Chicago Union Station needs fixing

[Guest_Longford_*]

I disagree with your assessment that Union Station is primarily a commuter station. There may be more commuter passengers, yes, but they aren't using the station facilities. They're mostly going straight from the street to the tracks. The mean time in the station is several times higher for an Amtrak passenger than a Metra passenger. The station needs to be designed so that Metra passengers can access the platforms, but the station facilities need to cater to Amtrak passengers since they're the ones actually using them. Besides, even Metra passengers would benefit with a much-needed increase in bathroom capacity.

Disagree you may, Tim, but you're assumptions don't reflect the facts of the matter. Anyone who's familiar with CUS understand's it's primarily a commuter station and that the station "facilities" (food service and other retail outlets) are used, primarily, by those commuters - not by AMTRAK passengers. Though, if you're comments are narrowly limited to define "facilities" as public bathrooms - better bathrooms are always welcome . . . by commuters or by long-distance travelers. At the station, Amtrak is an afterthought . . . to most users.

 

[meatpuff]

Transportation planners in the Chicago area and the state of Illinois have failed the region for the past 30 years. That is why there is no decent rail connections to the airports, and why we have some of the worst commute times in the nations on the expressways. The fact that one must walk two blocks south to connect with the closest subway station only to ride 3 stops to transfer to another line that involves going up and down stairs twice to connect to the line that goes to north Michigan avenue only highlights the backwardness of the transit system here. Obviously, some of this was done years ago, but the fact that nothing was done to rectify makes no sense.

I don't know what constitutes a "decent" rail connection to an airport, but Chicago has to be unique in the USA in having rail connections to two airports that cost just regular fare to use. NYC has extra fare for Newark and JFK, LAX has none, several cities have one connected. In Chicago, $2.25 CTA fare will get you from downtown to ORD in the same time it takes to ride in a cab. To me that's a decent rail connection. (And for that matter, besides MDW connected by CTA, the MKE and GYY airports are also connected to downtown Chicago by rail, albeit less practical to use. That's four total.)

It's not their fault that Chicago transportation planners didn't account for your desire for a direct rail connection between the west loop and near north side. Most people riding the trains are just trying to get to work, which is usually in the Loop. Anyway, you got it wrong, you don't need to go up and down stairs twice to transfer. You can transfer from the Blue line subway to the Red line subway underground at the Jackson stop.

Don't get me wrong, Chicago roads and transit need a lot of work. Plenty of blame lies with RTA/CTA and Illinois officials for funding/management decisions that have left so much of the CTA rail system out of a state of good repair. And certain expressways could/should be widened, which requires more local leadership than we have gotten. But if you want major new or overhauled rail transit, these are multi-billion dollar projects and need federal involvement. Cities across the USA have been scrapping hard for years for more limited transit dollars. I think you need to be more angry at federal leadership on transportation if you're griping about Chicago transit being inadequate.

As for the Union Station, the current plan is to replace it and the Ogilvie station with the giant West Loop Transit Center, sketched here, before 2020. http://www.chicagojournal.com/main.asp?Sec...amp;TM=82866.59 The total cost, including ancillary rail/transit to be constructed feeding into it, is $6 billion dollars. Obviously the timetable and feasibility depends much on when/if the Feds decide to step up to the plate. My opinion on Union Station is that it is adequate as is, but it can't deal with significantly more traffic. We'd all like it to be better, but right now the city, CTA and Amtrak all have bigger fish to fry. They all have plenty of things to deal with it that are in worse shape than "adequate".

Although this city of Chicago draft planning document does suggest they expect to support Amtrak and Metra making $60 million improvements to CUS passenger facilities and platforms in the next several years. http://egov.cityofchicago.org/webportal/CO...2_Transport.pdf

 

[Ryan]

Chicago has to be unique in the USA in having rail connections to two airports that cost just regular fare to use.

I'm not sure what you mean by "regular fare", but from WAS you can connect to BWI by paying a "regular fare" on MARC and to DCA by paying a "regular fare" on the Metro.

