CTA El Track Speeds?

Greetings- I just came back from 4 days in Chicago riding the L, Metra, CTA/Pace bus, and the NICTD line to South bend.

It seemed that a lot of slow orders were in place over much of the L tracks. I am familiar with the funding problems CTA is having. If CTA's tracks were in a state of good repair, what is the usual top speed between stations?

How long SHOULD a trip from O'Hare to Clark/Lake take? Yesterday, it took us about 45 minutes...

When service to O'hare first started, the average trip to downtown was about 35 min, and since much of the route runs in an expressway median with longer distances between stations, train speeds of 60mph weren't uncommon. Before slow zones became a fact of life, the average speed on elevated trackage was anywhere between 45-55mph, again, depending on the distance between stations. Indeed, those were the good old days.

45 min. from O'hare to downtown? Consider yourself lucky, because by today's diminished standards, that's actually pretty good...

45 minutes is very good for a recent trip. A few weeks ago, I had a 35 minute trip from Jackson to Damen.

As for top speed... I've seen in-cab speed readings of near 70 MPH on the Purple Line express. Kinda scary because that track was slow-zoned (down to 40 or so) a few months later; and, I seem to recall that 70 MPH is top speed for some of the L cars.

CTA used to have signs advertising 38 minutes, loop to O'Hare.

Before All of the slow zones travel time from O'Hare to Downtown was 35 to 45 mins. now It takes almost and hour, or in some cases that I rode the Blue line an hour + to get from O'Hare to downtown.

At the preasent time the CTA does not have all of the money it needs to fix the tracks that causes the slow zones, and how it going to impact the propose Midway to O'Hare express trains.

That why in some cases when I have to go to O'Hare I would drive, expecpt during the moring & evening rush hours in which the blue line is almost to completley jammed packed to at least Cumberland station, and the outbound kennedy is jammed all the way to Cumberland Exits

Tadman wrote:CTA used to have signs advertising 38 minutes, loop to O'Hare.

I remember those. Certainly would qualify as false advertising these days...

no kiddin - these days, your best option to O'Hare is to take Halsted to North Ave, then go all the way out to Manheim and take that to the airport - the Kennedy is perpetually screwed up too, just like the Blue line.

Well, help for the Blue Line appears to now be on the fast track...

Blue Line repairs on fast track

By Jon Hilkevitch
Tribune transportation reporter
Published July 12, 2007

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... 4842.story

The O'Hare branch of the CTA Blue Line, the slowest and bumpiest train ride in Chicago, will undergo extensive track repairs starting this year as the transit agency's new leadership shifts priorities, officials said Wednesday.

Blue Line passengers are fed up with miles of "slow zones" put in place because of deteriorating railroad ties dating to 1969, CTA President Ron Huberman told the agency's board.

Trains must travel as slow as 15 m.p.h. over 48 percent of the line from O'Hare International Airport to Logan Square.

Although slower speeds prevent trains from derailing on the bad stretches, the end result is that it takes an hour or longer for the ride between O'Hare and downtown.

"Since becoming president of the CTA 10 weeks ago, the most consistent complaint and frustration that our customers feel every day is the slow zones on the system," Huberman said.

CTA customers have made their dissatisfaction clear. O'Hare Blue Line ridership in May was down about 5 percent from a year ago. The O'Hare branch serves about 67,700 customers each weekday.

"Fifteen months from now, we should see tracks restored to the 70 m.p.h. standard so that we can make the Blue Line hum as quickly as possible," Huberman said.

But even though the tracks could accommodate the higher speed, CTA's top speed systemwide is 55 m.p.h.

Huberman's announcement was accompanied by more good news for riders: The CTA will use $14.7 million in bond revenue to tack 2 more miles of reconstruction onto an project to replace 6 miles of rotting wooden railroad ties on the Blue Line subway, the Red Line subway downtown and nearby Red Line elevated tracks. Those wooden ties will be replaced with concrete ties.

Completion of the additional work would end "slow zones" between Division and Grand on the Blue Line and from Grand/State to Clark/Division and from Armitage to Diversey on the Red Line, officials said.

Riders will benefit from faster travel times in September on the Blue Line and by year's end on the Red Line, officials said.

