I have just left Chicago after
exploring its 'L' system for five days. I'm sitting on the Empire
Builder on my way to Minneapolis/St. Paul, but find it hard to use my
netbook as the train wobbles and trembles too much to use a mouse and
do some proper work. Anyway, this is September 23rd, and Chicago was
the first stop on a 1-month tour through the American Midwest and
South, all in preparation for my forthcoming book "Subways &Light Rail in the USA – Vol. 3 Midwest & South" due to be
released in December 2014. So there will hopefully be more
interesting blog entries in the next few weeks, so check back if
you're interested.
The Chicago 'L' is quite well
known so I won't give you a general description of the system, just
my thoughts and impressions after riding the system intensively over
the last few days and taking hundreds of photographs (which is no
problem at all, it seems, I have never been addressed by anybody,
just yesterday a woman took pictures of me while I was taking photos
and probably meant to report me for 'out-of-the-ordinary' activity,
although this was actually outside the station proper at Sox/35th on
the Red Line). All in all, transit police or other vigilants are
hardly present anywhere, which I hope is a good sign. Generally, I
would say, people's behaviour is quite good and I felt quite
comfortable on all trains. The only sections I didn't ride were the
two southern ends of the Green Line beyond Garfield as they go
through areas often quoted as delicate.
The fare system has now been
completely changed to contactless smartcards, a system called Ventra
(would be interesting to know why this is the name as to me it
suggests 'belly, womb' as in Spanish 'vientre'). Arriving at O'Hare,
it took me quite a while to get my 7-day ticket, not because the
vending machines were so difficult to handle, but because they ask
for your ZIP code when paying with a card, and I misunderstood this
for PIN code, which would be what I would expect to enter. Living in
Germany, my credit card can be identified by a 5-digit ZIP code, but
what would happen if someone had a British or Canadian card with
their weird post codes, or countries with a 4-digit code, would that
be accepted by the machine? Anyway, I think that a major entry point
like O'Hare really needs a proper staffed ticket window where people
are properly helped, although there are staff around to help, there
is nothing worse for many people than being confronted with a machine
upon arrival to a new city. This brings us already to one of the
major deficiencies of the CTA system, a lack of costumer service
offices. In fact, there is only one at their headquarters near
Clinton (Green/Pink) station. At other stations, there is someone in
the booth and they come out when help is needed at the machines, but
often they looked like saying 'please don't disturb me'. I think, any
transit operator should have several staffed offices in strategic
places and well visible where potential riders can go and ask for
information. Network maps, especially the large system map, are
available at the ticket gates in most stations, the smaller downtown
map was also available in some places and also at the Tourist Office.
When you buy a single-ride ticket
(with transfer within two hours or so) or a day ticket, you get a
disposable paper smartcard, but anything valid longer, is loaded on a
proper Ventra plastic card, which costs $5.00, so for a first-time
visitor, a 7-day pass costs 28+5 US$. But given that a single ride
from O'Hare would also cost $5.00, it's still a good deal. Otherwise
a flat fare is required for the entire Chicago area, as far as CTA is
concerned, Metra still maintains its own fares and Ventra cannot be
used as of yet, I guess it will be expanded to them in the future,
too. The Ventra card can also be used to store money to pay in shops.
Although a day pass costs $10.00, all in all, the CTA fare system is
quite good and easy to handle.
The 'L' system is changing
continuously, which is natural, given that some of the elevated
sections on the Green or Brown Lines are some 120 years old! CTA has
closed entire sections over a longer period for upgrading, and now
there were also lots of announcements 'We are being delayed because
crews are working on the tracks' and often I actually saw workers
walking on the tracks. Good results are perceivable on the southern
Red Line, which was upgraded a few years ago, and which allows speeds
of 100 km/h, I would guess, providing a similar experience to BART or
DC's Metro. The Blue Line to O'Hare is quite fast beyond Belmont,
although trains tend to hop a bit, but otherwise it is quite a crawl
like most other lines. I also took the Purple Line Express once from
Belmont to Howard, but it was so slow I was waiting for the Red Line
to overtake (which it didn't, after all). Also many stations have
been rebuilt, currently California (Blue Line) is out of service to
be rebuilt in its traditional style, while others have been rebuilt
at some stage but with a more contemporary design. Most of the Red
Line's underground stations have already been refurbished, except
Monroe and Clark/Division (the latter being done now), which really
improved their appearance. Most of the Blue Line's underground
stations, however, still boast their basic and, honestly, rather
pathetic appearance, so some action is urgently needed here, too. All
in all, the stations are very narrow, and now with lifts having been
added to some, space and visibility is even more restricted. One
thing I have not quite understood are the continuous underground
platforms on both subway routes through the Loop, from Washington to
Jackson on the Blue Line and from Lake to Jackson on the Red Line.
