Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Downtown
So what were you thinking of when you wrote
The much-lamented Northwest Passage? An underground moving sidewalk from Millennium to Washington/Wabash?
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Just cause there's now better signage doesn't mean transfers are smooth. For starters, there used to be a passage way from the Clinton Green/Pink Line station to Ogilvie but that was torn down and hasn't been rebuilt. There's still no pedestrian passage way from Clinton Blue Line to Union Station. Going from the downtown MED/SSL platforms to a CTA platform is at least a five minute walk through multiple different concourses. If you want to get to River North or Streeterville and you're taking Metra, you'll need to take an additional bus, or you gotta power through by walking or biking.
London is the only other city I can think of that has a similar problem with transferring between their suburban/regional rail service and rapid transit lines. Your tube line could have a station at Euston, King's Cross, or Paddington, and it'll still take 5 minutes traversing multiple passage ways to just barely catch your connecting train. That's not even including the out-of-station transfers which are free, but several blocks separate your connections.
Chicago's transfer situation isn't quite as dire as London's, but some short-term solutions to make it more tolerable would be to have a unified fare system to encourage transfers between transit systems and increasing bus frequencies to take riders to other parts of downtown. More mid-term solutions would include reopening the Clinton Green/Pink Line passage way to Ogilvie. Fortunately, in the webinar I posted, Amtrak has expressed interest in establishing a pedestrian connection from Union Station to Clinton Blue Line. After those projects are completed, then we can start talking about long-term/futuristic visions.