Eugene Rogers has spent most of his life on Chicago’s Far South Side, an area Rogers calls a “public transit desert [that] has always been pushed to the back burner.”
So Wednesday’s vote by the Chicago Transit Authority’s board to extend the Red Line by more than 5 miles south to his part of the city is an outstretched hand to disadvantaged minority neighborhoods marred by empty lots, poverty and a feeling of isolation, said Rogers, 69.
“If you are out at certain times of the night, you are stuck. You cannot get home,” said Rogers, a resident of the Roseland neighborhood, which has a mix of middle-income residents and people living below the poverty line. “This is the only section of the city of Chicago where public transportation does not go to the city limits.”
The CTA plan calls for extending the Red Line southeast from the end of the line at 95th Street on the Dan Ryan Expressway to the Interstate Highway 57 median and finally to 130th Street, using Union Pacific railroad right of way. The Red Line would get 78 new rail cars and four additional stations — at 103rd, 111th, 115th and 130th Streets — as well as bus terminals and park-and-ride lots.
It was one of three rail-line extensions, estimated to cost a total of about $2 billion, approved by the CTA board Wednesday. The action came after years of studies, planning and collecting public input, although construction is years away.
CTA officials said they are confident the expansions will win federal funding that will cover up to 80 percent of the costs because the projects would serve thousands of riders in areas that are severely under-served by mass transit or need more mass transit to combat traffic gridlock.
The latter situation applies to expanding the CTA’s Orange Line beyond Midway Airport, as well as extending the Yellow Line to the area around the Old Orchard shopping center in Skokie, officials said.
But in the northern suburbs that include mass transit-rich Skokie, the CTA board’s decision to proceed with plans to extend the Yellow Line/Skokie Swift was met by fierce opposition from some residents and administrators at a high school next to the proposed new train terminal.
Elevated tracks would be built to carry Yellow Line trains over the 1.6-mile extension from the current terminus at Dempster Street to a station at Old Orchard Road, between the Edens Expressway and Niles North High School, near Old Orchard.
The plan, which is supported by the Village of Skokie, causes problems of safety, security, noise and aesthetics, Nanciann Gatta, superintendent of Niles Township High School District 219, told the CTA board.
“We have extremely limited space at the Niles North campus,” Gatta said. “The site is landlocked, and we are already challenged by inadequate parking for staff and students.”
In addition, some Skokie residents have voiced strong opposition to an “L” structure rising close to their homes on Union Pacific right of way. The Yellow Line extension would adversely affect about 3,800 people on a daily basis, according to a letter to the transit board signed by 183 Skokie residents who don’t want the single-track elevated structure built.
“It would place the interests of those who travel to Skokie from other communities to shop and to work above the interests of the thousands of Skokie residents and students who would be adversely affected daily,” the letter said.
The third project would expand the Orange Line from Midway Airport to near Ford City Mall.
The 2.3-mile extension is intended to improve bus-to-train connections for numerous CTA and Pace bus routes along Cicero Avenue and other nearby areas where there has been significant growth.
In addition to the new station at the end of the line at approximately 7600 S. Cicero, the CTA has the option to build another stop at Marquette Road.
Other goals include reducing traffic congestion at the Midway Orange Line station and cutting down on the lengthy bus trips to access the Orange Line, officials said.
John Brunell, 39, of Hickory Hills often takes the CTA No. 55N/55th Narragansett bus to Midway, then hops on the Orange Line when he wants to go downtown. He would welcome the extension.
“I don’t know how much time it would save, but it would be much more convenient,” Brunell said.
CTA officials said the rail-line routes the transit board approved represent the “one viable option for each proposed extension.”
But CTA Chairwoman Carole Brown attempted to show that in light of the criticism about the Yellow Line plan, the door is still open, even though CTA officials plan to apply for federal funding to begin preliminary engineering on the extensions next spring.
“Our action today does not finalize any route,” Brown said. “There will be many additional opportunities for the public to weigh in.”
