The Chicago Tribune editorial board members are probably not my biggest fans right now, since I've recently pointed out questionable statements about bike lanes and Metra fare in their editorials.
But it's worth noting that the newspaper's sustainable reporting, as opposed to commentary, is generally on-point nowadays. I've previously given a thumbs-up to work by Tribune Transportation Reporter Sarah Freishtat, such as her nuanced coverage of the Dickens Avenue Neighborhood Greenway controversy last year.
Here's another example of an article by Freishtat that I think is right on the money. A couple of days ago, she published "The United Center hasn’t been served by a Pink Line station since it opened. Could redevelopment plans change that?"
Granted, part of the reason I'm glad Freishtat wrote about that subject is that, back in 2014, I wrote about the first sentence of her title. That was for my old "Checkerboard City" sustainable transportation column in Newcity Magazine. My piece was titled, "Training for the Big Game: Why Is There No ‘L’ Stop at the United Center?"
"Every time I take the Pink Line to Pilsen and gaze out the window at the United Center, I’m struck by the apparent stupidity of train service that goes right past Chicago’s largest sports and music arena, but doesn’t stop there," I mused in the Newcity column. "The nearest existing stations, the Blue Line’s Illinois Medical District stop to the south, and the Pink and Green lines’ Ashland-Lake stop to the northeast, are both roughly twelve-minute walks to the stadium, long enough to discourage train use. But a new Pink station near Madison and Paulina would be a four-minute hop, skip and jump to the front doors."
Of course, a lot has happened since then. The attractive new Damen Green station (re)opened last August, in time for the Democratic National Convention. That's about 0.4 miles, or an eight-minute walk at 3 mph, from the main entrance to the arena. But a Pink Line station on Madison Street, shown with a red pin in the above map, would only be about half that distance from the stadium – super convenient.
And last month, as reported for Streetsblog by AJ LaTrace, the owners of the Blackhawks and Bulls teams announced a $7 billion mixed-use overhaul of the United Center campus, dubbed The 1901 Project. This would redevelop many of the vast parking lots around the the sports and concert venue into new retail, entertainment and residential district. That, of course, would create a lot more car traffic around the area or – if the City of Chicago is smart – a lot more transit ridership.
The Tribune sets the stage for such an outcome in its new article. "By the time the United Center opened in 1994, an 'L' station that was once about a block away from the stadium had been gone for decades," Freishtat writes. "There were brief talks of restoring the station for the 1996 Democratic National Convention, but those plans never materialized. Later, in 2006, the CTA’s Pink Line opened on a stretch of old track alongside United Center parking lots, with no new stop at Madison Street... But the time might soon arrive for a new Pink Line stop at Madison, as plans progress on a proposal by the owners of the Bulls and Blackhawks."
Freishtat talked to local Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) who was a tireless advocate for the Green Damen station. Unsurprisingly, he's also interested in building a Pink stop near Paulina, just east of the "Madhouse on Madison." He thinks it might be possible to use tax increment financing to pay for it, which would be logical since the improved transit access would help make the area more profitable for the City.
"It’d be an investment," Ald. Burnett acknowledged to the Tribune. "But [the developers] need to put it there to attract people to that development so they can get prospective tenants, and so we can get more people moving around the city and spending money in the city, beside just on game day."
Freishtat's article contains lots of interesting history of the Pink and Green lines from ex-CTA employee and current Chicago Department of Transportation staffer Jeff Sriver. That includes of a discussion of why, surprisingly, no Pink Madison station was built before that line was opened in 2006. "There was expediency to just getting the line rebuilt and doing that in a very cost-effective way," Sriver told the Trib. "Since that was kind of cookie cutter from the rest of the line, that was the focus."
It would take years to design and build a new Pink station, but its future is starting to look brighter. While the transit authority and the transportation department haven't made an announcement of definite plans, Freishtat said they've started talking about the possibility. "It looks like its time is getting closer," Sriver told her.
So there's more reason than ever for people who would prefer to take the train to championships and concerts to think Pink. Streetsblog Chicago will continue to advocate for the project. If and when the station finally opens, I can think of the perfect song by Brice Springteen, a frequent United Center performer, to kick off the celebration: "Pink Cadillac."
Read the Tribune article here.
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