Rail Transit

Two transit agencies working toward a common goal is unfortunately a rare phenomenon in our country. Thankfully this has not stopped the CTA and Pace from joining forces to brainstorm ways to improve public transportation in the Chicago region.

Sprawl isn't just a problem in car-centric America. Even cities with the world's best transit systems are surrounded by suburbs with poor transit access, according to a new report by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. As billions of people migrate from rural to metropolitan areas in the next few decades, these growth patterns threaten to maroon people without good access to employment while overwhelming the climate with increased greenhouse gas emissions.

The Chicago Transit Authority released a major study today, the next step in the developing project to extend the Red Line southward from the 95th Street terminal to 130th Street in the Altgeld Gardens neighborhood. The Environmental Impact Study is required by the federal government before the CTA can ask for funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Streetsblog Reader and former Transport Notes blogger Alan Robinson contacted us on Monday, concerned that a poorly publicized change to Metra’s Union Pacific West Line schedule that started that day would lead to riders missing their trains. The line runs from the Ogilvie Center to the small town of Elburn, stopping at suburbs like Oak Park, Elmhurst, Wheaton, and Geneva along the way.

This morning the CTA celebrated the completion of more than 50 percent of the Wilson station reconstruction project, shortly after all customer boarding was moved to the recently completed west island platform. Now that both sides of the new platform are completed and the transit agency is working on demolishing the old one, you can get a sense of just how big the station will be when both island platforms are in place. The entire track and platform combo will be the widest in the system, dwarfing even the double-island-platform at the Belmont Red/Purple/Brown station.

When it comes to opinion pieces about transportation issues, the Chicago Tribune has been publishing some doozies this month. First, in the wake of four bike fatalities allegedly caused by reckless drivers, an editorial in the paper advised cyclists to ride more carefully. Next they ran an op-ed from noted anti-bike crank John McCarron bemoaning the fact that drivers are supposed to look for cyclists before turning to ensure they don’t kill anyone.

At a public meeting Tuesday night, Department of Planning and Development and Chicago Transit Authority officials outlined plans for a new transit TIF district along the North Side Mainline ‘L’, which carries the Red and Purple lines. The proposed TIF (tax-increment finance district) would generate funds to help pay for the Red-Purple Modernization project.

Yesterday morning dozens of community residents and members of the Autonomous Tenants Union, Somos Logan Square, and Grassroots Illinois Action joined tenants of the 2340 N. California building in Logan Square as they announced their plans to fight their impending eviction.

Not a day goes by without a raft of stories about "new mobility" providers -- ride-hailing companies like Uber or car-share services like Car2Go that have tapped into recent technological advances to provide new ways to get around.