The areas between the proper stations are lit, though slightly dimmer
than the stations, and appear a bit spooky. I didn't walk through
them, but what you see from the train is that hardly anyone is there,
and those who are, you wouldn't want to meet. So wouldn't it save
quite a lot of maintenance costs if these intermediate sections were
closed off completely? Why were they built like that in the first
place?
Signage generally is good,
although next-train indicators do not exist in the entire system. At
some stations there are video screens, but like with American TV news
programmes, the information they are actually meant to provide, is
only visible for a short moment, whereas most of the time adverts are
played. If they want to play adverts to pay for the service, a split
screen may be a solution, but having to waiting a full cycle until
the desired information eventually comes back, is very
user-unfriendly. In most cases, I thought that the indicators were
positioned in the wrong place, they should be above the platform next
to where people wait, actually a kind of norm on all European metros,
I think. What I found missing, though, in stations are neighbourhood
maps.
The elevated Loop is a funny and
fascinating thing, but like a left-over from times gone by. Riding a
train on it, is quite pleasant as you can enjoy the view through the
streets with their high buildings, though it takes a while for
visitors to figure out which line runs around the loop in which
direction. But being on the street, it is more like a nuisance, very
loud as the trains rattle over the iron structure, and visually
rather an eye sore. Many iron trestle structure like old bridges
often have an elegant appearance, but the Loop certainly hasn't, also
because it looks neglected with paint peeling off.
I can understand
why New Yorkers demolished their elevated lines at least in
Manhattan, and why Berlin didn't allow such structures through the
city centre in the first place, instead Siemens had to build along a
rather tangential route. Many of the elevated stations are not fully
accessible, and climbing their steep stairs can be a pain for many,
especially for those who travel to Midway Airport on the Orange Line.
But, of course, tearing the elevated Loop down nowadays would kill a
real landmark, but some modernisation is needed. I also suffered from
its noise every night and morning as my hotel was close to the
Green/Orange Line viaduct just south of the Loop. Track needs to be
optimised and all other measures to be taken to reduce the noise
impact. I guess the same is true for most elevated sections which
often travel through the backyards of homes, a typical feature of the
old 'L' routes.
What I like least in Chicago,
however, is the rather unusual naming of stations. In the rest of the
world there is a certain understanding that the station name should
clearly identify a position within a city and should therefore be
unique. In Chicago, however, the same name may appear several times
as generally the name of the intersecting street is used, and streets
are very long in Chicago. As a result, there are three stations
called 'Chicago', five called 'Western' etc. and the worst case,
there are two stations called 'Harlem' on the same line, the Blue
Line! I wonder whether this system is not just confusing for visitors
or also for locals and trip planners? Some stations like
'Clark/Division' actually carry the second part on all signs, whereas
on some others, this is added in the acoustic announcements, e.g. at
'Grand/Milwaukee', otherwise I guess you always have to add the line
colour to make sure people understand which station you mean. This is
certainly easier since line colours were introduced officially in the
early 1990s, I wonder how people managed to identify their station
before, I guess just like 'Addison on the Howard Line' or so.
Just like in New York, what I miss
for such a big system is a proper logo. In some places you can see a
CTA logo, but although the 'metro' is generally called the 'L' (CTA
always uses these quotation marks), there is no L-logo. True, 'L' is
not the nicest letter in the alphabet for a logo, generally
symmetrical letters like T, U, S or M are much nicer. Probably a
Boston-style (T) would be the best choice, as it is also part of CTA
and transit is a word widely used over here. It is also used in
several other cities across the country, and I generally prefer a
standard logo for an entire country so visitors know immediately what
that is when they see such a logo. Elevated stations are, by nature,
easily visible, but underground stations certainly need better
signage. One example is North/Clybourn on the Red Line, which
actually has a nice new headhouse (paid for by Apple, I was told),
but you can actually only see it once you are in front of it, whereas
a proper logo would be visible (if placed correctly) from all sides.
