The Antiplanner

When One Rail Line Is Not Enough

21st August 2008

When One Rail Line Is Not Enough

posted in Planning Disasters |

The Chicago Transit Authority offers elevated train service from both O’Hare and Midway airports to downtown. But that wasn’t enough for Mayor Daley. After all, other world-class cities like Amsterdam, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Moscow offer express — i.e., non-stop — train service from their airports to downtown.

Because Chicago’s El has no passing sidings, all trains must stop at all stops — horrors! Express service would supposedly save travelers between O’Hare and downtown 9 minutes (21 vs. 30) over existing train service.

Chicago is bidding on the 2016 Olympics and believes it has to offer at least as good service as other potential Olympic cities. This is a ridiculous argument for spending hundreds of millions of dollars, especially since Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Athens, and Turin are among recent Olympic cities that don’t have airport express trains. Vancouver, which is hosting the 2010 winter games, is building a very non-express light-rail line to its airport.

Nevertheless, the Chicago city council decided to build an express rail line from downtown to the airports. It had previously condemned a downtown city block, known as block 37, and evicted all the businesses on the block. A mere decade or two later, it began building an underground express train station on this block while private developers built an above-ground mixed-use retail and residential project.

Predictably, the train station, which was supposed to cost $213 million, soon went over budget by at least $100 million. Of course, the Chicago Transit Authority, which is otherwise on the verge of fiscal collapse and needs a mere $16 billion that it doesn’t have just to keep its current trains running, hasn’t the foggiest idea where it is going to get the money to actually build a new rail line to the airports, even if it could finish the station.

So the city is shutting down the station project after spending somewhere between $210 and $250 million (reports vary). The whole story is told in a recent issue of Budget & Tax News, published by the Heartland Institute, a think tank headquartered in Chicago.

The Antiplanner has take the CTA between both airports and downtown. Judging from my experience, plus what data I’ve seen, no more than 4 or 5 percent of Chicago air travelers use the CTA. Cutting out nine minutes would not make difference. All it would do would allow Chicago to claim it was keeping up with other so-called world-class cities — a dubious distinction.

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There are currently 6 responses to “When One Rail Line Is Not Enough”

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  1. 1 On August 21st, 2008, D4P said:

    the Chicago city council decided to build an express rail line from downtown to the airports. It had previously condemned a downtown city block, known as block 37, and evicted all the businesses on the block. A mere decade or two later, it began building an underground express train station on this block while private developers built an above-ground mixed-use retail and residential project.

    Why do you blame “planning” in these cases instead of “democracy”? Citizens elect city council members, who then make the decisions.

    PS: The Antiplanner typically criticizes transit for being inconvenient, and then typically criticizes efforts to make transit more convenient.

    posted on August 21st, 2008 at 4:34 am

  2. 2 On August 21st, 2008, prk166 said:

    That criticism is an example of big part of the problem. It’s this black and white approach to the situation. Yes, having express trains would be more convenient. But the issue at hand shouldn’t be so simplistic. How much more convenient is it? How many people would it be more convenient for? What is the value of that?

    Personally, I could see where this could useful. But $300+ million for just one station on top of all the additional money required to build the sidings (assuming a good chunk of the line is elevated, it won’t be cheap) seems like a lot of money to spend just to save 9 minutes.

    More so, how is it good to build new projects when they don’t have money to properly maintain current one? If the system was in better condition, that would change things. But at a time when the CTA is begging for money from the state just to keep it’s head above water it doesn’t seem like a good move to spend 1/2 billion – billion just to shave a few minutes off the travel time for some travelers.

    posted on August 21st, 2008 at 7:08 am

  3. 3 On August 21st, 2008, Market Urbanism said:

    Currently it takes about 50 min from O’Hare to downtown on the Blue Line. (I don’t know where you got 30min) So, 21 min would be MUCH faster than the current line. In fact, 21 min would be faster than driving even with no traffic on the Kennedy…
    That speed would be worth $30 a ride or more, but would they have the guts to charge that?

    posted on August 21st, 2008 at 8:02 am

  4. 4 On August 21st, 2008, the highwayman said:

    We could ask the same thing of roads.

    “When is one Highway not Enough”

    What’s good for the goose is good for the gander!

    posted on August 21st, 2008 at 11:49 am

  5. 5 On August 21st, 2008, D4P said:

    When one highway is not enough, huge government subsidies are allocated toward building new highways, that reduce commute times by a few minutes here and there.

    posted on August 21st, 2008 at 12:01 pm

  6. 6 On August 21st, 2008, the highwayman said:

    That’s like our so called energy “crisis” which is really a built in(socially engineered by the highway lobby) over demand problem than any thing else.

    posted on August 21st, 2008 at 1:36 pm

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