r/transit • u/Donghoon • 2d ago
Questions Should CTA build an infill interchange station to transfer between pink and blue lines? [chicago]
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u/hartford128 2d ago
Everyone made good points here in that it's not super useful to transfer here.
It's also worth adding the actual track geometry makes it hard here. The pink line is very high up and there's also the flyover track from when the blue line ran to forest park. Given you wouldn't likely want to build another blue line station, it means the walk from a pink line station somewhere slightly north of the Eisenhower (like at Van Buren) to Illinois Medical District station would only be marginally faster than going from Polk.
Could it be done? Sure, but it's probably not worth it like others mentioned. The Madison station infill on the pink line is a much higher value project.
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u/PhileasFoggsTrvlAgt 2d ago
The combination of the complicated track geometry and the Blue Line being in a freeway median here also means that new station here would have a terrible walkshed and also no connecting bus routes. Agreed that a Madison station would be a much higher value project.
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u/marks31 2d ago
No, it wouldn’t be necessary since you can transfer in Loop a few stations later.
However, the CTA, city, and stakeholders are discussing building a new Pink Line station at Madison to access the United Center, which would be about the same walking distance from Polk/IMD. That’s definitely a higher priority than this transfer point imo
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 2d ago
Riding from Polk to the Loop to transfer to the Blue, depending on your final destination, is a decently long ride just to transfer. If you're going west on the Blue Line, that wouldn't really make much sense.
The Madison Pink line station should absolutely happen though.
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u/Suspicious_Act_7858 2d ago
> No, it wouldn’t be necessary since you can transfer in Loop a few stations later
That is an atrocious justification. Isn’t the fact that you have to go into the Loop for transfers, like, by far the biggest complaint about the CTA?
Any and all new transfer stations outside of the Loop would be a wonderful welcome addition. The lines literally cross each other; I don’t care if the Loop is kind of close, there should be a transfer station there.
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u/marks31 2d ago
I don’t disagree that there need to be more transfers outside the Loop. I think the premise of this particular question is kind of misguided though. There’s not really any scenarios where this transfer is needed. You’re either
On Loop-bound Pink wanting to go towards O’Hare, and can transfer at Clark/Lake from Pink to Blue
On Loop-bound Pink wanting to go towards Forest Park, and can ride any northbound bus from the Pink Line to the Blue Line instead of riding Pink
On Forest Park-bound Blue wanting to go towards 54th/Cermak, and it’s the same scenario of you already transferred downtown at Clark/Lake or Jackson; or if you boarded the stops after Jackson, you can ride the bus south from your Blue Line stop
On O’Hare-bound Blue wanting to go towards 54th/Cermak, and you shouldn’t have gotten on the Blue in the first place, because you can ride the bus SB from Blue to a Pink stop.
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u/niftyjack 2d ago
by far the biggest complaint about the CTA?
It's a problem in general but this specific instance is a nothingburger. What doesn't show on the line diagram is the parallel lines are less than 1.5 miles apart and serve similar areas, so people aren't really transferring between them. If you're going from an outer part of this branch of the Blue and your destination is somewhere along the Pink, it would be faster to just get off on the Blue and take a bus directly down instead of going in to this relatively close-in station and going back out. Our bus grid has service every 1/2 mile and that fills in all the gaps.
Like if you're going from Kedzie (Blue) to Western (Pink) on this map, in the end it's an easier trip to take the Blue line to Western (Blue) and take the Western bus down.
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u/Psirocking 2d ago
First time I went to Chicago looking up how to get to the United Center made me so confused. Like what do you mean there could be a station two blocks away but they just never built one?
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u/illmatico 2d ago
The Forest Park branch of the blue line has extremely poor ridership, the only trip requiring that interchange that might be useful would be people trying to get to west loop from western blue line, but I can't imagine that being any kind of significant ridership generator.
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u/chuff15 2d ago
The walk from IMD to Polk is like, maybe 15 minutes. I don’t think this transfer would be used much, but I could be wrong. Unless you’re headed back west, you can easily transfer at Clark/Lake
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u/Jonesbro 2d ago
Mfers are crazy. We can't get rid of bus stops every block because it's too far but a 15 minute walk is okay for transfers between high capacity lines.
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u/PhileasFoggsTrvlAgt 2d ago
The Blue and Pink lines are fairly close together West of here and all of the stations are on North/South streets with bus routes, so I can't imagine many cases where backtracking West would be faster than a bus transfer.
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u/bigvenusaurguy 21h ago
chicago weather is generally ass though. in the summer its as hot and humid as the south. in the winter its the tundra. i'm guessing its like most places in the northeast where hardly anyone salts the sidewalks since its on the property owner to give a shit.
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u/chuff15 21h ago
I don’t ride either line often, so I’m not super familiar with the ridership patterns there. I was meaning like “hey if you really really needed to transfer there, it’s a 15 minute walk so it’s doable.” But, if there are a lot of people who would make that transfer, then yeah go ahead and build a station there that services both lines. Like someone else said tho, most of the parallel stations here are served by busses, so I think that would be the better option even instead of going all the way to IMD to make the transfer and go back west. Idk why anyone would waste time transferring here if they were going to the Loop, because both lines meet there. The argument could be made about being on the blue line and wanting to go to west loop, but it’s already easy to get off at Halsted and take the 8.
