The Official Illinois and Chicago Transportation Thread

[Rivernorth]

If it dosent, it might have to face its main economic engine grinding to a near halt...

[AJphx]

Originally Posted by Naptown

Also, why doesn't the CTA put stops at Union Station and the United Center?

A stop at the United Center is part of the Circle Line, I believe.

In fact, I think that portion is already under construction?

[BVictor1]

$46M MetraMarket Gets Serving of TIF Help
By Mark Ruda
Last updated: March 9, 2005 06:33am

For more retail coverage, click GlobeSt.com/RETAIL.

CHICAGO-US Equities Inc. is not tearing down the wall that is part of Metra’s Ogilvie Transportation Center. However, the 112,000-sf retail redevelopment anchored by a 20,000-sf fresh food market is expected to link the West Loop with emerging residential neighborhoods west of the commuter rail station.

The city will contribute $12 million toward the $46.5-million project, being built under at ground level beneath 16 overhead Metra commuter railroad tracks that terminate a block south, at the base of Citicorp Center. Fashioned after venues such as Seattle’s Pike Place Market and New York’s Grand Central Market, MetraMarket will stretch two blocks, from Washington to Lake streets, incorporating the existing Randolph Street viaduct as well as the retail concourse at the base of the station.

“I think in our 27 years of existence here, this is by far our most challenging project,” says US Equities chairman and chief executive officer Robert A. Wislow, whose company is handling development, financing, leasing and management of MetraMarket. “This is just a large brick wall now that goes two stories high.”

The brick wall will remain, although restaurants and storefronts are planned along Clinton and Canal streets, with about 100 parking spaces remaining behind the retail space. Likewise, the foreboding Randolph Street viaduct will provide access to more storefronts, including a 20,000-sf fresh market.

The tax increment financing, endorsed Tuesday by the community development commission, is needed to offset higher than usual infrastructure costs. For example, Metra requires the concrete columns supporting the tracks overhead remain exposed. Meanwhile, US Equities will have to create a “pan and drain” water management system to protect the new retail tenants from water leaks, diesel oil separators to mitigate odors from the commuter trains as well as heating and ventilation systems.

US Equities is signing a 90-year ground lease with Metra, which serves 95,000 commuters from the North, Northwest and West suburbs at the Ogilvie Transportation Center. Metra will get 75% of revenues from the redevelopment, Wislow explains, and will eventually be guaranteed a base rent. However, Metra also is signing on as an equity investor, Wislow adds.

Lease rates are expected to range from $20 per sf to $40 per sf, not including tenant-improvement packages. A “large national drug store chain” is being courted as a high-profile tenant, Wislow adds, as well as five other concourse tenants that include coffee shop operators, ice cream parlors and restaurants.

US Equities hopes to begin construction this fall, with completion of the southern block expected by the end of 2006 or early 2007. Potential tenants are being offered a market of 4,896 residential units within one mile of MetraMarket, with another 3,031 units either planned or under construction, according to US Equities. Meanwhile, average income is $115,917, according to the company.

[pottebaum]

Well since metra got help for this, and one of the arguments against not helping the CTA was money being taken away from the Metra and Pace, do you think this is a good thing for the CTA?

Do guys think this will all end up alright? I've read quite a through articles, and I see some mixed messages.

[Kevin J]

Originally Posted by pottebaum

Well since metra got help for this, and one of the arguments against not helping the CTA was money being taken away from the Metra and Pace, do you think this is a good thing for the CTA?

Do guys think this will all end up alright? I've read quite a through articles, and I see some mixed messages.

You have to make sure you're comparing apples to apples. The CTA is looking to the state for extra money. The $12 million contribution being made to the Metra Market project is coming from the City of Chicago, in the form of diverted property tax revenues collected through Tax Increment Financing (TIF).

TIFs are a very common tool the city uses to create money for property improvements. The fact that the property is owned by Metra is just incidental. The city's motivation is improving the property and the surrounding area, just as the city has used TIF districts to pay for improvements in dozens of other areas around the city.

The city has no authority to divert property tax revenue to contribute to the operational budget of the CTA.

[pottebaum]

Oh, okay. I see.

Are many people in the city concerned about this, or am I just paranoid? lol

[aion26]

Oh... I'm quite concerned about all this CTA stuff as it is my only mode of transportation, but I feel a bit helpless about all of this. I may be looking at buying a good bicycle this summer.

[pottebaum]

Do you think the state will help out, aion?
Even if these cuts do take place, I think the CTA would still serve me well....but I hate to see it go into another decline.

[aion26]

i'd like to think the state will re-examine the funding structure and get things sorted out, and I'm about 75% positive they would, because the proposed 'solutions' by the CTA are almost apocalyptic, as anyone who uses it all the time would know (seriously with overcrowded platforms I can see people falling onto the tracks being an actual problem). That being said, there is plenty of resentment between the city and the state, and I hope this CTA issue doesn't become a plateform for that to be played out.

[Azn_chi_boi]

"Route Elimination
- 65 bus routes totally eliminated
- no service on Blue or Red from 1-4 AM
- Purple Express trains eliminated (local service in Evanston remains)
- No service on other rail lines past 10 pm, many bus routes scaled back as well
-wait times for both buses and trains increased
Quote:
"The furthest locations from the Loop will face the most difficult service problems. Elimination of routes on the far northwest, southwest and southeast side will leave customers without transit alternatives. For example, the elimination of the #30 South Chicago, #100 Jeffery Manor Express, #103West 103rd, #106 East 103rd and #111 Pullman/111th/115th leaves sections of the area with walking distances of up to four miles to the nearest bus."