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RED LINE
High hopes — and skepticism
Karen Smith, whose morning commute can take more than 90 minutes from the Altgeld Gardens public housing complex to downtown, said the extension of the CTA’s Red Line would cut her travel time in half.
She takes the CTA No. 34 bus, which loops through Altgeld Gardens on the Far South Side, to the train. On a good day, the bus ride alone is a half-hour to the 95th Street station on the Red Line, the last stop on that route. The proposed extension of the train to 130th Street would use the Union Pacific Railroad’s right of way.
“To have the ‘L’ come out here would be beautiful … if it happens,” said Smith, a housekeeper. “By the time they do it though, I probably won’t be here to use it.”
Smith, along with many of her neighbors, expressed skepticism about whether and when the extension, some 40 years in the making, will materialize.
“They were talking about that back when I was in high school,” said Kenneth White, 51. “I have to see it to believe it.”
Carol Rowser, a telemarketer who rides the Red Line from 95th to the Loop, said the rail extension would allow her to sleep in a little longer. As it is, she has to catch the 6:30 a.m. bus at the latest to make it in by 7:30 a.m., she said.
“It’s about time,” Rowser, 58, said of the CTA board’s vote to approve the extension. “I really hope they build it.”
— Kristen Mack
ORANGE LINE
More time to spend with family
To Tracy Green, a lengthened Orange Line could mean more time with her three children and perhaps no more mornings that start at 4 a.m.
The Justice resident takes three buses and about two hours to commute to her job at a nursing home near 71st Street and South Shore Drive.
“We get stuck on Cicero or Kedzie. I just try to be patient because I know it’s not the bus driver’s fault,” she said Wednesday while waiting for a bus at the Orange Line hub at Midway. Green, a nurse, takes the Pace No. 379 bus to the CTA 63rd Street bus, then switches to the CTA No. 6 bus. “I just get there right at 7 a.m.,” she said, noting when her shift starts. Green said it usually takes her about three hours to get home, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m., depending on traffic. Taking a train to and from the West Lawn neighborhood would likely cut her commute.
When Kay and Larry Oldendorf, a retired couple from Burbank, want to go to the theater downtown, they take a bus from Ford City to Midway, then catch the “L.” The two were returning home Wednesday from seeing the musical “Spring Awakening” at the Oriental Theater and said an expanded Orange Line would make their cultural excursions more convenient.
Bedford Park resident Martin Miranda, 47, said it would make it much easier for people to reach the mall — and for his Little Village relatives to visit him.
— Steve Schmadeke
YELLOW LINE
‘I think it’s absolutely absurd’
Among the tidy split-level homes along a stretch of Terminal Avenue in Skokie, residents such as Richard Sher were strongly opposed to living within a short hop of a CTA elevated line.
Sher, 62, a retired dry-cleaner with a tiny backyard near the proposed tracks, fears he may soon see trains passing within feet of his second-floor bedroom.
“I can run a Starbucks out my master-bedroom window,” he said Wednesday. “I think it’s absolutely absurd, and if it does happen, I will move.”
For the most part, the 1.6-mile leg from the Skokie Swift Terminal north to the Old Orchard shopping center area would pass through open space, industrial areas and run along the eastern frontage of the Edens Expressway. The route would end near Niles North High School.
A three-block cluster of homes near Golf Avenue is in the path of the proposed elevated line. With power lines towering nearby, many of these homes along Terminal and Laramie Avenues are near recently dormant freight tracks. “It’s the route of least resistance,” said Steve Marciani, planning supervisor for Skokie. “The power lines have always been there, and the railroad was there until a couple of years ago.”
Nestor Nueva, 50, lives on Terminal Avenue. He was less than thrilled about the CTA’s plans. “It was finally peaceful when the trains stopped. This is not good.”
— Robert Channick
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jhilkevitch@tribune.com
Hilkevitch to visit Jarrett’s show
Jon Hilkevitch will talk about plans for the Orange, Red and Yellow rail-line extensions on WGN-AM 720 on Greg Jarrett’s program in the 6 a.m. hour Thursday.
