Bus Transit

Thanks to years of lobbying by South Side community members and organizations, the CTA’s #31 31st Street bus will ride again for the first time in almost two decades next Tuesday, albeit on a trial basis. The big question is, with a limited route, frequency, and service hours planned, will the line garner enough ridership to convince the agency to make the service permanent?

This afternoon officials cut the ribbon on the Union Station Transit Center, a new facility across the street from the Amtrak and Metra hub that will make it easier to make transfers and will better organize West Loop traffic. The transit center opens to the public this Sunday. It’s the latest step in the development of the Loop Link bus rapid transit route, which debuted on Washington and Madison Streets last December.

[Last year the Chicago Reader launched a weekly transportation column written by Streetsblog Chicago editor John Greenfield. This partnership allows Streetsblog to extend the reach of our livable streets advocacy. We syndicate a portion of the column after it comes out online; you can read the remainder on the Reader’s website or in print. The paper hits the streets on Thursdays.]

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office has started crafting an ordinance that would activate a state law allowing the city to create "transit TIF districts" – officially called Transit Facility Improvement Areas – around four transit projects, according to the Chicago Tribune. Boundaries could be drawn up to a half mile around Chicago’s Union Station (to fund the improvements recommended in its master plan), the CTA’s North Side Main Line, the CTA’s Red Line extension to 130th, and the CTA’s Blue Line Congress branch modernization and possible extension.

Last month I reported on the Chicago Park District’s plans to expand a parking lot at the southwest corner of 31st and Lake Shore Drive, a short walk from 31st Street Beach and Harbor. The proposal would enlarge the lot, currently 60,000 square feet of asphalt, by 85,000 feet -- that’s about 1.5 football fields worth of existing green space that would be replaced by blacktop.

Earlier this week the Millennial Trains project stopped in Chicago on its five-city national tour on Amtrak, bringing a group of 26 young people to meet with locals within each city. They discussed how issues of housing affordability and inequality, and transit affect their lives, and talked about ideas for improving conditions in Chicago.

[Last year the Chicago Reader launched a weekly transportation column written by Streetsblog Chicago editor John Greenfield. This partnership allows Streetsblog to extend the reach of our livable streets advocacy. We syndicate a portion of the column after it comes out online; you can read the remainder on the Reader’s website or in print. The paper hits the streets on Thursdays.]

[This article was produced in partnership with the Chicago Reader.]

Today a spokesman for the Obama Foundation officially confirmed that the Obama Presidential Center will be located in Jackson Park on the South Side, and he lauded the project as the nation’s first urban presidential library. “For the first time, a presidential center will be in the heart of an urban community," foundation chairman Martin Nesbitt, said in a statement.