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, who lives in Roseland, 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.
To be sure, each project faces a number of hurdles to clear before it becomes a reality. The CTA must secure federal funding and conduct environmental impact and engineering studies before laying down any track. The agency’s last ambitious expansion attempt, a “super station” in the Block 37 complex that was to run express trains to both city airports from downtown, was put on indefinite hold after $213 million had been spent.
But CTA officials said they are confident the line expansions approved Wednesday 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 underserved 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, as well as extending the Yellow Line to the area around the Old Orchard shopping center in Skokie, officials said.
The third project would expand the Orange Line from Midway to near the Ford City shopping center.
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 Ave., the CTA has the option to build another stop at Marquette Road.
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, in light of the criticism about the Yellow Line plan, that 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.”
Red Line hopes tempered
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.”
Yellow Line backlash
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.
Orange you glad?
John Brunell often takes the CTA No. 55N-55th Narragansett bus to Midway, then hops on the Orange Line when he wants to go downtown. The 39-year-old Hickory Hills resident would welcome the extension.
“I don’t know how much time it would save, but it would be much more convenient,” he said, adding that it would bring more people to the Ford City Mall.
