CHICAGO: Transit Developments

[Busy Bee]

Assuming electrification, it may be easier and cheaper (than a soft ground TBM bored tunnel), to instead branch off the NCS and into the median of 190 using cut and cover and alongside the Blue Line tracks at grade and re-entering a widened or new parallel tunnel for the final 3000' or so to get into a new shared regional rail/Cta terminal station.

[nomarandlee]

I still think the cheapest and best option would be to extend the ATS a few hundreads yards running perpendicular to the current NCS O'Hare station.
An even cheaper and more practical option would be to retrofit an enclosed ped tunnel to the ATS Rental Car station from the current NSC O'Hare station.

I took the NCS from Prospect Heights to Terminal 2 a few months ago and once you are on the ATS it is not too bad in terms of convenience to the rest of the airport other than the open-air walk of a few hundred feet between the two stations. Take out that walking segment and you can easily find a target market who would use the service, particularly those leaving from T5.

[VKChaz]

This Chicago Tribune op ed from July raises the issue of a connection between the North Western and Amtrak tracks. Is such a thing possible and is there any chance it (or any alternative) would actually be seriously studied and put into motion?

In September 2022, the Department of Buildings issued a permit for the construction of a 33-story apartment building at 350 N. Canal St. This past May, the new tower welcomed its first tenants.
But when the city signed off on the new building, it inadvertently foreclosed on the possibility of a critically needed regional transportation asset: 350 N. Canal blocks a potential connection of the former Chicago & North Western Railway’s tracks serving the Ogilvie Transportation Center with the Amtrak main line that brings trains from north of the city into Amtrak’s Chicago Union Station.

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If CMAP does decide to contemplate a Union Pacific-Union Station hookup, there may just be one opportunity left to make it happen. The Union Pacific still uses one of the old ground-level tracks to deliver tankcars of corn syrup to the east side of the Blommer Chocolate Co. factory at Kinzie and Des Plaines streets. Blommer has announced it will soon close that facility and sell the property for demolition and redevelopment. IDOT, CMAP, CDOT, Metra, Amtrak and UP need to sit down and study whether the Blommer tracks that now stub on the north side of Kinzie can be extended across Kinzie into the one block of Jefferson Street between Kinzie and the Amtrak main line. At the south end of that block, the track could be curved eastward to join the Amtrak alignment into Union Station.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/...ation-ogilvie/

[Randomguy34]

f CMAP does decide to contemplate a Union Pacific-Union Station hookup, there may just be one opportunity left to make it happen. The Union Pacific still uses one of the old ground-level tracks to deliver tankcars of corn syrup to the east side of the Blommer Chocolate Co. factory at Kinzie and Des Plaines streets. Blommer has announced it will soon close that facility and sell the property for demolition and redevelopment. IDOT, CMAP, CDOT, Metra, Amtrak and UP need to sit down and study whether the Blommer tracks that now stub on the north side of Kinzie can be extended across Kinzie into the one block of Jefferson Street between Kinzie and the Amtrak main line. At the south end of that block, the track could be curved eastward to join the Amtrak alignment into Union Station.

Oh geez, that sounds like hell trying to connect those two points. I'm not even sure if Metra's rolling stock would be able to make sharp enough turns for such a connection