CTA Brainstorm

Remember my "Diagrammatic Suggestion for Green Line Station Addition"? My simple suggestion was to add four crucial rapid transit stations to the Green Line of the CTA's Elevated line to make this under-utilized train line more accessible. These station additions take advantage of the rapid development and gentrification of Chicago's near West side, a trend that suggests that the "West side is the new North side", if you will. In fact, I predict that the majority of Chicago's explosive residential growth in the next 10 years will be in this area-- consequently the CTA should plan on bringing the Rapid Transit in this area up to par!

But here's the kicker-- it will take *TEN YEARS* to for the CTA to build one of these new stations.

Yes, that's right-- *TEN YEARS*-- from the moment they decide to do it, until the first train stops there.

This shocked the hell out of me upon hearing this last night at the CTA's West Side Corridor Study Workshop I attended. This "transit-brainstorm" of sorts was set up by the CTA as the final phase of their research on the West Side's transit system. They set up the brainstorm in a meeting room in the back of the Garfield Park Conservatory (Which, by the way, is a completely bad-ass building which I have vowed to return to in the near future) which is in the center of the "West Side Corridor"-- coincidentally accessible from the Green Line El.

I drove there.

I arrived at the meeting room, and the CTA planners divided the brainstorm volunteers (AKA The Riders) into teams of 5 or 6, with 2 members of the transportation design and planning department. My group was an interesting cross-section of the area, most people represented the far West neighborhoods, or the Southern neighborhoods (like the previously mentioned Pilsen). I was definitely the token white yuppie(!!!)-- but the group was having fun, so it worked anyway. The CTA printed out giant 5'x4' maps of the region (Chicago Ave to the North, Halsted to the East, 26th(?) to the South, and DesPlaines in the Western Suburbs). They handed us markers and told us to mark up the map with suggestions and changes for bus routes and rail-stops. As a group we brainstormed improvements, wrote them on over-sized Post-It pads and prioritized them as a group using dots to mark our personal preferences. It all reminded me very much of the brainstorm process that we use in the design world. It's not a coincidence either: in a design-research presentation I saw recently, three phases of user-centered-research were presented: What People Say, What People Do, and What People Make.

What People Say is basically standard user-interviews-- ask them what they want, need, and desire. What People Do is a little more progressive-- it's known as ethnographic research in the design-research industry, which means the researcher observes users using a product or performing a specified activity, and records and notes user-behaviors. This info can be used later to identify unspoken problems that the user might never think to bring up in interviews What People Make is the freshest methodology, where the user is involved in a mock brainstorm and is asked to work on the problem along side with the design-team. So the CTA was seeing what we make... interesting.

The transit-planners helped satiate my thirst for info-- I found out that:
  • The circle line (remember?) would in fact take 30 years to come to fruition, if they even get the funding for it. (!)
  • The Paulina Connector (the piece of track that is currently unused that links the Blue Line to the Green Line) is ready to roll-- we might see trains on it in the near future, if they can decide how to re-route the current lines.

  • The busses automatically announce the intersections they cross via satellite. (Ooh, if only the privacy freaks knew about that one!)

  • Consequently if the busses are tracked by satellite, why can't they tell me when the next one is coming as I leave the El station? "Maybe someday", they hinted. (But in CTA years, that could mean 2030.)

  • The CTA does lots of demographics research-- oh yes, they DO know where the population growth is...

  • The CTA doesn't have an official stance on what's more important-- rail or bus service. (Doesn't that seem like a crucial element of the company culture?) I feel like rail service should be #1 priority, with the busses as patches to weak spots in the rapid transit.



At the end, our group presented our top voted changes, and the CTA wrote them down. Will they go to good use? Only time will tell, really. My main goal was to push my agenda of more Green Line stations, and I got the shocker-- it will be at least 10 years before I can take the El to the West Loop Gate/Fulton Market District. You might see condoliths (monolithic condo buildings all over the North side of Chicago [Wow only a few links come up in Google, cheers to Andrew of Gapers' Block fame for that term]) pop up in months, but El-stations are built at glacial rates.

Lesson learned: Government-funded/public-sector projects take a long. time. to. happen. because. of. all. the. red. tape.

I'll just stick to idealistic futurism.


  8/19/2004

 
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