The bus system is overloaded and overworked; the bus route that runs into Southwest Portland and its suburbs is crowded even during off-hours and weekeneds; the express bus is even more crowded when it runs (weekday rushhours). Yet we have a shiny new “commuter rail” line that is empty during the few rush hours that it runs.

Same thing happened in San Juan. The unfinished system is a disaster when it comes to ridership!

… Speculative transit lines in areas with little demonstrated ability to generate TOD on other transit lines …

The fact that the formulas apparently favored BRT is due more to bogus research on how many choice commuters will really accept lame BRT service than anything else – it’s not an inherent fault of the idea that we ought to consider the return on investment.

That is a bizarre framing of the issue. The question is why total saving of commute time is considered an especially valuable return on investment, and development, energy efficiency, or emissions reductions only merit consideration if that first priority of saving commute time is met.

We’ve never had the funding to upgrade the existing system to the extent needed, and the people in charge of the CTA simply don’t seem to have ever seen the need for speed, punting on things such as straightening out the double curve at Sheridan and the 10mph curve on the Montrose Avenue bridge, or closing stations that are two blocks from the next station. Transit use and viability in low-rise and lower-density Washington DC is now arguably better than Chicago in large part because the speed competes directly with driving.

And the only zoning department that really got it with regard to urban density and getting people to live closer in lieu of faster transit was Daley senior’s, which made all the changes in the early 1970s that enabled the near north and neat south high rise condo booms.