Chicago Olympics May Depend on Better Transit – But Where’s the Commitment?

Also, here’s the Chicago Zoning & Planning Commission’s Central Area Action Plan – recently approved – which is PLANNED TO provide significant additional downtown transit services:
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/portalContentItemAction.do?contentOID=537035558&contenTypeName=COC_EDITORIAL&topChannelName=Dept&entityName=Zoning+and+Land+Use+Planning&deptMainCategoryOID=-536903357&blockName=Zoning+and+Land+Use+Planning/Cont

Page 7 of this section (chapter 2) clearly shows the improvements (eg. Carroll Ave transitway; Clinton Ave subway):
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/webportal/COCWebPortal/COC_ATTACH/03-Chapt_2_Transport.pdf

The improvements are, not coincidentally, planned to be complete by 2016.

Tokyo’s total rail ridership, including the subway, is 36,000k per day. Just the JR East operations at Shinjuku Station have 766k boardings per day. Note that in Japan ridership is reported per day and not per weekday as in the US, which means that Shinjuku’s JR ridership is almost as high as this of the entire Metra and L systems combined.

Often countries seek the Games to announce their arrival on the world stage. Massive investments in public transit become part of that arrival statement.

I don’t think Chicago has a compelling case in that regard. If anything, the US is probably perceived as losing its world leading position. The main argument for Chicago then could be the hope of getting higher TV revenue if the Games are held at a good time for American broadcasters and cable channels. But Rio is only an our or two ahead of the US, probably negating that advantage.

But Spain won the Barcelona Games in 1992 in part because it was their way of saying “The Franco dictatorship is long gone, economic growth and EU membership are making ours a rich country, and Spain is like the other European countries now.” (Madrid may in effect lose to Barcelona this time — been there, done that.)

South Korea’s Games in 1988 had a similar role, and of course, Beijing in 2008. Even Athens in 2994 was saying, “We’re not a poor stepchild of Europe anymore; we can do this.”

Brazil wants to make that kind of boast now. With almost 30 years of political stability and more recently strong economic growth under a slightly left-of-center government, that could be a powerful argument for putting the Games in Rio.

Governments commit to the big spending on the Games for the prestige. They also hope the publicity will pay off in the long run with future tourism and with business investment. They also hope for a surge in tourism outside the host city.

Yonah mentions the plans for HSR to link Rio to Sao Paulo. That city is also expanding its rail transit system, with several extensions underway at once. Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, and Porto Alegre are all expanding their metros. Even Recife and Fortaleza in the poor Northeast of Brazil have new or growing rail systems. And Curitiba is one place that knows how to make BRT real, not just repackaged bus transit. It’s probably easier to do rail transit in all these other places than in Rio, where part of the city stands only a few feet above the water level, and the rest clings to mountainsides of solid rock.

if it was all about transit, NYC would have won hands down with its extensive system

No, London actually has a more extensive rail system. The Underground, National Rail, and the Overground have 2.9 billion annual riders among them; the New York City Subway, the LIRR, NJT, PATH, and Metro-North have 2 billion.

World Cup 2014 in Brazil may actually be a negative for Rio. It will most likely draw resources and attention away from 2016 preparations. IOC does not intend to play second fiddle to any other event and they will be just that from now until 2014 in Brazil. Plus the World Cup resources are focused on soccer facilities in many cities, so the preparations needed for World Cup are only a small share of what is needed for the Olympics, and they’re distributed differently. If IOC thinks Brazil cannot keep the Games at at least as high a priority as the World Cup during 2010-2014, I bet they will take a pass. On the other hand, there will be no doubt that Chicago will give its undivided attention to the Games for the next 7 years. Rio 2020 anyone?

Not only is the transportation improvements in the bid underwhelming but so is the stadiums themselves. I can’t say there is one defining piece of architecture in the whole thing really. The Olympic Stadium looks crappier than those of Sydney, Athens, Beijing, and London. The only saving grace is due to the lack of grandeur in the facilities there is possibly a lower carbon footprint. I think it still has a decent chance of winning but I don’t see much of a long-term legacy on the city.

Alon, do you EVER bother to look up any of the stats you state?

From Page 7 of the American Public Transit Association’s 2009 Fact Book. . .

“The largest transit agency, MTA New York City Transit, carried passengers on 3.3 billion trips for 11.5 billion miles.” Around two-thirds of this is subway. London did actually finally surpass New York this year, thanks to the huge expansion of ridership in London over the past several years, but largely due to growth in bus services. London Underground is still less than half the New York Subway in riders. For 2008/09, they’re at 2.247 billion journeys by bus, 1.089 billion on the Tube. See Transport for London’s Annual Report and Statement of Accounts for 2008/09.

Furthermore, this substantial New York number, 60 percent above what you stated, does NOT include NJT, the Long Island Railroad, or other New York area providers. It is only New York City Transit. See Page 8 of the APTA 2009 Fact Book. The total number of passenger trips for the metro area is 4.054 billion (rounded). See Page 10 of the APTA 2009 Fact Book. More than double the number you wrote down.

More importantly for your assertion, London was well behind New York in city transit ridership at the time of the Olympic bidding for 2012, not ahead of it, and with a substantial distance from central London to the stadium in contrast to New York’s approach of putting a stadium downtown, transportation was a very legitimate question mark over the London bid. Of course, as New York discovered, not bothering to offer an Olympic stadium at all is guaranteed to ruin any bid for the Games, while London answered the IOC’s concerns with a far more coherent approach to making use of the high speed rail link among other things.

