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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EXTRA: Video blasts from Chgo past

Rummaging through the accumulated scraps of junk otherwise known as the Internet, where I stumbled through the many multiple views of the Second City as seen throughout the years.

For some of you, the only appeal of Jean Shepherd's "America” will be the fact that they love the “A Christmas Story” film every Dec. 25 and will appreciate the Hammond, Ind., native’s take on Chicago. For it seems that Shepherd is among those who appreciates the fact his hometown is so close to the Greatest City on the shores of Lake Michigan.

BUT FOR THOSE who are particularly annoyed with this past baseball season and the way it has turned into a love-fest of cutesy Cubbiness and certain fans who are convinced their ball club has now developed a New York Yankee-like aura of invincibility, it will be nice to be reminded that Chicago is a two-team town when it comes to the national pastime.

Shepherd was a Chicago White Sox fan, and I got a kick out of him shooting a portion of this film from the right field seats of the old Comiskey Park – section G, seat 161, which supposedly was his father’s favorite general admission seat whenever he went to ballgames.

It’s also amusing to hear Shephard compare Chicago to small-town America, with Marshal Fields as the corner store and Lake Michigan as the swimming hole nearby.

I also got my kicks from seeing the “Chicago, 1957” video – a couple of minutes long, that manages to show us places that haven’t changed one bit during the past 60 years. Even though some others would like to think Chicago is nothing like it used to be.

THERE’S PARTICULARLY THAT point at Wabash and Lake streets where you see the “el” trains making the bend and you wonder if this is the moment when the trains will derail again at that spot – which actually happened once back in 1972 and was something that a certain generation of Chicagoans won’t ever forget.

Then, there’s the person who felt compelled to put on YouTube a collection of television commercials for local businesses back in 1971.

I’m still trying to figure out if I’m most amused by the vintage commercial for Courtesy and DuraFab, with the knuckleheaded kid who got his hot dog stains all over his friend’s parents couch, or the Marshall Brodien spots for TV MagiCards.

Which could supposedly give anybody the magical skills of Wizzo the Wizard from Bozo’s Circus.

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Some people don’t pay attention

We joke about it all the time. The phrase, “the third rail” is taken to mean instant doom when used in just about any context.

Except when it comes to being taken literally.

BECAUSE I HAVE lost count of the number of stories I have reported in the quarter-century that I have been a reporter-type person that involved someone dying because they came into contact with the rail that provides the electric power that operates the rail cars on the “el.”

Do people think that the third rail kills everybody else but them? Do they think they are invincible?

Or do they think they’re the equivalent of Wile E. Coyote? How many of those anvils did he get conked on the head with throughout the years?

Too many of these stories blend into each other, because the details are so unfamiliar. I recall one instance when I was a reporter for the now-defunct City News Bureau involving a homeless person, whom it seems publicly urinated on an “el” platform and had his urine stream hit the dreaded rail.

THE “BURNS” ON his body were restricted to his fingertips, since the electricity shot up through the urine and into his fingers. Not a pretty image.

Which makes me wonder why people don’t pay attention to all those signs that get posted warning people of the electrical danger of getting too close to the tracks. Let alone the possibility of getting hit by one of those “el” trains.

They certainly were ignored by a man who, early Wednesday, thought he could walk across the tracks to get to the “el” platform on the other side, rather than using the stairs that people are supposed to use to get from one side of the “el” station to the other.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the man in question was at the California Avenue station on the blue line.

AS SOMEONE WHO has used that particular station on those occasions when I have had to cover a story at the Criminal Courts building located just four blocks to the south, it really would have been simpler for him to use the stairs, rather than jump off the platform and try to walk across the tracks to have to climb aboard the other platform.

This particular man saw things differently. Now, he’s no longer with us.

I’m sure his family will wish he had been willing to put a little more thought into his use of the “el.” Although if he was that desperate to save himself a few seconds of time, he probably was capable of doing so many risky things.

Perhaps it was just a matter of time before he perished. What a waste!

BUT THIS MAN, whom police didn’t immediately identify, wasn’t the only one who didn’t seem to think before acting this week.

There also is the story of a Chicago woman who had to go to court Tuesday in suburban Skokie, only to find herself being arrested and hit with more criminal charges after her court appearance.

For it seems this woman had a young child and two dogs with her. She knew she couldn’t really bring them into the courthouse.

So, she chose to leave them in the car, sitting and waiting while she made her court appearance. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that she now faces charges of endangerment of a child and animal abandonment.

PERHAPS SHE CRACKED open the car windows to provide a little relief. But officials pointed out that the temperatures got into the 80s on Tuesday and that the kid and dogs were in the car for more than an hour – although the woman told the county sheriff’s police she lost track of how long she was in court.

Which makes no sense to me. Anybody appearing in court ought to realize how indefinite the process could be.

One could get lucky and be the first or second person on a court call. Or they could be the last. It’s not an experience for people in a hurry.

Her behavior kind of reminds me of a guy I once saw arguing with a sheriff’s deputy at the Criminal Courts building. He wanted to be able to walk up to the court clerk, immediately get a new court date, then leave.

BECAUSE HE HAD left his car parked right on California Avenue in front of the courthouse, not realizing he’d have to wait his turn on the court call like everybody else.

Yet another person who thinks the rules of life don’t apply to them.

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