Humanize the Earth!

Tonight I went to an open house of the Chicago Transit Authority where they presented their plans for transit changes (upgrades, I’d say) in the West Side corridor (Chicago Ave to 26th St). Among the many changes to bus routes (new express buses, extended routes, etc) is a big one to the trains. Currenly trains from O’hare pass through downtown and then split onto two lines as they head west. The plan is to take all of those existing trains onto the Forest Park (the northern spur of the two), basically doubling service on that branch. The Cermak branch, where I live, will go from 4 trains per hour now to 6 trains per hour (a decrease in wait times from 15 minutes to 10) and instead of going by subway to downtown and then O’hare, will use a currently unused piece of track along Paulina to Lake Street and the Green Line tracks, and from there to Clinton, Clark&Lake and around the loop, back to Clinton and our branch (this is similar to what the Brown, Purple and Orange lines currently do, go from their terminal, around the loop and back again. And, during rush hours 2 trains per hour will still go from Cermak branch to the subway and O’hare, so lots more service, in total. Go CTA!

Downside from the event tonight was that the announcements weren’t in Spanish and the initial presentation (only a few minutes long) was also not bi-lingual. They did have a translator there and as soon as they were able to get us spread out around the room looking at posters of the different routes, the shouting stopped. CTA really needs to understand how to reach all it’s populations.

crossposted from http://bikechicago.info/marshallsquare/blog/index.php/2006/01/11/cta-changes-on-west-side/