All three of today’s Grid Shots photos come from Eric Rogers and feature the Kennedy “Expressway.”
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Passing Blue Line trains. With the Chicago Transit Authority’s new 5000-series train cars, the Blue Line will get the Pink Line’s 2600-series cars, to replace the butterfly doors (the oldest car in the system). Read more about the distribution on Chicago-L.org.
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A Blue Line train races traffic.
[flickr]photo:6007291991[/flickr]
Stand over a Chicago highway for five minutes and you’ll quickly realize that the traffic never ends. This is the Kennedy Expressway (I-90/94) near Montrose.
As always, we invite you to add your photos of sustainable transportation in Chicagoland to the Flickr group.
I don’t get the logic of assigning the 5000s to the Pink and Green lines. Given that a big benefit of these new cars is the extra space from the new seating arrangement, they should go to the most space-constrained lines. That would definitely be the Red Line, and then probably the Blue or Brown.
The logic goes like this:
1. Pink Line has fewer trains in its yard.
2. 5000-series cars cannot be hooked up to other series cars.
3. Pink Line can be converted to ALL 5000 series cars faster than any other line so the yard only has to deal with one train type. Blue and Red Line yards would have mixture of 5000 series and other series for a long time if they received 5000 series cars before other lines. 4. Operators can learn the new trains on less-busy lines.
5. This will work out kinks in their operation.
I get the logic. I still don’t think it makes much sense. It’s fine to use the Pink Line as a test run, but eventually these cars should be moved to a higher-capacity line. Otherwise the purchase was a huge waste.
They ordered 706 cars.
The Blue Line only has 318 cars currently.
The Pink Line has 44 cars currently.
And the Red Line has 336 cars currently.
http://www.chicago-l.org/trains/assignline.html
Point taken. But why the Green Line then? Seems like the Pink Line test should be enough to get the kinks out….
Green Line yards also have few cars, so both lines (Pink and Green) are for training operators.
The goal here is to NOT have yards with mixed cars because of their incompatibility and added logistical stress.