When you look at Chicago in this context, the system here in the Windy City is wholly inadequate even by the standards of London’s initial bid book. This, in short, is a situation that really could break the deal over transportation. Regional rail-to-subway connections are terrible, and not scheduled to be addressed until the Circle Line and/or Clinton Street subway open in the 2020s. The capacity of the ‘el is inadequate, a 140 mile system carrying substantially fewer riders than Toronto’s 43 mile system due to short trains operating at slack headways. And many Olympic venues are significantly off major transit routes.

A word on the CTA’s Circle Line, as it was extensively covered by Jeff S’s detailed post. In theory, as Jeff points out, it looks pretty good. In practice, there are some significant problems. First is the question of whether the city will actually deliver it. The city specifically declined to give a commitment, and the line is not adequately funded in the state of Illinois’ capital bill, which is very heavy on Downstate roads to nowhere and light on city infrastructure.

Second is what happens with the Circle’s relationship to the Red Line. As things stand, plans call for trains to share the already-crowded Red Line subway, creating a significant potential issue with headways. That can only be solved if the Red Line were to get its own new route, the Clinton Street Subway also called for in city planning documents that would directly connect Union and Ogilvie Stations as part of the West Loop Transportation Center, but the subway portion alone is a $3 billion scheme that will take substantially longer to develop.

Alon, London breaks journeys down so that a bus trip followed by a rail is a separate trip. TfL data are broken down by mode and by operator, providing separate numbers for Underground, Overground, buses, Docklands Light Railway, National Rail etc, hence, inherently unlinked data. I see no difference in how TfL data are calculated from how APTA data are calculated.

Certainly not, Alon, on the buses, where in 2006 they switched to a new method of calculating ridership that substantially upped the number. With Oyster, they can, and do, count each boarding separately.

As for rail — where as you note TfL’s ridership is by trip, not per train (adding up the lines separately yields about 1.3 billion, rather than the slightly over 1.1 billion that’s quoted systemwide) — I have a question for you with regard to US data, that I want you to answer complete with source:

I had always understood measurement by boarding to be each pass through a fare barrier. For buses, that of course produces an unlinked trip. For any fare-barrier-equipped heavy rail system, however, it does not unless passengers must go through barriers to change trains. Even a system that records exits like Washington DC can’t automatically see the middle segment of a rail-rail-rail trip. So what’s going on here? Measurement by boarding, in which case fare-barrier controlled journeys on heavy rail aren’t strictly “unlinked”? Or extrapolation of barrier-controlled journeys on an arbitrary ratio (APTA estimates about 10 to 30 percent of transit riders transfer en route, depending on the agency).

For at least 13 years there have been plans to convert the Metra Electric to operate as part of the CTA as the CTA Gray Line, now referred to as the Gold Line. This plan to improve the South Side economic condition was created many, many years before the Olympics were even thought of.

Even the IOC noted that there were no
concrete plans for rail service between the venues by the 2016 committee, just vague references to using “existing infrastructure”.

The Electric District runs within footsteps of all the South Lakefront venues, and it is a 4-track Class I Railroad; not a miniature train like CTA’s el (able to carry a much higher per hour passenger load).

When the IOC say’s Metra will carry 2/3 of the rail passengers during the event,
do they mean carrying large numbers of people from the suburbs into the city; or do they mean the Electric District carrying event participants along the Lakefront between venues?

To construct a new CTA type rail line along the Metra Lakefront alignment would cost 1 to 2 billion dollars, which no one is going to spend for a 2 week event; even with leaving a legacy for the South Side communities.

Using the Metra Electric to provide service between the Lakefront Olympic venues will NOT work without fare and service integration with adjacent CTA rail and bus services.

Due to FRA/FTA regulations, new rail lines using CTA type trains cannot operate in common or on adjacent ROW to Class I trains; so CTA type trains could not run on the 2 center Electric District tracks (even with conversion to 3rd rail) right next to Metra trains.

If the IOC was looking among other things for real rail plans, than we’ve already blown it.

It would cost less than $200 MILLION (not billion) to convert part of the Electric District to operate as the Gold line/Gray Line (the Gold Line utilizes only the Metra South Chicago Branch, the Gray Line uses the entire South Side in-city Metra service).

I think a least part of the reason for Chicago’s loss of the 2016 Olympics was the glaring lack of any kind of firm and viable transit plans.

Purposely vague references to “shuttle bus” service, and “closed roadway lanes” is all that was offered by the 2016 bid committee.

Yet even after the IOC visited Chicago to check out all the venues and facilities (and had to have seen with their own eyes the 4 track Metra Electric Division commuter rail line interlacing all the Lakefront sites; and probably wondered why the bid committee made little or no reference to it, when it should have been one of the most promoted features), the bid committee continued to promote a purposely undefined “shuttle bus” / “closed lane” transportation system.

Proposed Red, Yellow, and Orange Line extensions are all many, many miles from the Lakefront and would have done nothing for inter-venue transit.

Many South Side individuals and Community Organizations have lobbied the 2016 bid committee for years to include the CTA Gold Line/Gray Line plans to convert the Electric line to operate as part of the CTA in the bid proposals; but from personal experience they were largely ignored.

I now believe the idea of a “legacy of transit improvements” for the SE Side was the old donkey-stick-carrot trick by da’ mayor, and the 2016 bid committee.

There will NEVER be any (rail) transit improvements to the SE Lakefront Corridor now, as CTA and Metra would rather DIE and BURN IN HELL FOREVER to protect their fiefdoms, rather then work together to improve transit conditions for the people there.

Hyde Park will have [Star Trek Transporter] service before there is a Gold/Gray Line.

So sad…

Chicago really didn’t have anything concrete and fixing up that IC corridor wouldn’t have guaranteed Chicago the bid anyways.