The CTA trains are all rather
uniform although they belong to different generations, but even the
blue and red colour on the older cars was removed to make them all
look similar in stainless steel only. The new 5000 series is probably
a good vehicle and provides a smoother ride than the older types
(which are quite good, too), but if I hadn't read about them before,
I wouldn't have identified them as new. It is a pity CTA is so
conservative when it comes to train design, why don't they dare
something more contemporary? So the big novelty for the passengers
was the longitudinal seating but I've heard they don't like it much,
and neither do I. They do have another, less visible, feature,
though: when the doors open, they sort of kneel down to match the
height of the platform. Otherwise, their setup is just like that of
the older cars. I think the doors should be wider, and the standing
area next to the doors should be larger. The driver's seat is always
on the right side, although the larger number of stations have island
platforms. This means that the driver has to get up and walk to the
other side to open the doors, which in some cases costs several
seconds (once I observed a driver who was hardly able to walk, no
wonder that train had accumulated a long delay and the next was
following soon after!). Generally, my impression was that trains run
rather irregularly. I was already wondering when I saw the
'timetable' which mostly gives very vague intervals, like every 4-12
minutes...
Another anachronistic feature of
the Chicago 'L' are its flat junctions on the Loop, which naturally
cause some delays during peak hours, most notably at the northwest
corner where two branches come into the Loop and different lines take
different directions around the Loop. While the Red and Blue Lines
are proper metro lines, the Loop lines have a certain Stadtbahn or
light rail feel to them, especially on some outer sections, where the
Pink, Brown and Purple Lines have several level crossings despite the
use of a third rail power supply, but apparently this is no major
safety issue. The Yellow Line (or Skokie Swift as it is still known)
also features many level crossings. Until not too long ago, its outer
section used an overhead wire inherited from the old North Shore
interurban, but now it also has third rail throughout. Fortunately an
intermediate station was added on that line recently, but it still
runs nonstop through continuously built-up areas. Generally on the
entire system, spacing of stations is very uneven. Historically, the
old 'L' lines had too many stops, and many were closed over the
years, and interestingly, new ones have been added on the Green Line,
like Roosevelt or Morgan, and another one is now under construction
at McCormick Place, actually in places where previously stations did
exist!
Chicago kind of pioneered mass
transit in the median of freeways, when it opened the Congress line
to Forest Park in 1958 (now Blue Line), which actually replaced an
old elevated line. Later new routes were built for the Red Line to
95th/Dan Ryan and the Blue Line to O'Hare. Generally I don't like
this kind of alignment as the stations mostly are isolated from the
neighbourhoods they serve and mostly not very pleasant to wait in
with traffic rushing past on both sides. In the case of the Blue
Line's Forest Park branch this is accentuated by very narrow and
rather long ramps that lead down to the narrow platform, although the
median of the freeway would actually allow a much more generous
layout. Things are much more pleasant on the Blue Line's O'Hare
branch.
As a network, Chicago's 'L' system
basically consists of radial lines, so all transfers are located in
the Loop area or nearby. Direct transfer options. i.e. without
leaving the closed station area and exit to street level, only exist
in very few places, namely Clark/Lake, Roosevelt and Jackson, and of
course at Belmont and Fullerton where Red and Brown share the same
platforms. In other cases, transfers are made via public streets, now
no longer a problem with smartcards programmed for free transfers
anyway (there are still many signs saying 'farecard holders only').
There is not much I could say about
the Metra commuter rail system as I only used it once. I took the
Metra Electric Line to South Chicago and then back to the University
of Chicago at 59th Street. I have to say, I didn't like those trains,
sitting upstairs you can hardly look out of the window because the
windows are so small, and in fact I don't really understand the idea
behind those gallery cars. Wouldn't a proper double-decker provide
more capacity? Anyway, I don't like double-deckers on urban lines,
and this line is pretty urban, even rather like a light rail line
from where it splits from the trunk line, running in the median of an
urban road, so they should really convert it to something St.
Louis-like and run it more frequently to make it worthwhile. A train
every hour is really no urban service. As the trunk line has four
electrified tracks, a good local service with a train at least every
20 minutes should be possible. The other thought which frequently
comes to my mind when I see a line like this is why doesn't it
continue further downtown and out north. A tunnel under Chicago River
would bring it to a deep-level station at Water Tower Square in the
centre of the Magnificent Mile shopping area. Further north it could
be linked to one or two of the Metra branches creating a proper
RER-style system. If properly integrated into the Ventra fare system
it would without doubt be very successful. I always think that
Americans should more often look at Australia to see how existing
railways can be converted into great urban rail systems.
LINKS
Like on the train front, also at
station accesses a huge (M) logo is visible on a pole which also
displays the name of the station, so St. Louis boasts one of a few
such systems in the U.S. to use a proper logo, something I always
welcome
