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| 'L's future lies below: Let's leave the slow ride to the bicyclists | |
| Jan 20, 2008 | |
| Jeff Libman, author, teacher jalibman@core.com | |
| Chicago Tribune | |
| Pertains to North Side Bike Skyway, Chicago, Evanston | |
| I crawled downtown the other day, or so it felt. Red Line, 8 a.m. -- headed south into the Loop. If you ride Red, you know the routine. A long wait at Berwyn. Snail-like turns in and out of the Sheridan station. Another wait before Belmont as Brown and Purple Line trains cross in and out and merge on the track. In between, the screeching sound of steel on steel, wheels on rails, at no more than 5 m.p.h. Despite the regularity of this routine, it's still incredibly painful. And yet, we've all become complacent and accepting of this 100-year-old means of transportation. Packed in the elevated train cars, our silence becomes even more pronounced. But beyond the blank stares, we're all thinking the same thing: There's got to be a better way. This is Chicago. The City of Big Shoulders. We make no small plans. We fought and scraped to rise out of the rubble of the Great Chicago Fire. Daniel Burnham wouldn't put up with this; why do we? Then we get to Armitage and start descending underground. All of a sudden the train moves the way a vehicle with no traffic should -- smoothly and quickly. Above ground, the Red Line is a transit dinosaur. We want to be a world-class city of the 21st Century. We want the 2016 Olympics. But we can't figure out how to move our people around at a rate faster than a rickshaw. Now imagine if the Red Line were underground from Howard Street all the way downtown. Smooth and easy. We would glide along quietly and uninterrupted like subway riders in other modern cities -- Washington, Moscow, Singapore, Barcelona. The trains would be comfortable and clean. Brightly lit stations would be dotted with shops, musicians and restaurants. There can be life underground! Sure, it would cost some money, something we never seem to have enough of. With all the hot property values on the North Side, though, I'm sure if the Red Line were moved underground and the city sold the land above ground at market rate, there would be plenty of money. And if we save the elevated tracks, maybe there would even be a few extra bucks for the crowning jewel in the greening of Chicago: a bicycle skyway. Rails to trails is nothing new. Obsolete railway lines all over the country are being converted to bike trails. This would be the ultimate trail. Slick on and off ramps for this bike highway in the sky. Sporadic coffee pedal-through cafes. An uninterrupted view of the skyline. Maybe some hip shops along the way. Now that's a commute I can live with. Mayor Richard Daley wants to be remembered as the man who left his green mark on the city. This is no small plan. The world would take notice, and commuters of all types -- underground and above ground -- would delight. I can just imagine the morning traffic report: "Most of the regular delays out there this morning. On the outbound Kennedy, it's 45 minutes to the junction. Watch out for an overturned truck off to the side at Addison, where there's still a gapers block. The inbound Ryan is heavy from 95th Street all the way to the Circle Interchange. Fifty-five minutes both ways. The Red Line is 30 quick minutes all the way downtown. And as usual the North Side Bike Skyway is clear sailing in both directions." ---------- Jeff Libman, author of "An Immigrant Class: Oral Histories from Chicago's Newest Immigrants," teaches English as a second language at Truman College in Chicago. |
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