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How COVID-19 affects transit


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On 10/13/2020 at 7:40 PM, artthouwill said:

In a strange twist made possible by the pandemic, Southwest Airlines will be adding service to and from  O'Hare next year.  Yes. O'Hare!  It will also add service to and from George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.   Both airports are United Airlines hubs.  Southwest will not shrink its Midway operations to accommodate the O'Hare expansion. 

Today, Southwest announced even more service from O'Hare:

Nashville, Denver, Dallas (IAH), Baltimore and Phoenix.

 

Service will start Feb 14, 2021.

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57 minutes ago, Smolensk said:

Today, Southwest announced even more service from O'Hare:

Nashville, Denver, Dallas (IAH), Baltimore and Phoenix.

 

Service will start Feb 14, 2021.

IAH is Bush Intercontinental in Houston.  I don't think Southwest would try DFW but I think they will fly to DAL (Dallas Love Field).

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1 hour ago, artthouwill said:

IAH is Bush Intercontinental in Houston.  I don't think Southwest would try DFW but I think they will fly to DAL (Dallas Love Field).

Thanks for the correction.  You are right.  I copied and pasted that from the USA Today article.  I see they have corrected the article and say Dallas Love Field now.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2020/10/28/southwest-airlines-flights-chicago-ohare-phoenix-nashville-baltimore/6054800002/

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4 hours ago, MTRSP1900-CTA3200 said:

Exciting, but since they’ll be at Terminal 5, they won’t have the Blue Line within walking distance. I still welcome this news, as Phoenix is a destination I visited yearly before COVID, and I’ve changed planes in Dallas Love and Denver, so I could always fly elsewhere via a connection or stop.

Yeah United and American aren't too happy about this news. I heard they complained that they didnt want to share gates with them at their terminals 1 and 3. I honestly thought they would get terminal 2. Terminal 5 seems too far from the action. I'd be calling rideshare if I flew sw. The terminals are a mess. Maybe the people mover will start in 2021 else this may be a fail. 

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14 hours ago, BusHunter said:

Yeah United and American aren't too happy about this news. I heard they complained that they didnt want to share gates with them at their terminals 1 and 3. I honestly thought they would get terminal 2. Terminal 5 seems too far from the action. I'd be calling rideshare if I flew sw. The terminals are a mess. Maybe the people mover will start in 2021 else this may be a fail. 

United and American control their gates so there was no way they were going to share with anyone who wasn't an alliance partner.  Terminal 5 gates are all common use gates, even for the international carriers.  Honestly that was the only place they could fly from.  Frontier is there too.  Terminal 5 is also due for an expansion.  When the O'HARE expnasion is complete,  Delta will also relocate to Terminal 5..  However, we will have to see how the Western bypass plays out.  If a new Terminal 4 gets built out there, who would dare move there?  WOULD the Blue Line get extended to serve it?  Would a separate people mover ATS be built or the current one extended?

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21 hours ago, artthouwill said:

United and American control their gates so there was no way they were going to share with anyone who wasn't an alliance partner.  Terminal 5 gates are all common use gates, even for the international carriers.  Honestly that was the only place they could fly from.  Frontier is there too.  Terminal 5 is also due for an expansion.  When the O'HARE expnasion is complete,  Delta will also relocate to Terminal 5..  However, we will have to see how the Western bypass plays out.  If a new Terminal 4 gets built out there, who would dare move there?  WOULD the Blue Line get extended to serve it?  Would a separate people mover ATS be built or the current one extended?

I doubt you can extend the blue line further into the airport without an major disruptive realignment but I’m happy to shut up if wrong. Like I even considered “what if they did the realignment before the tunnel might take some flyover and bridge to wrap around cause it look a like it follows I-190 to the end and after I-190 ends and wraps through the airport is where the tunnel leading to ohare station starts

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1 hour ago, Sam92 said:

I doubt you can extend the blue line further into the airport without an major disruptive realignment but I’m happy to shut up if wrong. Like I even considered “what if they did the realignment before the tunnel might take some flyover and bridge to wrap around cause it look a like it follows I-190 to the end and after I-190 ends and wraps through the airport is where the tunnel leading to ohare station starts

The blue line turns more than I-190 as it leaves it. I believe there was a parking lot or empty lot, that it went through on it's way to terminal 2. Probably they would have to extend the people mover, but they would need a road to connect the western part. If they were cheap about it, they could just make the approach off I-490. They wouldn't need a road tunnel; and if they extend the people mover around the airport possibly they wouldn't need a rail tunnel either. Connection to the other terminals might be 10 minutes away though.

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3 hours ago, Sam92 said:

I doubt you can extend the blue line further into the airport without an major disruptive realignment but I’m happy to shut up if wrong. Like I even considered “what if they did the realignment before the tunnel might take some flyover and bridge to wrap around cause it look a like it follows I-190 to the end and after I-190 ends and wraps through the airport is where the tunnel leading to ohare station starts

The station cavern is directly underneath the large parking garage. I think the exit is facing Terminal 2 (which extends out southeast into the airfield), with T1 to the right and T3 to the left, so if the two side tracks that extend past the platforms have tunnels added to them, they would have to start curving to the right to have the tracks reach a potential Terminal 4.

Originally the idea of extending the Blue Line to Schaumburg was thought to be nearly impossible because of O’Hare’s former runway setup. When they announced the runway reconfiguration project the idea of extending the Blue Line became possible because the runway that the tracks would have to pass under would be removed (it’s a taxiway now), but the entire idea was shelved because of Metra’s proposed STAR line.

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Yeah, the best bet for T5 is to take the farthest exit from the garage on the T3 side (past the O'Hare badging office). There's an elevator that takes you directly to ATS in the garage, no need to go through the terminal. 

Of course, ATS isn't running so you have to take the shuttle bus from the departures roadway. 

The O'Hare 21 plan adds two new satellites in T1. One of the new ones is an extension on the existing one. The other one would be further out. There will be a walkway and utility tunnel from T2 to the satellites, and it will have room for a future security-side train. That train could one day be extended to the Western Terminal and/or to T5. That's a very long ways away however, and the Covid pandemic and current collapse of air travel might delay the plans. 

For what it's worth, the O'Hare 21 plan includes a security gate for employees where a Western Terminal would go. This will at least help some of the suburban workers get to work faster by being able to use 390/490 instead of 90/190/294. 

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