The $5.7 billion Red Line Extension is moving closer to becoming a reality, more than half a century after it was first promised to Far South Siders. The CTA is holding three "Meet the Contractor" sessions this month to provide updates and answer questions about the project.
The inaugural meeting was held last Tuesday at the Carter G. Woodson Library, 9525 S. Halsted in the Roseland community. It notably marked the first RLE public hearing since the transit agency finalized $1.9 billion in federal funding last January, enabling construction. That was shortly before the sustainable transportation-hostile Trump administration took over.
The second meeting is happening tonight from 6-7:30 p.m. at St. John’s MB Church, 211 E. 115th St. in West Pullman. And the final meeting will be on Tuesday, April 15, from 6-7:30 p.m. at the Altgeld Gardens Community Youth Center Building, 951 E. 132 St.
Tuesday at the library, local Ald. Ronnie Mosley (21st) kicked off the proceedings by sharing a few words about the project. "We are very proud that we are going to have two of these new stations," he said. "103rd, where we’ll also have the first park-and-ride lot, and also at 111th. That’s two out of four, so we’re doing quite, quite well. But we are very excited that this project, which has been promised for almost six decades, has finally arrived."
"When you talk about the ability to be connected, whether you are going to work, or inviting folks that are coming out, or finding out all the gems that are here through the 21st Ward, just the mere fact of connectivity, the opportunities that brings," Mosely added. "If you study and look at transportation, you know that... any type of rail has always spurred development. And here in the 21st Ward, we are going to have over a billion dollars invested in a very short amount of time."
The RLE’s design-build team is made up of two large construction firms, Walsh Construction and VINCI. Walsh is located in Chicago and has performed multiple megaprojects here. These include the four new Red Line Stations currently under construction in Uptown and Edgewater as part of the Red and Purple Modernization Project, and the renovation of the Garfield Green Line station in Washington Park. VINCI has also handled large transit projects inthe U.S. and worldwide. Walsh’s Senior Project Manager Rob Cheeseman, also the construction manager for Walsh-VINCI, said Walsh is excited to be partnered with VINCI because the latter has "new ideas, innovations, and a really smart workforce."
According to Cheeseman, one of the innovations the firms are bringing to the project is pre-casting the segmented bridge deck for the extension off-site, bringing it on one piece at a time, and assembling it part-by-part. "It really cuts down the construction duration, cuts down the impacts we have from a typical cast-in-place bridge deck," he said. Another way that Cheeseman described constructing the RLE was with the old saying about how you eat an elephant: "One piece at a time."
"To control this project and get the design done efficiently, get the construction done efficiently, we chose to split up the project into six distinct segments," Cheeseman added. "A lot of that is built around natural boundaries like segment one, which is the tie-in work at 95th. We have to do a lot of work in the yard there, build a bridge, get it amongst the existing rail traffic, and then go up and over the I-94 ramp, which starts a new segment, which is basically the [Illinois Department of Transportation] north segment.”
Here’s a list of the different segments:
- 95th Street/Dan Ryan to I-94
- I-94 to 99th Place
- 99th Place to 106th Place
- 106th Place to 118th Street
- 118th Street to 120th Place
- 120th Place to 132nd Street
During the Q&A portion of the meeting, multiple residents expressed concerns about minority participation in building the structures. "I know that there are not that many minority iron workers," said one person. "What do you do in a particular trade when there are insufficient minorities identified to fill those slots?" A person in the audience said that the agency's diversity department tracks all of that and it is publicly available information, inviting attendees to request it. Residents can also send letters to the unions specifically requesting minority workers.
Officials said there will roughly six to twelve months between the start times of each of the four stations. At some point they will all be under construction at the same time. The work is expected to be completed in 2030. We’re now in the advance construction phase, with the groundbreaking not scheduled to start until 2026.
Read a CTA press release about the hearings here.
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