CTA

“We knew how important it was for federal policy makers to see innovation and new ideas bubbling up from important cities around the country,” said Nick Turner, managing director of the Rockefeller Foundation at a bus rapid transit roundtable last Friday. The foundation has provided roughly $2.8 million in grants to Chicago's BRT program for research, technical support, land-use planning, project management, community engagement, branding and communications. “That’s why we started to get interested in the work here in Chicago.” The seminar, Bus Rapid Transit on a Roll in Chicago, took place at the Loop offices of the Metropolitan Planning Council, which promotes sustainable development and transportation in the region.

The Wells Street bridge is under construction until early morning Monday, March 11, and Brown and Purple Line Express trains have modified service. The Chicago Department of Transportation is replacing part of the southern bridge leaf in a 9-day stretch; a part of the northern leaf will be replaced in April.

Let's step back from the discussion about how Chicago is implementing rapid bus routes and take a long view of how transit in Chicago might transform if these first BRT routes are successful.

Chicago just got a step closer to first-class bus rapid transit. Today the CTA and the Chicago Department of Transportation released proposed lane configurations for the Central Loop East-West Transit Corridor, a downtown circulator route connecting Union Station with Navy Pier, as well as renderings for a new transit center next to the train station. The corridor would include bus-priority lanes on two miles of streets: Canal, Washington, Madison and Clinton. This downtown BRT service is slated to launch next year.

This advertisement for safe driving has been posted for a couple of months on a bus stop shelter for the 56-Milwaukee at California Avenue. It's sponsored by the Auto Alliance and the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons (the kind who will fix your broken bones after a car crash).

On Wednesday, the Chicago Transit Authority announced that it's planning to upgrade its train fleet with more than 800 new rail cars. As the agency looks into what manufacturers can provide, this should be the time when Chicagoans influence the process and push for the best possible redesign.

This morning at Freedman Seating, a Humboldt Park-based company that will be making seats for hundreds of new CTA buses, Mayor Rahm Emanuel argued that better public transportation can give a shot in the arm to the local economy. The 120-year-old company will be fabricating some 11,100 seats for the transit agency’s $148 million contract to buy at least 300 new vehicles from the Nova Bus company. The CTA says the bus purchase will create up to 100 new local jobs.

The Chicago Transit Authority is out with a new publication called "When Things Go Wrong on the CTA" and recently gave a televised tour of its control center to Chicago Tonight -- two recent examples that highlight how the agency is improving its communication with riders.