Public Transportation-Easy or Not? (Chicago, Evanston: apartments, how much, home)

[Deb0624]

I am a 36 yo single woman, thinking of moving to Chicago in the next year or so, and my plan would be to live in either Lakeview or Lincoln Park and get rid of my car (which would be a refreshing change from how much I have to use it to get around in the sprawling city of Charlotte!). Anyway, is the public transportation easy to navigate for a beginner? Is the El super crowded during rush hour? Would it be better to find a place to live that is reasonably close to the El, or is it better to live by Lakeshore Drive and take an express bus downtown to work? How late at night can you ride the El alone, or should you always plan on a cab ride home after a certain time? Thanks for your input.

[j33]

Over the next few years, living off the El on the northside of the city will be frustrating indeed. They are starting a track repair project that is going to make it quite unpleasant during rush hour until 2009.

The answer is yes, the 'el' is very easy to navigate for a beginner, the buses a bit less so. And yes, the 'el' is very crowded during rush hour, usually standing room only, sometimes trains are too crowded to get on and you have to wait for another one if you are like me and live very close to downtown.

The lakeshore express buses get stuck in LSD traffic, so they can be a bit of a pain as well, but are your best option if you live close to the lake because it is often a bit of a hike to the 'el' from those lakefront neighborhoods.

And finally, I'm a single woman around your age and my general rule is that after 11:30 or so I take a taxi home if by myself, if I'm with friends, I'll take the 'el' home whenever (I've taken it without incident at 3am). However, I live around wicker park (a bit to the south), so the neighborhood is almost always busy on the weekends (even at 3am).

Also, there are two good car sharing schemes for those times you want to have a car for errands etc.

[domergurl]

When I started working in the loop in 1992 after getting my masters at Indiana University, I lived in Evanston because I wasn't ready to live in the city. In Evanston, I had the choice of the L or the Metra all within walking distance of my apt. It was a great way to transition and still keep my car. Once I familiarized myself with the city and found a neighborhood I wanted to move to, I sold my car and moved. The trains are easy to navigate. The busses are a little tricker, but you get used to what routes go where.

Have fun!

[prairiestate]

Transit in Chicago is collapsing, literally. The EL system in particular. The CTA needs 6 billion (yes, billion) dollars worth of infrastructure improvements. They don't have even a tiny fraction of that. There are numerous slow zones over decaying track and bridges that have slowed trains to a crawl. The train cars themselves are becoming increasingly noisy and drafty as maintenence is defered. I always feel pretty safe on transit, but it's common to bothered by panhandlers, loud radios, etc. They really need more police patroling the the trains. Many bus routes are notoriously late, especially outside downtown and the north side. The system is not in good shape, and without a huge infusion of cash, it's only going to get worse.

[j33]

prairiestate - no kidding. I sometimes wonder if it is going to literally collapse , Kruesi seems to be trying his damnedest to run it into the ground. I cannot fathom the collapse of the CTA, but it seems to be going that direction, and it makes me nervous, quite nervous (I live on the near northwest side with no car, if the CTA collapsed, I still probably wouldn't be able to own one because there would be nowhere to put it (the garages are mostly rented, the streets are full, and like most 19th century apartments, mine didn't come with parking) nor would I be able to park it downtown in the garages that would all be full from everyone else driving down there. Sometimes I wonder how far things will go, the city would collapse (I'm talking civil unrest and economic catastrophe) without the CTA, I fail to understand why nobody seems to care.

I've attended a few of the CTA public hearings, the anger and frustration is palpable (and shared).

[Drover]

j33:

Check out the CTA map of the slow zones. Notice where they are, and where they aren't. Wads of money have been spent rebuilding and refurbishing the L system on the South Side. The South side portion of the Green Line was shut down entirely for two years while they practically rebuilt it from scratch. What an incredibly sensible investment to rebuild an L line that runs parallel to another L line two to four blocks away for seven miles. It remains practically abandoned since the riders moved to the Red Line when the Green Line was shut down and many never moved back. It would have probably been a hell of a lot cheaper and made more sense to just abandon the southern portion of the Green Line except to create a trunk from the Red Line to serve the portion that goes to 63rd and Ashland. The 54/Cermak portion of the Blue Line (sorry, "Pink Line") just underwent a renovation that cost, what, 600 million dollars? The south portion of the Red Line is getting revamped along with the Dan Ryan construction project, and by the looks of things, it's pretty close to done.

Lord knows much of the system down there needed it, but it seems like so much money was thrown at the South Side, which has a fraction of the ridership, that they almost seemed to forget that a much heavier burden is placed on the northern portions of the system. It would have been nice to see that money spread around a bit more equitably, but sometimes political necessity trumps common sense.

Meanwhile, the major capital investment project on the North Side is to expand the Brown Line's capacity from 6 cars to 8. And won't we all be thrilled to have a 7th and 8th car crawling toward the Loop at 15 miles an hour...

[NSH]

This link answers drovers questions as to why 2 lines run parallel through the south side
http://www.chicago-l.org/history/CTA4.html

[Drover]

"It was not until the late 1980s that work finally began on the necessary subway connection, though the work was slow and cumbersome. In the meantime, both lines had to maintain a high level of service, running long trains that were full on the Howard and Dan Ryan lines and virtually empty on the Lake and Englewood-Jackson Park lines...

"When the CTA created the Green Line in the 1993 realignment, they combined the city's oldest (Englewood-Jackson Park) and second oldest (Lake) rapid transit lines into a single route. And now the one hundred-plus year old lines were deteriorating, partially due to sheer age and partially due to subpar maintenance in the cash-strapped days of the 1970s and 80s. The structure was becoming a safety hazard, the CTA claimed, and there were only two choices: close the lines down and replace them with improved bus service or overhaul the entire line.

"The CTA seriously considered closing the lines for a time, but political and citizen pressure were major factors in their ultimate decision to leave the line open and rehabilitate it..."

So, we spent $300,000,000 to revamp a nearly empty line because of political pressure rather than spend it in a pragmatic fashion that would have netted a much higher utility-per-rider had it been spent where the actual demand was. I can understand rebuilding and keeping the West Side portion of the Green Line. Rebuilding the South Side portion made redundant by the far more utilized Red Line was a tremendous waste of resources.