How long it can take (sometimes never) for municipal projects to become reality

I once wrote a commentary essentially praising Chicago Transit Authority officials for moving forward on a long-discussed project to improve mass transit access to the far South Side by extending the Red Line trains from 95^th Street all the way potentially to within one mile of the city’s southern border.

A Red Line stop of the future. Perhaps some day by 2026. Image provided by city of Chicago

As one who was born in the far southeast corner of Chicago, still has relatives there and thinks of the 10^th Ward as the “old neighborhood,” I was pleased to see that something could happen to make it easier for those people to have access to the rest of Chicago.

SO I SUPPOSE I’m pleased once again to learn the CTA took actions to advance the project a little further. They have picked a specific route for the trains to follow once they get to the current end-of-the-line at 95^th Street and the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway.

It is one that will take people all the way to 130^th Street (at the Bishop Ford Freeway), giving residents of Altgeld Gardens and the Hegewisch neighborhood some train access. It also will make stops at 103^rd and 111^th streets – adding further access to people who live Far South in Chicago.

Will it ever arrive?

Yet that original commentary I wrote was back in August of 2009. I also have written about various community forums throughout the years in which those of us who regard a Sout’ Side neighborhood such as Bridgeport as just another place up north expressed our support.

Yet here it is, some nine years later, and still no earth has been turned toward the eventual goal of “el” trains connecting places like Hegewisch and Pullman to downtown.

IN FACT, THE Chicago Tribune reported Friday that the soonest actual construction could begin would be some time in 2022, with the actual project taking about four years for completion.

This will NEVER arrive

Meaning that if I’m lucky, I might see this project become reality some time after I hit the age of 60. This project is taking time to complete, and keep in mind that the opposition to this isn’t as intense (some argue that doing anything on the South Side is a waste of time and money, but they’re nitwits) as some other projects have become.

One could easily see the ongoing debate over the need of a third major airport for the Chicago area, where proponents have sort of settled on Peotone, Ill., in Will County, while critics have argued for doing nothing and thus far have been successful.

That project has been under speculation since the early 1970s and had the process narrowed down to four sites by the late 1980s when the opponents really stepped up their hostile talk.

I REMEMBER ONCE hearing then-Peotone village President Richard Benson tell me he had given up even following the airport talk about his municipality. I thought he was being short-sighted and silly.

Heck, that was back in 2000. Some 18 years later, nothing is closer. Perhaps he really WAS wiser than I. In that particular project, it seems that everybody is determined to have nothing happen that a political opponent could take credit for.

Resulting in the lack of activity. Never mind the actual issue of whether Chicago’s aviation needs would benefit from another full-scale airport.

Of course, a Peotone airport theoretically could be revived. Moreso than the one-time Crosstown Expressway – the route that supposedly would vastly improve transit through Chicago.

BACK IN THE 1960s and 1970s, there was serious debate about a highway following 75^th Street to Cicero Avenue, eventually merging into the Kennedy Expressway. There are those who argue it would have significantly reduced the constant jams along the Dan Ryan.

How many would have viewed it as victory if they could have thwarted construction altogether?

But that project never got off the ground, and eventually the federal government withdrew its support in the early 1980s.

Perhaps by that definition, we ought to consider the late 1980s construction of a Chicago White Sox ballpark a success. Talk had been going on in the mid-1980s, and threats in 1988 to move the ballclub to St. Petersburg, Fla., motivated the politicos to act. The ballpark now known as Guaranteed Rate Field is 28 years old.

It's too bad that Hegewisch can't do some political blackmail like the White Sox did to speed up the process toward a Red Line extension. Because I'm sure there are some political people who, if they could have had their way, would still have the ballpark construction argument continuing to this day.

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How long until proposed Red Line extension turns local tempers all “red?”

It is one of those projects that has been discussed for years – extending the Chicago Transit Authority elevated commuter train lines deeper into the city’s South Side than they already go.
 

Proposed route for Red Line extension

On a certain level, the project makes too much sense. The commuter trains that help city residents get from place to place and are a common fact of everyday life in most of the city only go as far south as 95^th Street.

WHILE CHICAGO ITSELF usually considers 119^th Street to be its southern boundary and there are parts of the city at the southeastern corner where 138^th Street is the end of life as we know it and where suburbia begins.

Now as somebody who actually originates from that part of the city (born in South Chicago and with relatives scattered across the neighborhoods that comprise the 10^th Ward), this is a project that I have long followed.

Because for people in the southeast part of the city, there are a few bus lines that pass through that eventually can take you to a place along the Dan Ryan Expressway where you can catch a Red Line train.

But it can be a slow, plodding trip (what with all those bus stops) and it can result in an hour-and-a-half journey to get downtown. There are parts of Will County or Gary, Ind., that have quicker connections to downtown Chicago via suburban commuter trains.

IT’S NO WONDER that those people who live near a Metra Electric line station in the South Chicago or South Shore neighborhoods, or in the Hegewisch neighborhood where the Indiana-based South Shore commuter line keeps its lone Illinois-based station, prefer to use those suburban-influenced services even though they're very much urban residents.

Which is why the idea of extending that Red Line train that now runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan to 95^th Street would be a life-altering experience for the Far South Side.

 

Metra lines more a daily life reality in Far South Chi

A direct CTA el train extension going to 130^th Street? Actual stations in the Roseland and Pullman neighborhoods – instead of having to take a bus to the west to catch a Metra Rock Island line commuter train in the Beverly or Morgan Park neighborhoods.

It sounds like nirvana (and I don’t mean the 90’s era rock band).

EXCEPT TO THOSE people who, while complaining about how isolated their part of Chicago often feels, will also be the first to complain about anything that brings about change.

They’ll be the ones who think of el trains as being something associated with “the ghetto” or artsy-fartsy North Side neighborhoods – and something they’ve managed to do without all these years.

I have heard from some of these people already. Although they have been muted largely because of skepticism that the city will ever get its act together and actually build the extension!

But will they get louder, now that talk is progressing to the point of figuring out where exactly new track would have to be built. City officials this week said they would allocate some $75 million for engineering studies. Which means figuring out what structures would need to be torn down.

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS reported Thursday about the project – pointing out that 82 single-family homes and 19 multi-family properties are on a list of things that would need to be torn down to make room for 5.3 miles more of train track for the el extension.

The weekly business newspaper already has some comment from people who admit train service would be nice, but not necessary if it means they have to move.

Personally, I became an el proponent back during the stints I lived in North and Northwest Side neighborhoods, and I often wonder how it is that my home base neighborhood, so to speak, has never been willing to demand such equal service.

May someday no longer be distant southern CTA outpost?

Except that too many people living out in the land where Indiana isn’t an esoteric concept but is the place at the other end of the Chicago Skyway have become too used to their sense of isolation from the rest of Chicago – a concept whose time truly ought to come to an end.

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