If officials can't find additional state or federal funding, officials said, capital funds would be taken from other transit projects and diverted to fix the Blue Line stretch between Addison and the rail terminal at O'Hare.

That could delay work on the $1 billion-plus Circle Line and airport express service from downtown to O'Hare and Midway Airports. Both were pet projects of former CTA president Frank Kruesi, but his successor, Huberman, said all past decisions are under review.

Huberman declined to release internal engineering estimates on the cost of the Blue Line track-and-tie rehab.

The CTA plans to seek bids for the O'Hare branch work within several weeks and conduct the project this year and next year. Conservative estimates put the cost in the tens of millions of dollars.

Some Blue Line riders strongly support the investment.

Rider John Feuerborn said it recently took more than two hours to travel from U.S. Cellular Field on the Red Line to the Cumberland stop on the O'Hare Blue Line because of the repeated slow zones.

"That's an average of 10 to 12 m.p.h.," Feuerborn wrote in a letter to the CTA. "Do we really want to fund a transit agency to perform like this?"

When all the track work is completed, only about 11 percent of the CTA's 223 miles of rails would be in slow zones, compared with 21 percent today, CTA officials said.

Separately, the CTA board approved spending $250,000 on a one-year pilot project to electronically monitor the driving performance of bus operators.

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doepack wrote:

Tadman wrote:CTA used to have signs advertising 38 minutes, loop to O'Hare.

I remember those. Certainly would qualify as false advertising these days...

There used to be a sign at the Argyle station along the Red Line that said "Use rapid transit, 19 minutes to the loop".

This afternoon I had the chance to take the Brown Line from the Fullerton stop into downtown and I am surprised at how smoothly Red, Purple, and Brown line trains ran through the three track zone in both directions. A few Brown line trains were SRO from what I saw and the northbound Fullerton platform was packed. This was about 5:30.

MetraBNSF wrote: This afternoon I had the chance to take the Brown Line from the Fullerton stop into downtown and I am surprised at how smoothly Red, Purple, and Brown line trains ran through the three track zone in both directions. A few Brown line trains were SRO from what I saw and the northbound Fullerton platform was packed. This was about 5:30.

That's because the three track constraint currently only constricts northbound trains. With the CTA actually managing the traffic flow (almost like an agency trying to run a proper railroad), this means that southbound traffic flow can actually be really good.

I also had slower *northbound* times in the period just preceding three-track operation.

Everyone: I remember the speedy ride that the CTA used to provide on lines like the Dan Ryan,Congress and Kennedy extensions as well as the decent ride on older elevated lines. Has the CTA let its track get this bad over time? Mentioned in the article were ties dating to 1969-are any of those original concrete ties still in use? I remember that tracks in the State and Dearborn subways were wood block ties set in concrete-how is this track holding up today? I believe all this would have never happened had someone like George Krambles was still overseeing the system! MACTRAXX

I also just came back from a week in Chicago, and yes the slow zones are really bad! You're constantly speeding up and slowing down between stations, sometimes crawling at 15 MPH.

I don't understand where all the capital money went in Chicago. No other rapid transit system I've been on has so many slow zones, including SEPTA, which has rebuilt most of its elevated line.

It's no fun to ride the L when it's so slow.

Lucius Kwok wrote:
I don't understand where all the capital money went in Chicago. No other rapid transit system I've been on has so many slow zones, including SEPTA, which has rebuilt most of its elevated line.

It's no fun to ride the L when it's so slow.

CTA also had several projects that are in progress, or had been completed that I the capital money they had had been to:

Rebuilding the Pink/Blue line Douglas Branch, and making all the stations on the branch ADA Compliant.

Rehabbing the Red line along the Dan Ryan expressway,

Also currently rehabbing the brown line from Merchandise Mart
to Kimball, which includes the red, and purple lines from Armitage to just north of Belmont, So that It can run 8 car trains to the current 6 cars, which it gets very overcrowded, and rebuilding, or rehabbing the stations to 8 car length, and ADA compliant.

And the most recently project to eliminate the slow zones along the Blue line O'Hare branch, and the North side of the Red Line.

And also the purchase of the new 5000s series cars that the CTA is suppose to start getting after 2008.