CTA riders are in for a rail mess
North Side work may double travel times
By Jon Hilkevitch
Tribune transportation reporter
January 11, 2007
Commuters who thought the Dan Ryan Expressway reconstruction failed to live up to all the hype about traffic gridlock should try riding the most heavily traveled CTA rail corridor starting in the spring.
That is, if they can somehow squeeze aboard a train.
Capacity on many parts of the rail system now is full at the height of the morning and evening rush. And things will get even worse as the CTA starts the next and most disruptive phase of its $530 million Brown Line expansion project.
Travel times are expected to as much as double when one out of the four tracks used by the Red, Brown and Purple/Evanston Express Lines between the Armitage and Addison stations will be taken out of service from about April 2 through the end of 2009, transit officials said Wednesday.
The elevated tracks traverse the Lincoln Park and Lakeview neighborhoods and are among the CTA's busiest. The corridor carries 185,000 passengers on about 1,000 trains each day.
The almost three-year, 25 percent reduction in the corridor's track capacity is the painful price for expanding service enough to meet future ridership growth, CTA officials warned in providing the first details of the plan.
The phased-in changes will allow the CTA to keep the rail lines open while expanding platforms at the Belmont and Fullerton stations and building new tracks. Trains will continue to make all station stops.
But waiting and boarding times will rise, and trains will fill up earlier on their routes while the work is being done.
So start making alternative plans to ride the bus or Metra trains. Carpool. Go buy a good pair of walking shoes. Pump up the tires in your bicycle or motor scooter. Switch your travel times to earlier or later in the day. Or maybe ask your boss for a three-year sabbatical.
Starting in April, northbound Red, Brown and Purple Line trains will share one track for part of the way from south of Fullerton to north of Belmont, then be switched back to the regular two-track configuration.
Southbound trains will operate on two tracks as normal--the outside track for the Brown and Purple Lines and the inside track for the Red Line.
Train schedules will be pared to accommodate the reduction in tracks. Running the same number of trains would create horrendous bottlenecks at crossover points where trains merge onto a single track near the stations, officials said.
The Purple Line schedule will be cut back the most, officials said. Purple Line riders will be encouraged to ride the all-stop Red Line instead.
To alleviate crowding downtown, Purple Line trains, which normally run clockwise around the Loop, will switch to the counterclockwise direction on the outer track, as the Brown Line does, officials said.
The crunch will be worst during the evening rush for northbound commuters on the three lines sharing one track for a portion of the routes.
But transit officials say the impact will be felt on other rail routes too.
"Depending on where you live, in an extreme case you should budget up to double the amount of time to get home and 50 percent additional time to get to work in the morning," said Michael Shiffer, CTA vice president of planning and development.
"Trains will be more crowded. It will be difficult to board during rush hours," Shiffer told the CTA board, adding that commuting times should improve over time as people adapt to new travel patterns and as the CTA hopes to add back some trains.
The service changes are still nearly three months away, but as word spread Wednesday, CTA customers started to worry.
"Does the CTA want to get rid of all of its riders? That's one way to alleviate overcrowding on trains," said a commuter named Katharine who did not want her full name used.
"It currently takes 45-plus minutes to get from the Loop to the Kimball station" on the Brown Line, she said. "It is now going to be 1 1/2 hours to travel 9 miles as the crow flies?"
Capacity will be reduced by 16 trains, or about 8,640 passengers, on southbound runs between 6 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., the CTA said.
The cuts will be twice as deep later in the day.
Northbound between 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., there will be 31 fewer trains--reducing passenger capacity by 17,460 passengers--because the Red, Brown and Purple Line trains will temporarily share one track at the Fullerton and Belmont stations. The two stations are being relocated and replaced with larger facilities.
CTA officials say the impact of three-track operations will stretch as far as the Addison station to the north and the Armitage stop to the south.
And that's if everything goes according to plan, which would be almost unprecedented for the CTA.
The rail system has been plagued in recent months by a series of fires, derailments and track-switching problems that have snarled operations and delayed commuters, who are becoming increasingly impatient with the transit agency.
Referring to the possibility of balky track switches and other disruptions during the three-track operations, CTA president Frank Kruesi acknowledged, "If we have one hiccup, it will multiply the problems we would have had with four tracks."
CTA officials say they are getting the word out now in the hope that transit riders will find alternative travel choices.
Higher ridership is expected on the Blue Line and some bus routes due to riders switching commuting patterns, officials said. Some equipment may be shifted to the Blue Line to help operations there, Kruesi said.
Some North Side rail commuters are expected to try the express bus routes on North Lake Shore Drive or regular bus routes on major arterial roads, including Clark and Halsted Streets, Lincoln Avenue and Broadway. Shuttle buses will also operate at least initially to take passengers beyond the Fullerton-Belmont area and link them with trains at other stations or regular bus routes, officials said.
