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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