Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
It's still an insane cost. The Englewood Flyover that Metra opened 5 years ago only cost $140M. That was not an easy project either, spanning over one of the city's busiest freight lines and the Dan Ryan. Now they're saying A-2 will cost 10x that amount?
For that price they'd better rebuild every crumbling viaduct from California to Halsted, add a 4th track between Union Station and Pacific Junction, and expand the coach yards in addition to just the flyover.
|
Yeah it better include all of those old viaducts for that price. And they are super wide. And if this is on the scale of the Red Line modernization project, phase 1 of that is $2.1 billion. Sometimes the costs get escalated when they are required to maintain service during construction as well. Englewood flyover may have been simpler by not having to deal with passenger rail. Hopefully Federal and state funds can pay for most too.
Looking at the map, I'm wondering why they wouldn't move all of the northbound trains that go through Clybourn and Western Avenue to use Ogilvie and then all of the west bound trains (Kedzie station) would exclusively go out of Union Station. Then it seems like the need for crossing tracks could be mostly eliminated??
Also interesting that putting the new station near Ashland makes the most sense so that it can serve all of those lines simultaneously and provide good connectivity with CTA. This would continue to push the office market west to Damen.