Observation Paper post + wishful thinking for the CTA

This past Thursday (January 24th) I set out to ride the L for an hour for the purposes of the observation paper. Given a choice between going to bond court (I have been to court before, pass), spending an hour in a public space in Chicago (the public spaces that excite me the most are outdoors and with last week's weather, pass) and riding the L I naturally chose what was most convenient for myself. I rode the Brown Line from the Loop to Kimball as I had never ridden it past Irving Park. There were less people on the train than I would have hoped for (in order to observe interactions between riders) but still I tried to keenly observe the goings-on inside the car. The Brown Line is undergoing double-tracking along with the Purple and Red Lines up to Belmont, which in addition to construction at several stops (Diversey, Southport, Irving Park, Damen) to accomodate 8-car trains slows down the train considerably and makes a commute last 40 minutes. The remodeled stations that I saw are quite a step up from the almost dilapidated state of some of the older stations. Now, I had read on http://www.chicago-l.org/ that there were grade level crossings for part of the Brown Line but I had stored that information in some unaccessible corner of my mind until the train was suddenly at the same level as the bungalows on either side. To my slight dismay, I was unable to see the damage from the recent water main break at Montrose. Of course, I will go into more detail in my observation paper.

The future of the CTA is quite interesting to me and a good place to start dreaming of what it COULD become is by reading Craig Berman's 2005 article "A CTA Map for 2055". Within it, he outlines how to strengthen the current rail network and make it truly world-class. Some ideas are no-brainers (the Circle Line, extending the Green and Red lines to the criminally underserved far South Side) and others are a bit more of a stretch (a subway line under Belmont connecting the Red, Brown and Purple lines to the Blue line, merging the Brown and Orange Lines into a single line). I will touch upon other ideas in future posts such such as the Midcity Transitway - a line running near Cicero Avenue from Jefferson Park to Ford City, the "Gray Line" - appropriating the Metra Electric Line into the CTA system and my own optimistic (perhaps harebrained?) idea for a Western Avenue subway.

I think the next thing the CTA should do is build a station on the (now reused) Paulina Connector at Madison serving the United Center. I was at a Blackhawks game recently (incidentally my first hockey game and the first time since high school I'd been at the United Center) and seeing Pink Line trains rolling past a mere two blocks from the stadium bespeaks poor planning. The financial situation for the CTA is grim, even after Springfield bailed out public transit in the Chicagoland area. The system will, for the time being, continue running as it had before but this is a system that is woefully inadequate at some points. Where the money will come from to finance the ideas that brim within my head (as they undoubtedly do in the heads of many other riders) is a complicated question that will be quite interesting to watch in the years ahead.