by doepack
Dan Ryan portion of Red line goes out of business for 5 months starting next year...
--Dorian--
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doepack wrote:Dan Ryan portion of Red line goes out of business for 5 months starting next year...Doepack: Interesting news about rebuilding the tracks and ROW of the entire Dan Ryan line in 2013...
Red Line South
Track Renewal Project
Coming: Spring 2013
Faster. Smoother. Better.
Starting in Spring 2013, the CTA will rebuild the tracks along the south Red Line, from Cermak-Chinatown to 95th/Dan Ryan—a project that will provide faster, more comfortable and more reliable service for Red Line riders.
Building a New Chicago
The south Red Line, called the Dan Ryan branch, is more than 40 years old and needs a full replacement. Because of the current track conditions, Red Line riders experience longer travel times, more-crowded trains and less-reliable service.
This project will provide faster commutes, a smoother ride, improved stations and accessibility and a better passenger experience. Additionally, the project is expected to create hundreds of good-paying jobs.
The work is part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Building a New Chicago program, which is updating infrastructure that's critical to the city—and includes improvements that will help ensure that CTA continues to serve customers as effectively as possible.
The project is made possible by $1 billion in federal, state and local funding announced in late 2011 by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Pat Quinn for the Red and Purple Lines.
byte wrote:They did a ton of work on signaling and roadbed, but come to think of it, I don't think they actually replaced the rail. Just picked it up, moved it out of the way, then put it back when work was done. Anyway they couldn't have done all of it at that point anyway because the stations remained fully open, and the shoo-fly tracks setup at that time (which ran the trains onto a diverted track that was sitting on the Ryan roadway) were only there between stations, so the track IN the stations they could never touch, it had to remain open. In the stations is actually where you see a lot of rail wear due to what the electricity does to the rails when a train is taking power and accelerating (puts little divots in the rail when there are sparks).Byte: (David)
MACTRAXX wrote:I remember seeing information of other recent construction on the Dan Ryan route and ICTA released an informational video on the Dan Ryan project and basically the tracks, rail, ballast, roadbed and drainage is original 1968 construction.
find it interesting that the rail was not replaced...I wonder how much rail dates from around
1968/69 from when the line was originally constructed...
Tadman wrote:Hehe guys this is Chicago. The home of pork and payola... It makes no diff if we did a bunch of work on the red line a few years ago, and certainly makes no diff that the north side L probably needs way more work than the south side...
erie910 wrote:This is reminiscent of the shutdown of the Lake St. el line for complete reconstruction. Since that line was overhead, the entire superstructure from the Loop to the end was reconstructed. I think that it took over a year.The Green line reconstruction took a little more than two years, and the entire superstructure was not rebuilt. Most of the line still operates on 100+ year old steel, but all of the concrete footings were replaced, along with some steelwork in various places along the route. 95% of the original structure is still in use, however, and simply rehabilitated and repainted from its prior state. The complete shutdown of the Green Line is, in retrospect, not seen as the pinnacle of transit planning; it took several years (after it reopened) for ridership to climb to its pre-rehab levels. I predict that the CTA will be able to get by with a five month shutdown of the Dan Ryan branch because that's a fraction of the time the Green Line was closed, and because they've learned a thing or two about getting people to their destinations during previous rehabs.