus stop signs had to be replaced. He had a certain logic based on position in the street grid, but Daley said Chicagoans are used to what it had. But he never proposed making 8 the Fairy Route or 4 the Black Route.

But to get back to my point, there are subway entrances with Red Line engraved on them and red neon, and new stations such as Wilson are planned with Red and Purple Lines in their architecture. With capital money that short, how big a fool would have to be in charge of CTA to implement this joke?

6 hours ago, MTRSP1900-CTA3200 said:

A video version of what Jajuan said

Establishing that even NY has some color logic. In Chicago, tt would be real confusing to stand on the Belmont platform and have K to Loop and L to Loop, especially if you only read Korean, but want the most direct route to Wabash.

 

 

[Pink Jazz]

Also, Jazz is not pink, it is negro

How insensitive and stereotypical.  Not all jazz musicians are black.  This is one of (among others) the reasons why jazz is pink:

[garmon757]

Alright @Pink Jazz and @Busjack settle down.

[Busjack]

10 minutes ago, garmon757 said:

Alright @Pink Jazz and @Busjack settle down.

Maybe you ought to lock the topic. Only things useful here were the explanation of how the Dan Ryan and Howard hooked up, and the explanation of the NYCTA system.