 

[Guest_julieandrews_*]

I've only been to this station once but the sheer madness of the station struck me as soon as I got off the CZ, and I live in London and use major London stations every day so am well used to busy station! The first thing that struck me was the absolute noise when I got off the train at the platforms. How many platforms are there - someplace between 10 and 20? And it seemed like there was a diesel train on every one of those platforms with the engine roaring and black smoke pumping out. The din was a amazing!! I'm used to stations where most trains are electric so the noise isn't the same. I could barely see anything through the black smoke fog, I feel sorry for anyone who has to work in that

The next thing that hit me was when I got in to the station proper were the crowds of people milling about and falling over each other to get places. Nothing more than the crowds in a London station but the difference is that most stations I'm used to have a massive concourse which can take all those people and there's the space to find yourself a path to get through. Chicago seemed to be more of a series of wide corridors which could not take that amount of people, it seemed to be very badly designed. Then the next day I took a tourist trip to the great hall on the other side of the station and what a difference that was - very quiet and peaceful. Nearly a museum or library feel to it.

CUS needs to be waaaaaay more open in terms of space, I appreciate that only a certain amount of floorspace is available but I do think it could be put to better use, especially if the underused side of the station were incorporated

 

[jphjaxfl]

Keep in mind that Chicago used to have 6 railroad stations in the loop. Union Station had only four railroads using it, two which have always had large commuter operations and the other two with very small commuter operations. I was in Union Station last summer on a Saturday and was amazed at the crowds. I have been traveling through Union Station since the early 1950s long before the first office tower was built on the air rights. They need to move some of the operations to the Great Hall and use it for the Railroad Station it was built to be. There used to be a great Fred Harvey Restaurant in the Great Hall that served reasonably priced, good meals. The restrooms in the Great Hall were huge. The crowded conditions in Union Station sound very much like crowds my Dad talked about from the WWII era. Chicago Union Station is not strictly a commuter station. It is the busiest long distance station on Amtrak. Amtrak owns it so they need to use it more efficiently.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Keep in mind that Chicago used to have 6 railroad stations in the loop. Union Station had only four railroads using it, two which have always had large commuter operations and the other two with very small commuter operations. I was in Union Station last summer on a Saturday and was amazed at the crowds. I have been traveling through Union Station since the early 1950s long before the first office tower was built on the air rights. They need to move some of the operations to the Great Hall and use it for the Railroad Station it was built to be. There used to be a great Fred Harvey Restaurant in the Great Hall that served reasonably priced, good meals. The restrooms in the Great Hall were huge. The crowded conditions in Union Station sound very much like crowds my Dad talked about from the WWII era. Chicago Union Station is not strictly a commuter station. It is the busiest long distance station on Amtrak. Amtrak owns it so they need to use it more efficiently.

Yeah, I remember the six station days. And there was the Parmalee(spelling?) Service which operated buses, vans and taxis,all, I think, between the stations for those changing stations. There was no separate charge for this and there was a separate stub on your ticket for it. Just as there is a separate stub to get you from Emervyille to SF on the CZ.

As I recall, if you were in a real hurry a Parmalee taxi or something could take you straight to your station.But otherwise, there were big buses which just kept going around from one station to the other. That is always what I was on. Though there were some trips which I arrived and departed at the same station.

I remember CUS as being very cavernous, all of it looking like the Great Hall today. I do not seem to remember it being as packed and jammed as it is today.This was at a time when most of us still took such architecture for granted. So it has tall ceilings, whatever!!

And I recall some trip shortly after Amtrak had taken over in which there was some sort of first class lounge. It was not widely known or advertised and it did not seem to have a special name--not yet-- just some sort of separate waiting area for sleeping car passengers. Whether coffee and such I do not remember. But it was a forerunner of Metropolitan Lounges, Club Acelas, etc. I believe they collected your ticket there.And it was very crowded, at least at the time I was there, whatever train I was waiting for. Just may be it was before Amtrak, not sure the more I think about it.

These are at least most of the long distance passenger(and freight) railroads which served Chicago in 1957.

Santa Fe

Baltimore & Ohio

Burlington

Cheapeake & Ohio

Chicago & Eastern Illinois

Chicago & Northwestern

Chicago & Western Indiana

Milwaukee

Rock Island

Erie

Grand Trunk

Gulf Mobile & Ohio

Illinois Central

Michigan Central

Monon

New York Central

Nickel Plate

Pennsylvania

Soo Line

Wabash

NOTE: No attempt here to list commuter rail.

 

[dan72]

When I worked at 600 W. Jackson in the early 1960's, we often went after work to Union Station and entered on the southwest side of the Great Hall. That entrance is now blocked off and unaccessible. There were a few small shops along the hallway leading from that entrance to the Great Hall.
If you go to the west wall in the Great Hall, on the north side there were large washrooms which could easily accommodate more passengers than that small one in the coach waiting room, where there are sometimes lines going out the restroom door. I suspect that it is now being used for Amtrak crews.

