[Mr Downtown]

My memory has also grown hazy, but I think the only Amtrak waiting area in the concourse side was a small one for sleeping-car passengers. The Lagrange remodel pushed the east wall of that level out onto a former track area to create the new Amtrak waiting area. The Metra ticket windows, and maybe the Amtrak ticket windows as well, were located in the passageway under Canal Street. Food service and other vendors were scattered around both sides of that passageway, not upstairs in the concourse. I think the escalators bringing Metra pax in from Riverside Plaza came down in the middle of the current Amtrak maelstrom, creating a ball of confusion there.

Even originally, in the heyday of train travel, I think 75% of the action was always in the concourse building. You had waiting long-distance pax populating the Great Hall, you had arriving and departing taxi patrons, and you had the restaurants on the west side pulling people over that way, but functionally the headhouse building was always a cul-de-sac west of the real action.

I might say that Amtrak in recent years has been looking seriously at another remodel, as growing patronage is again overwhelming their facilities at CUS. To me the greatest loss is the closing of the taxi drives, which has created huge traffic congestion upstairs for very dubious security reasons.