New CTA L cars may last for 40 years: do we really want to spend them staring into someone's crotch?

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Yes, the picture above is a bit of an exaggeration.  The CTA isn't actually planning to relieve overcrowding by putting riders into harnesses and speeding them along conveyor belts, after eviscerating us to reduce load weight.  At least not publicly. The CTA is, however, ramping up its commitment to another rider-unfriendly ‘innovation.’

In a move to make Rachel Shteir feel more at home, the CTA is deep into the process of upgrading its fleet with new railcars that replace the (pun alert)long-standing forward-facing seats with the aisle-facing benches that have been the norm in New York City for over a century.

The new L car design is another lovely parting gift from the administration of Richard M. Daley. After purchasing zero new rolling stock since 1992, the CTA announced in 2006 that it would be purchasing 406 new rail cars at a cost of $577 million, with delivery to begin in 2009.

When the first new 5000 series cars actually began appearing in 2011 on the Pink, then the Green lines, they offered up smoother rides, ADA compliance, brighter lighting, security cameras, and nifty station maps where the dots representing the stations light up when a train approaches.  That didn't stop many riders from expressing strong negative reactions to the layout, to which the CTA responded with its usual raised middle finger.  The cars, it said, had been engineered to only accommodate aisle-facing seats - so shut up and take a seat, if you can find one.

In February, the CTA announced they were opening the bidding process to find a manufacturer for a new 7000 Series of "L" cars - 846 cars, at a cost of $2 billion.  As part of the process, the CTA has set up an on-line user survey, which you can access and take here.  ‘Do you prefer to sit or stand during your journey?’ it asks after getting past some preliminaries.  Then it's your preferred clinging strategy: pole, strap, seat back, or the person you apologize to after you use them to catch your fall.   Finally, it moves on to placement, starting with the old forward-facing seats, before moving on to 5000, mainly inward-facing seats.  14 screens of questions in all.

This is actually a lot more user input than the CTA has ever sought before. “This is the first design I am overseeing,” President Forrest Claypool  told the Trib's Jon Hilkevitch, “and we are going to do the type of research to get it right." Still, it's easy to fear the CTA is testing the waters for even more depressing changes, such as the painful-looking blue plastic benches pictured below . . .

Not that passenger comfort was ever Chicago transit's primary concern.  Charles Yerkes, the man who built the original L back in the 1890's,  once famously said, “The short-hauls and the people who hang on the straps are the people we make money out of.”  But not even Yerkes imagined he could get away with turning his riders away from the windows.  His original wooden cars established a basic layout that was still being followed in later decades . . .

Photo courtesy The Chuckman Collection

Those original cars offered 52 seats, a number that held pretty much steady for the better part of a century.  The new ones are down to 38.  By increasing standing room, the capacity of the cars is now estimated at 120 passengers, far above the CTA's own de-crowding goal of no more than 75 people per car.

There are, to be sure, a lot of people who think comfort is expecting way too much from the CTA. “If it gets you from point A to point B and you don’t end up dead when you’ve reached your destination then it’s done it’s job effectively,”  one vociferous defender of the new car design proclaimed.

Still, I think it's an issue worth raising. And I'm not alone. “I think as other modes of transportation become more comfortable, it’s a shame that the CTA is taking a step backwards with fewer seats. It reinforces the notion that transit is inherently uncomfortable,” Joseph Schwieterman, director of DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development  told Carolyn Suhr of Medill Reports. At a time when we're trying to get more people to use mass transit, Chicago's ‘sell’ almost seems to come down to:  “The CTA - what other choice do you have?”

photograph courtesy of The Chuckman Collection

Economics and logistics obviously have a major, quite possibly decisive role in this, but it's also about what kind of city we want Chicago to be.

New Yorkers pride themselves on taking in stride all manner of daily affronts and injuries that would send lesser urban dwellers fleeing to the suburbs like whipped dogs.  New York is so full of amazing things; it's just the price you have to pay.

Chicago has its own store of wonders.  If it doesn't match the Egyptian scale of New York, it also comes with a more relaxed idea of a city that can be vibrant and creative without so easily resigning itself to the kind of  ‘Little Murders’ dehumanizations that arise out of New York's staggering density.

For most of Chicago's history, the L was a great way to see the city.  For me, it was a daily, ever-changing classroom of the city's architecture and history.  Now, it's all about avoiding eye contact with the passengers sitting directly across from you, even as you enter into an intimate visual relationship with the crotches of those standing mere inches from your face.

The purpose of mass transit is to transport people, but the increasing dependence on subsidiary revenues often marginalizes the passenger. Are windows now just a surface to attach ads to, so that looking out is like viewing the world through cataracts?  Do trains exist for the passenger, or to provide advertisers an audience, even if it means leaving riders sometimes feeling as if they've been dropped into a vat of orange juice?

The designs that were the norm for the better part of a century carved small refuges of individual, private space within the uncaring anonymous enormity of the public realm.  There was almost a Noah's Ark vibe: two-by-two, husband and wife, mother and child, friends, lovers or your impromptu partner, just for the ride.  The oldest even had seats that pivoted direction, so a party of four could have its own facing space, chatting or perhaps playing a game of cards on the long trip into the city.  Now it's all about moving the widgets in and out with a minimum of friction.

You could make the argument that these are pretty petty complaints  You could observe that with our iPads and earbuds, we've already disengaged into our individual, virtual worlds.  But do we really need the CTA to reinforce this?  Chicago remains a city of marvels.  Is it unreasonable to want to be able to see them as they pass by?

In our Age of the Supply Chain, efficiency is the deity that brooks no appeal.  A train, after all, is nothing more than a machine to get us to where we want to go.  Yet it's also where we spend an hour or more of every working day.  When we look back on our lives, what carries the greater emotional weight: the destination or the journey?

Take the CTA survey here.

At the CTA, you can rehab in any color - as long as it's white

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The CTA is in the middle of Red Ahead, a welcome $86 million upgrade of 10 Red Line stations - not total rebuilds, but extensive repairs and reconfiguration, with new lighting, doors and finishes.  All in all, this has been an attractive alternative to such money-pit projects as the estimated $200 million+ cost of renovating the Wilson station.  [The Chicago Sun-Times has recently been reporting on how money gushes like a geyser in the city's Public Building Commission.]

At Argyle, as in the other stations in the rehab, there are new, handsome glass-filled entrance walls renovated platforms and canopies, and a clean, open design, all accomplished, as in the other stations, during a fairly short six-week shutdown.

The only thing missing is color.  About 20 years ago, as part of renovation that cost all of $250,000, the Argyle station , which serves a neighborhood with a substantial Vietnamese, Cambodian and Chinese population, was repainted in colors associated in China with good luck and keeping away evil (red), and with longevity - also infidelity, jealousy and lust - take your pick (green).

The new Argyle is white, white, white.   Very nice, very generic.  Would it have cost that much more to give each station a bit of personality?  There are a lot of blank walls, so maybe the color will come from the $525,000 in artwork the CTA is currently considering for seven of the rehabbed stations, including Argyle.

CTA looking for 7 or so good artists: October 10 deadline for proposals for public art in 7 rehabbed CTA Red Line North stations

CTA rehabbed Granville Red Line station (click images for larger view)

 The question period actually closed yesterday, but artists have until 3:30 p.m., October 10th, to submit proposals for artworks to be installed along seven stations on the north branch of the Chicago Transit Authority's Red Line, which are, in sequence, undergoing at $81 million rehab.

Artwork on the CTA includes everything from, at the Brown Line Western stop, a slice of the Berlin wall . . .

To 50 works of arts from 41 artists on the Pink, Red, and Brown lines, including Jo Hormuth's Canopy Lights at Red Line 47th street . . .

. . . Jason Pickleman's MONT/ROSE: Area at Brown Line Montrose, and . . .

. . . Juan Angel Chávez and Corinne Peterson's Hopes and Dreams at Red/Roosevelt.  (The CTA has published a pdf of all the artworks._

The Red Line Granville stop was the first to shut down, this past June 1st, re-opening July 13th.  The century-old station had already had one gut rehab back in 1980, so the latest fix was a matter of repairing and restoring concrete and masonry, cleaning, repainting, and refurbishing the platform.  The end result is a bright open design, although the granite fascia - leftover from 1980? - is an incongruous element that weighs down the lightness.

More recently, the Argyle stop closed down for its facelift on August 24th.  Will the distinctive Chinese color palette survive?

Unlike the Brown Line stations, where the art was co-ordinated with the reconstruction of the stations, the Red Line project is a bit of an applique.  Artists are given a pre-configured tabula rasa to work with.  According to the press release, "Prior public art experience is not a requirement."  There's a $525,000 budget for the art works, paid for by the feds.  The stations are Lawrence, Argyle, Berwyn, Thorndale, Granville, Morse and Jarvis.  (You can find full descriptions and histories for each station on Graham Garfield's indispensable Chicago-L website. )

The budget for individual stations will range from $45,000 to $99.000.  There will be two steps to the judging process, with 25 artists selected as finalists, winners announced next February, and all art to be in place by September, 2013. You can read the CTA press release, with a link to the RFP here.