Then go toward the southwest wall of the Great Hall. There's a large, unoccupied room there. It could easily handle the ticket counter.

The Great Hall could easily be transformed into what it should be, what it was designed for and what it was built for - a place for train passengers.

My guess is that it is not air-conditioned. I was there two years ago in July about a week apart heading to Boston and returning. Both times, it was stifling in the Great Hall and they had industrial size fans trying to move the air around.

Dan

 

[Tim in Wisconsin]

Disagree you may, Tim, but you're assumptions don't reflect the facts of the matter. Anyone who's familiar with CUS understand's it's primarily a commuter station and that the station "facilities" (food service and other retail outlets) are used, primarily, by those commuters - not by AMTRAK passengers.

Again: how much time does the average Metra passenger spend inside Union Station? How much time does the average Amtrak passenger spend there?

My rough back of the envelope calculations show there to be about 5000 Amtrak passengers daily at Union Station. You cited a number 0f 25,000 Metra passengers daily at CUS. That means that over the course of a day, there's roughly five times as many Metra passengers as Amtrak passengers. Obviously, on weekdays that ratio skews towards Metra's end, while on weekends I wouldn't be suprised to see it near unity.

That means that, yes, there are many more Metra passengers. I'm not arguing that. However, my experience is that Metra passengers generally don't wait for trains. They go from street to stairs to platform to trains, following the same paths that they've traced out for years. I've never waited for a Metra train myself; to be fair, I typically go out of Ogilvie because Harvard on the UP-NW line is the closest to where I live but I doubt that the experience differs that much two blocks south.

Let's be generous and assume that a Metra passenger spends ten minutes in the building while not on a train. Your average Amtrak passenger is spending much more than fifty minutes inside Union Station. Therefore, the total passenger-waiting hours are going to be substantially higher for Amtrak than they are for Metra. Commuter railroad passengers need easy access to the platforms, but they don't need much else of what a train station provides like food, entertainment, resting areas, and so on. As Metra passengers are going to be more familiar with the city than Amtrak passengers,they are going to be more likely to seek those amenities outside the station. Since the majority of waiting time in the building is done by Amtrak passengers, the facilities need to represent them.

 

[Everydaymatters]

Disagree you may, Tim, but you're assumptions don't reflect the facts of the matter. Anyone who's familiar with CUS understand's it's primarily a commuter station and that the station "facilities" (food service and other retail outlets) are used, primarily, by those commuters - not by AMTRAK passengers.

Again: how much time does the average Metra passenger spend inside Union Station? How much time does the average Amtrak passenger spend there?

My rough back of the envelope calculations show there to be about 5000 Amtrak passengers daily at Union Station. You cited a number 0f 25,000 Metra passengers daily at CUS. That means that over the course of a day, there's roughly five times as many Metra passengers as Amtrak passengers. Obviously, on weekdays that ratio skews towards Metra's end, while on weekends I wouldn't be suprised to see it near unity.

That means that, yes, there are many more Metra passengers. I'm not arguing that. However, my experience is that Metra passengers generally don't wait for trains. They go from street to stairs to platform to trains, following the same paths that they've traced out for years. I've never waited for a Metra train myself; to be fair, I typically go out of Ogilvie because Harvard on the UP-NW line is the closest to where I live but I doubt that the experience differs that much two blocks south.

Let's be generous and assume that a Metra passenger spends ten minutes in the building while not on a train. Your average Amtrak passenger is spending much more than fifty minutes inside Union Station. Therefore, the total passenger-waiting hours are going to be substantially higher for Amtrak than they are for Metra. Commuter railroad passengers need easy access to the platforms, but they don't need much else of what a train station provides like food, entertainment, resting areas, and so on. As Metra passengers are going to be more familiar with the city than Amtrak passengers,they are going to be more likely to seek those amenities outside the station. Since the majority of waiting time in the building is done by Amtrak passengers, the facilities need to represent them.

Also, there are those of us who take Metra to connect with Amtrak.

Hey, Tim in Wisconsin, when I decide to walk the 3 blocks from the Ogilive to CUS, it's because I took the Harvard train from Woodstock.