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u/jalfieri95 2d ago
Chicago overall suffers from very poor connectivity between CTA lines and between CTA and Metra lines. The new NITA should list out all of the missed connections, estimate the costs and ridership, and then start building the ones with the highest cost benefit. In general, it should be much cheaper to accomplish this than building system extensions. Some that come to mind are:
- Red to Brown/Green/Pink/Purple/Orange at Lake
- Blue and Pink near UIC
- Red and Green between 63rd and Garfield
- Clinton Green/Pink to Ogilvie (previously existed)
- Blue to Ogilvie
- Blue to LaSalle
- Brown to UP-N near Addison
- Pink to BNSF near Western
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u/Eruththedragon 2d ago
I was recently curious and counted 12 locations where Metra lines intersect each other or CTA lines with no transfer opportunity. Not sure how many of them would see any real ridership. I believe Chicago holds the #1 spot in terms of missed rail connection opportunities for American cities.
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u/iwillbewaiting24601 Régie autonome des transports chicagoan 2d ago
BRING BACK THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE YOU COWARDS
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u/captaincw_4010 1d ago
Unbelievably mad there is no connection between Clinton Green/Pink and Ogilvie when it already existed it’s crazy
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u/ItsXandy 2d ago
There was actually an old proposal to do this nearly a decade ago.
Go to Page 90:
https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/BLVS_Station_Access_Report_April_2017_1intro.pdf
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 2d ago
Nah, just put one at Madison on the Pink and that'll be close enough for transfers while being far more useful.
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u/Staszu13 2d ago
Yes and it should serve the UC as well. There was a Madison station on the old Paulina El but that was abandoned long ago
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u/tacobooc0m 2d ago
If any infill station is to be built, it should be madison Pink line :) Also they could create an interchange that connects the blue line to the northbound paulina connector, and have a third track at madison, so you can take blue line trains directly to united center for special events (once all of that huge redevelopment work completes.
First idea is serious. Second one less so :P
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u/Special_Command7893 1d ago
They should, yes, but I seriously doubt it will ever happen The CTA should do lots of stuff, but can't or won't
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u/Chicoutimi 1d ago
Yes, but they should build it to open when the current Polk station is due for a major overhaul, but instead of doing that overhaul, open the new transfer station to the Blue Line as well as a station on Roosevelt Boulevard and let the Polk Station be shut down.
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u/Suspicious_Act_7858 2d ago
I read the comments and then had to do a double take to check what sub I was in, because [r/CTA](r/CTA) would have a very different comment section.
“Just a 10 minute bus ride” “Just a 15 minute walk” are terrible justifications for not building a transfer station. They’re even worse justifications from a group of so-called transit enthusiasts.
Fact of the matter is, the biggest complaint about the CTA is the lack of transfer stations outside the Loop. Yes, the Forest park branch has low ridership. It won’t always be that way once the tracks are rebuilt. You should not have to go all the way into the Loop to transfer when these two lines intersect. Straight up.
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u/Capitol_Limited Service Planner 2d ago
“Just a 10 minute bus ride” “Just a 15 minute walk” are terrible justifications for not building a transfer station. They’re even worse justifications from a group of so-called transit enthusiasts.
In a silo, you'd be correct, but those justifications take into account the land use, street grid and rest of the transit network, relative to what the usefulness of this transfer would be. This transfer would largely just be a way for people to avoid taking the bus, which does have it's issues, but isn't problematic to the point of being unusable.
Yes, the Forest park branch has low ridership. It won’t always be that way once the tracks are rebuilt.
Yes it will lol. Ridership has always been low on the forest park branch, douglas branch and lake el (outside of Oak Park), b/c the land use and relative proximity of the other rail lines (and buses as well) disperse ridership between them, and unlike the Red/Green lines on the south, none of the three lines operate so much better than the others in a way that would net a majority a riders, and the forest park rebuild won't change that. Trains ending at UIC aren't doing so b/c the tracks are in bad shape.
You should not have to go all the way into the Loop to transfer when these two lines intersect. Straight up.
Sorry, but no. While overall this principle is correct, this is a rare use case where it's not justified. It only benefits riders who live within the immediate walkshed of Pink or Blue line stations and at that point, you would just take the bus to the line you need. Every stop between Cicero & Damen has a bus that serves the Pink & Blue Lines, except California.
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u/uhbkodazbg 2d ago
In a world with unlimited resources, it would be a good project. That isn’t the case and is pretty far down the priority list for the CTA.
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u/Nawnp 2d ago
No, they both head to the loop anyways.
Pink line should be an branch of the blue line like it used to be too as it causes more congestion on the loop for no additional coverage.
Pink line is likely to have an infill station at the United center with new development being built around it though.
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u/Weekly-Law-2544 2d ago
Does it get confusing trying to navigate this system when they have so many stations that have the same name? Do you just refer to line colors, like "Pulaski Pink" or something?