Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Open House Tonight About CTA's Plan To Improve Red Line Stations from Lawrence to Bryn Mawr

After the Wilson Station's huge overhaul is completed (work is due to begin late summer/early fall), the CTA has its eyes on rebuilding the four stations north of it, as well as creating a Brown Line "flyover" in Lakeview.

The rebuilt stations will be in Uptown and Edgewater.  According to the CTA, the project would include
"Completely rebuilding four aging stations (Lawrence, Argyle, Berwyn, and Bryn Mawr) and rebuilding all tracks, support structures, bridges, and viaducts between Leland and Hollywood Avenues. The new stations would include modern amenities and elevators to make them accessible to customers with disabilities, and the new tracks would significantly improve train speeds and service reliability."
There's an open house about it tonight at Truman College (1145 W Wilson) between 5:30-7:30pmMore information is here about the project.

7 comments:

  1. How do these meetings usually work? Do they start with a presentation, then open it up to questions at the end? I've never attended one of these, but want to tonight. I just don't know if I'm able to make it until 6-ish.

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    1. They usually have visual materials up, with CTA people standing around to explain what it's about. It's designed so you can do it whenever you arrive and at your own speed.

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  2. so...we just renovated these stations and now they are rebuilding them...is this why they shut down schools? ;)

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    1. This is what I'm going to talk about. I took the red line last night and when I got off at Sheridan, I needed to swim through Niagra Falls just to get out of the station. They spent an average of $8 on 3 of the 4 stations in this place to completely gut them and make them nice, only to demolish them 5 years later (2012-2017). Sheridan however had more ridership than all of them, and yet there is not even a stopgap plan to repair the water that gushes into the station or add simple drainage. Why can't Sheridan get a "temporary" repair, since that would at least last more than 5 years due to the fact that the CTA has no real plan for Sheridan. Spend $8 on Sheridan to bring it up to the status quo, then let's talk about a complete rebuild further north.

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    2. There was a concerted effort for YEARS on the part of the community surrounding the Wilson stop to prioritize rebuilding it...it helped that readers of UU managed to vote it the crustiest L stop several times (good publicity!), and the Alderman and the neighboring block clubs got behind the effort to convince CTA that the Wilson station NEEDED to be replaced. I haven't seen that level of intensity or broad neighborhood support for doing something with the Sheridan station--maybe if the block clubs around the station make it a priority and convince Cappleman that it should be a priority, then it will get enough momentum to do something more than temporary fixes. But keep in mind that CTA is talking about realigning the tracks and moving the station north to Irving Park--that will take acquisition and demolition of many buildings, which will make it more expensive. That may be why CTA pretends that Sheridan is an ugly red-headed step-child that it doesn't want to acknowledge...yet.

      As far as Chad's comment goes, when CTA did the renovations for the North Main Line stations, they were very clear that they were stop-gap measures to improve rider usability and safety...and that the stations would be rebuilt from the ground up when funding was identified. No surprises. And if you didn't already know, CTA is a completely separate government entity from CPS...and the Park District...and the City of Chicago. They are independent (except for Rahmbo's appointments to their boards) of each other, and their budgets are independent of each other. Saying that CTA's spending resulted in the closing of schools is the equivalent of saying that Chicago's city employee pensions are underfunded because the City of Dixon's comptroller embezzled a few million tax dollars to buy herself a horse farm.

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    3. So I went tonight and talked with multiple people about multiple different aspects of the RPM and the brown line flyover. I'll save the Brown Line talk, but the woman I asked why these stations were getting double dips after just 5 years, she told me that the CTA knows about Sheridan and has a separate "stop-gap" plan for it. They have identified and allotted about $20 million for this work, vs. the roughly $8 million per station north of here. The problem is that they can't agree within the CTA about what to do during these repairs. Do they tackle the platforms, canopies, decking, stairs, station house, floors, turnstiles, etc.? She also said that being historic, they're limited in some scope to what they can do. I found that interesting because it's not officially historic. She did know about the drainage issue, and was made even more aware when I showed her my video from yesterday.

      The rough timetable for this work is "2 years" from now. That's a lot of rain and snow storms to continue to deal with, but I guess it's better than 2017 when the 4 stations north of here are getting work started. I remember that the Ricketts had needed to set aside money for Sheridan in the Wrigley renovation plan. Did that make the final agreement, or was that cut out?

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