Please, anything but this...

this will make my life feel horrible, and after this, Chicago cant show how much streets that the cta cover after 65 routes are gone

[The Urban Politician]

This thread is depressing.

I don't know how some of you guys can keep posting here. It is truly bothersome to even discuss such things happening to our city

[pottebaum]

Well, I'm sort of the paranoid type, so when I hear about a possibility like this, I go sort of crazy. lol

I have faith it will all get sorted out, though.

[pottebaum]

Chicago-Sun Times

Closing CTA lines, stations would be worst solution

March 14, 2005

Advertisement


Whatever opinion we have of the Picasso sculpture on Daley Center Plaza, we do not want to see it sold as scrap to ease our city's budget crisis. Nor would we accept lakefront park property being auctioned off to developers. The first consideration, above even saving money, is to not damage the infrastructure and attributes that make Chicago the vibrant, marvelous, functioning city it is.

This yardstick must be used when making the hard choices facing the Chicago Transit Authority as it grapples with a $55 million deficit that keeps rising.

The easiest solution -- more money from the state -- is also the most uncertain. Sympathy for Chicago is never great to begin with in Springfield, and lawmakers don't seem to grasp that the CTA is the bloodstream of our city, moving workers and shoppers, making Chicago the economic heart of Illinois. Since state money might not be forthcoming, the CTA must decide what to do in the meantime.

The first step is a fare increase. Not the complex scale proposed, but something simple: maybe one fare for rush hour and a lower fare for off-peak -- say, $2.25 and $2. The gap cannot be too enormous -- you don't want to pay $1.75 at one point and $3.40 at another, depending on the clock, because the chilling effect will be as if the higher rate was always in place.

Second, frequency of trains and buses on certain routes should be reduced. That way, a person who needs to get to work can get there, perhaps less conveniently, but it still can be done.

Only as a last resort should lines and stations be eliminated, because this represents a contraction of our transit system. Fare hikes soften over time, as other prices rise to make them relatively less severe, but closing lines and stations worsen matters, as neighborhoods deteriorate and jobs shift away because they no longer are as accessible.

Transit systems are a public good -- they all lose money, everywhere. Governments support them anyway because they make urban life bearable. Cities without transit systems either are hobbled in their growth or become permanently gridlocked, smog-laden nightmares of gas-powered vehicles inching around each other, going nowhere.

Finally, we lean toward Gov. Blagojevich's idea of bailing out the CTA with a software sales tax for corporations. You and I already pay sales tax on software we buy, as do small businesses. But big corporations lease their software to avoid the tax. Ending this dodge would more than plug the hole in the CTA budget. The business interests that argue such a tax is taxing an "intangible" are stuck in the computers-are-magic days. Software is a product no less real than movie DVDs. Everyone, including big corporations, has an interest in making sure that the CTA does not deteriorate and leave working Chicagoans out in the cold.

What were they thinking?

While Springfield lets the CTA starve, the House Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a truly wrongheaded bill, the Predator Accountability Act, that would allow prostitutes to sue their pimps and collect monetary damages.

While we are deeply sympathetic to the plight of young women pressed into prostitution, the fact is that both pandering and prostitution are crimes, and therefore belong in the criminal courts. It is a bad idea to begin using the overtaxed civil legal system to allow criminals or former criminals to fight each other over the take.

If any hooker who feels ill-used -- and most are -- can later sue her procurer for damages, then why shouldn't a similarly pressured drug mule be allowed to sue a narcotics kingpin for cheating him out of his share of a drug sale? What about a check forger who gets stiffed by fellow con men? The possibilities are endless.

This bill now moves to the full House, which should reject it, and in the process begin thinking of Chicago less as the cliched, crime-ridden city of 1970s cop dramas -- where squabbling pimps and hookers need outside mediation -- and more as it truly is in the 21st century: a place where the buses need fuel and the CTA needs money so people can get to work on time.
--------------------------

Are complete subway/L station closures a part of any of the plans?

[pottebaum]

http://www.apma.org/s_apma/bin.asp?...35&DOC=FILE.PDF

I'm so surprised that Chicago didn't make this list! I think the stats for this include mass transit, but im not 100% sure.

[Azn_chi_boi]

no, not that surprising. Everyone near Chinatown/Bridgeport ride in a car, thats why the Ashland station(Orange Line) have nearly no one there, and you will rarely see a chinese person at Cermak-Chinatown(red line).

The northsiders use more Public transportation than the southside(unless they aregoing to the LOOP)

[pottebaum]

Would you say living in Chicago with no car is practical?

[aion26]

Originally Posted by pottebaum

Would you say living in Chicago with no car is practical?

Depends on where you live.

[pottebaum]

Do you have one? I'd probably want to live in the rivernorth, maybe GoldCoast area, if finances permit.

[aion26]

Originally Posted by pottebaum

Do you have one? I'd probably want to live in the rivernorth, maybe GoldCoast area, if finances permit.

I don't have one, sometimes it is a pain in the ass. But if you live in the gold coast, lincoln park, etc. you won't need one at all (I live a bit further west in the ukrainian village area and it isn't as convenient to everything, and I dont' live near a decent grocery store, sorry Edmars doesn't really cut it, but I muddle through okay).

[pottebaum]

Yeah. When I move to Chicago I'll probably look for a place covered well by buses or really close to a rail station (hopefully the latter). I may bring a car, but I hope to use mass transit most of the time.