 

[AlanB]

My rough back of the envelope calculations show there to be about 5000 Amtrak passengers daily at Union Station.

Your number is a bit low, it's more like 8,500 each day on average. I just took the yearly number and divided by 365. but I suspec that weekends are probably a bit lighter and weekday a bit heavier, but I have no way to tell for sure.

Nonetheless, I would still agree that METRA passengers out number Amtrak passengers.

 

[Everydaymatters]

Does anyone have old pictures of the Great Hall when it was used for passengers?

 

[Steve4031]

Meatpuff,

I appreciate the links. This is the first I heard of the Clinton Street subway, and of underground transit ways. I tend to read all of the transit related articles about Chicago, but missed some of them. Implementation of some these projects would definitely improve Chicago.

I have to respectfully disagree with you about using stairs at the transfer point between the red and blue line at Jackson. It is true that you do not have to leave the system. However, after getting off the train, one must go down a flight of stairs, and through a block long walkway and the climb up another flight of stairs to reach the platform level. I see plans to upgrade these stations, and I suspect they might put escalators in place, which would alleviate my annoyance with this connection.

I agree that the metra stations and Union station does a good job of getting people to the loop area, but that walk is brutal in inclement January and february weather. Perhaps, and improvement in the pedway system that was also mentioned would alleviate this too.

As far as the connections to the airports, I was comparing Chicago to European cities such as Paris and London, not to NYC. I agree that the pricing of NYC air trains is non competitive to limo travel. When I flew into Newark with my girlfriend a year or so ago, I added up the cost of the NJT fare and airtrain fare for the 2 of us and saw that for a few dolars more we could have a one seat ride to our destination. That was an easy decision to make.

Again, thanks for the links, they were interesting.

 

[Tim in Wisconsin]

Your number is a bit low, it's more like 8,500 each day on average. I just took the yearly number and divided by 365. but I suspec that weekends are probably a bit lighter and weekday a bit heavier, but I have no way to tell for sure.

That was intentional. Amtrak lists its passenger numbers as "boardings plus alightings." Under this accounting, every connecting passenger counts twice. That would have improperly skewed the analysis that I presented, so I cut that number in half and added a small bit of fudge factor to account for situations where boardings wouldn't equal alightings in a given day: one-way trips, passengers terminating in Chicago, passengers connecting to Thruway buses. Unfortunately, while some good station by station and route by route data has been compiled by Amtrak or NARP, there is no public data that I know of that looks at connections. I would love to know how many of Amtrak's 3.1 million Chicago passengers aren't actually visiting Chicago.

 

[meatpuff]

I appreciate the links. This is the first I heard of the Clinton Street subway, and of underground transit ways. I tend to read all of the transit related articles about Chicago, but missed some of them. Implementation of some these projects would definitely improve Chicago.
I have to respectfully disagree with you about using stairs at the transfer point between the red and blue line at Jackson. It is true that you do not have to leave the system. However, after getting off the train, one must go down a flight of stairs, and through a block long walkway and the climb up another flight of stairs to reach the platform level. I see plans to upgrade these stations, and I suspect they might put escalators in place, which would alleviate my annoyance with this connection.

I agree that the metra stations and Union station does a good job of getting people to the loop area, but that walk is brutal in inclement January and february weather. Perhaps, and improvement in the pedway system that was also mentioned would alleviate this too.

As far as the connections to the airports, I was comparing Chicago to European cities such as Paris and London, not to NYC.

...

Steve,

Oh, I understand your complaints about Chicago transit. It's just important to keep it in perspective. As annoying as the quirks and shortcomings you brought up are, transit in the Chicago downtown core is still better than anywhere else in the country save NYC, with maybe Boston and DC in the conversation.

Clinton subway would be neat, or the Circle line would be great. Both really do fulfill a great need as far as I can tell. But don't worry you didn't hear of it, there's always some new fanciful transit line concept popping up in the news, isn't there? I could name a half-dozen recent ones without breaking a sweat... Central Area Circulator, Franklin subway, Mid-City Transitway...

I sure hope they get either the Clinton subway or Circle line done, though. The CBD really is expanding out to the west. And so many people use the CTA and rail stations that if you got this done and saved each of them a little time and trouble every day, it's quite a valuable thing because the numbers are so huge. We know the city wants it and state is seeming more on the ball lately, so let's hope the Feds get on board one of these years.

And of course comparing it to European cities' transit systems just isn't really a fair fight :lol: