Well, yeah. People in that community still cling to the "promise" made by Mayor Daley (Senior) and CTA back in the 1960s - which was to branch the Red Line down 94 and 57, by the way, not to build an el through the middle of the community. Politicians can dangle that out there to earn votes from this corner of the city. The problem is that Roseland and West Pullman have absolutely tanked in population since then. They have dropped 34-36% in Black population since 1980. Riverdale has lost 47% of its Black population. (I can only find the Black population
trends, but each of these community areas is more than 90% Black so it's a fair stand-in for overall numbers).
This is not a trivial fact - the Federal process for funding rail expansions is highly competitive (although not immune from political influence). A declining population makes it unlikely that FTA will give a grant when New York, LA, SF, etc are all clamoring for money to build transit into fast-growing areas. It also makes tools like the transit TIF a lot less effective, since even the promise of new rail service is unlikely to boost property values in such troubled neighborhoods.
If we had a budget for rail expansion like Paris or Madrid, absolutely we should extend the Red Line... but given that CTA only does an expansion once every two generations, is this really the ONE project we want to sink our resources into? Nobody seems interested in LA-style proposals to raise taxes and
really expand the system comprehensively, so I think we do need to look at the Red Line Extension as a zero-sum and accept the fact that funding the RLE means any other large project
won't get funding.
I like Rahm's approach of rebuilding 95th - substituting a flashy, medium-scale project for a huge project seemed like a way to let the Far South Side down easy. But he kept insisting the project wasn't intended to take the place of the Red Line Extension. Now CTA is proposing a Halsted BRT, which could serve the west side of Roseland, West Pullman, etc while Metra Electric serves the east side of those communities. But still, they keep sinking money into the Red Line project.