CTA's Attack of the Street Walruses

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 This is what $100 million looks like.  It's a rendering of the replacement 8800-square-foot mezzanine for the Red Line Clark and Division subway station, originally opened in 1943 and largely unrejuvenated ever since.  That's up from the $86.6 million price tag quoted in a CTA press release just this past January.  If the new station lasts as long as the old one, and assuming half of those using the station will be boarding and paying a fare, it will cost 50 cents for every one of the 4,000 per-day passengers over the next 70 years.  (The CTA is projecting usage will double.)   But then again, a CDOT flyer distributed by 42nd ward Brendan Reilly this past weekend quotes a cost of $41.3 million, so we've already made over half of the expense disappear.

As with the Chicago and, most recently, Grand stations on the Red Line subway, the contrast between the old, dank and dreary stations and their replacements is like night and day.  The platforms, while constrained to the original size, appear more spacious and welcoming, and the mezzanines are, in physical fact, vastly increased in size and openness.  Below ground, everything is sleek and modern.  It's only when you move above ground that you get this . . .

Call it Daley retro.  Word got out during the reign of Richard M. Daley that the mayor was partial to "traditional" design, and while the rap wasn't entirely deserved, the result was a lot of unnecessary pandering with such things as the Botero-limbed bus shelters designed by Robert Stern, and the street enclosures for escalators and stairs up from the subway.

The best that can be said about them is that they're lighter than the box they came in . . .

Other than that, could anything be more maladroit for a city that prides itself on its design?  Encountering one of these objects is like walking down the street and finding a giant walrus lounging on the sidewalk, loudly braying at passersby.

Is this really the best we can do?  As proven by the recently opened Ross Barney Green Line stop at Morgan Street, and this design concept for the intended Loop L station at Washington and Wabash . . .

. . . the answer is, clearly, no.  The way they dominate the sidewalk view, these subway entrances are more than just enclosures - they're emblems, and brazenly dishonest ones, at that.  They misrepresent the bright, streamlined design to be found in the actual station below.  In this "less is more" city, they're like giant billboards refuting Chicago's pretensions to architectural excellence.  On pain of fines, you're expected to clean up after your dog no matter how big the turds, but these huge, stinking - and inescapable - excrescences seem to enjoy blanket immunity. to plop at will.

At these prices, the CTA and CDOT need to step up to the plate.  Chicago deserves better.

Lonely Flowers at the Gravesite of the Abandoned Subway Station

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State and Washington

October 17, 1943 - October 23, 2006

buried alive with $300 million in TIF funds

in the never-opened "Superstation" beneath Block 37.

(former stairway entrance filled in with unkempt lawn)

Attack of the Hypothetical Fare Scenarios

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CTA survey seeks public input about "hypothetical fare scenarios" - headline of Trib story by Jon Hilkevitch

Dear beloved passenger: The CTA would like to have your opinion about possible new ways to assess charges for riding our trains and buses.  Be assured that no fare increases are currently under consideration.  (You should also be aware that there's a really nice bridge on Michigan Avenue we'd like to sell you.)  But just in case we'd ever, possibly, need to increase revenue sometime in what we're absolutely sure would be far, far into the future, we would like to get your opinion in ranking each of the following 250 "hypothetical fare scenarios" ("HFS's") in order of desirability . . .

$2.00 zoned fares for rides under 5 miles, $16.00 for not telling the cops you look suspiciously zoned out
$3.00 per bag
$.50 per escalator ride; $1.50 per working escalator ride
$2.25 for basic fare, 50 cents for transfers, $1.50 for oxygen
$3.50 if the driver sits in your lap.
$5.50 if said driver shifts energetically as the bus turns a corner
$7.50 per transcript of cell phone conversations of the deranged passenger sitting next to you
$5.00 "mystery aroma"-free section
$2.25 if you bring your own squeegee
$6.50 to harmonize with the motorman on "Rolling in the Deep" over the train intercom.
$4.50 to make up your own street names for the overhead message board
$1.00 to place a bet on whether or not that red-faced guy running like a fiend will have the doors close in his face as the bus pulls away
$4.95 for the What Subway Tunnel Location Am I Stuck In? iPad app.
$10.00 to replace "doors are closing" announcements with "you're going to be crushed like a bug!!!!"
$7.50 to allow you to kick everyone else out from under the heat lamps
$24.50 to be terrorized by Robert Shaw
$6.95 to let you amuse yourself by changing the Bus Tracker indicator from "approaching now" to "removed from service"
$4.00 for each bus not bunched up right behind the bus before it.
$16.50 to open a beer concession at the back of the car
25 cents if you can correctly identify the viscous substance on the seat next to you; $4.95 if you can't
$1.00 if you let us use your Link card to fill up the vending machines at headquarters
$2.00 surcharge for stopping within two feet of the curb
$6.00 to let you shake down other passengers for cigarettes
$2.00 if you share your cab with the driver when the bus runs out of gas.

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