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Chicago 'L'

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The 'L' is the principal urban heavy rail and metro serving Chicago, Illinois in the United States. It is colloquially known by several names: Chicago El, Chicago L, El, the 'L', CTA Trains, and other variations.

The 'L' consists of eight rail lines totalling 106.1 route miles (57.1 miles elevated, 36.9 miles surface, and 12.1 miles subway) on over 242.6 miles of double-track rail line and 144 stations. 17 of these stations include "Park-'n'-Ride" facilities for customers who drive to CTA rail stations. The total number of parking spaces systemwide is approximately 6,639.

The CTA website says "CTA’s train system is called the ‘L’, short for 'elevated.'" Networked as a series of rail lines, the Chicago Elevated connects downtown Chicago with eight adjacent suburban cities, towns and villages. The Chicago Transit Authority operates several mass transit programs including the Elevated and a more often used city bus system. The oldest segments of the Chicago Elevated date to 1892.

The 'L' is the third busiest rail mass transit system in the United States, behind New York and Washington. According to 2003 statistics prepared by the Chicago Transit Authority, 494,743 people rode the Chicago Elevated each weekday. 262,791 people rode each Saturday while 180,951 people rode each Sunday. This is an annual ridership of 150 million. Despite the fame of the Chicago Elevated, it is not the most popular service (in terms of usage) provided by the Chicago Transit Authority. More Chicago residents use the city bus system which has 148 routes connecting all the neighborhoods of Chicago. The statistics noted that for every person that rode the Chicago Elevated, two people rode the city bus system. It is the only major rapid transit system that provides 24-hour service outside of New York.

The 'L', while nicknamed as such when it was entirely elevated, also includes subway portions on its Red Line and Blue Line routes. Along the expressways that lead into and out of Chicago, the 'L' has three lines that run on tracks constructed within the medians. Chicago pioneered the use of the expressway median for rail lines in the 1950s. There are also open-cut and/or grade-level portions (with street crossings) on some parts of the system.

Contents

Lines

Chicago 'L'
Chicago Transit Authority
  Red Line
  Orange Line
  Yellow Line
  Green Line
  Blue Line
  Purple Line
  Brown Line
  Pink Line
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Main article: List of Chicago Elevated stations 
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Jackson/State street stop on the Red Line.
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Jackson/State street stop on the Red Line.

A westbound Chicago Elevated crosses the south branch of the Chicago River.
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A westbound Chicago Elevated crosses the south branch of the Chicago River.

Passengers wait for the Brown Line at Quincy station.
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Passengers wait for the Brown Line at Quincy station.

Two CTA trains approach the T-junction at the southeast corner of The Loop.
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Two CTA trains approach the T-junction at the southeast corner of The Loop.

Currently, there are eight rail lines of the Chicago Elevated. Since 1993 under Richard M. Daley, Mayor of Chicago, each rail line is classified by color and destination name:

Previously, the rail lines were given route names based on cardinal directions. For example, the present-day Blue Line was formerly the West-Northwest Route. Passengers were forced to rely on station platform signs to determine destinations of particular trains. Trains also were given names based on principal terminals. The former O'Hare–Congress–Douglas designation of the Blue Line reflects this.

As part of the effort to make the Chicago Elevated easier to navigate for newcomers, current terminal or branch names for some lines have changed from the historical neighborhood names to terminal station names. The changes are:

These changes do not eliminate all confusion, however. Visitors to the city should be warned that a redundant naming system can complicate travel in Chicago. For example there are four stations named Pulaski and five named Kedzie. It should also be noted that none of the three stations named Chicago lies in the Chicago Loop, the area visitors often assumed 'Chicago' refers to. These stations, in fact, refer to Chicago Avenue, which lies six city blocks (3/4 mile) north of the northern boundary of the loop.

Five Chicago Elevated lines (Brown, Green, Orange, Pink, and Purple) converge in Chicago's central business district to form a small rectangular nexus around the district referred to as the "Loop", roughly 0.4 miles (650m long) east-to-west and 0.6 miles (960m) long north-to-south. While many believe that the city's center earned the name "Loop" from this very conspicuous section of the "L", the term actually predates the "L" and refers to a now-retired circular routing of streetcars through downtown.

The Red and Blue lines serve the heart of Chicago via subways under State and Dearborn streets, respectively. These are the only 24-hour lines in the system, but having them makes it distinctive, along with the New York City Subway and the Port Authority Trans-Hudson, as one of the few 24-hour rapid transit systems in the world. The Skokie Swift, a shuttle from Howard Street at the city's northernmost limit to Dempster Street in suburban Skokie, does not serve the vicinity of the Loop and is the only "L" line not to run on weekends.

Pink Line

The CTA began a new route on June 25, 2006. The Pink Line is essentially a reconfiguration of the Douglas Park branch of the Blue Line which once operated between April 4, 1954 and June 22, 1958 when the route was rerouted from the old West Side 'L' system during construction of the Eisenhower Expressway. It travels from the 54th/Cermak terminal in Cicero to the Polk-Medical Center station in Chicago. At this point, instead of joining the Congress (Forest Park) branch of the Blue Line, the Pink Line proceeds via the Paulina Street Connector to the Lake Street branch of the Green Line and then clockwise around the Loop Elevated tracks via Lake-Wabash-Van Buren-Wells. The new route configuration serves 22 stations instead of 35 stations on the present 54th/Cermak-O'Hare Airport routing. It will operate during a 180-day trial period and is not permanent yet.

Expansion plans

The CTA has several plans for renovation and future expansion of the "L" system. The Authority recently completed massive infrastructure reconstruction on the Douglas (54th/Cermak) branch of the Blue Line. The current projects are the renovation of the Dan Ryan branch of the Red Line, which includes station renewal, trackwork and other system upgrades, and an ambitious rehabilitation and capacity-expansion project for the Brown Line (Ravenswood), a line that has been largely untouched since the first decade of the twentieth century. The Brown Line Capacity Expansion plan will most notably renovate existing stations while extending platform lengths to support 8 car trains and making all stations fully accessible. Work on the Brown Line project was started on February 20, 2006 and is scheduled to be completed in 2009.

The CTA also continues to work towards the creation of the Circle Line (also known as the Super Loop), a new L line which would form a large circle around the Loop and connect various other lines and Metra trains. More info available on the [Chicago-L.org] website. Aside from still missing one or more Crosstown rail lines outside of downtown Chicago, the 'L' suffers from a lack of service to some of Chicago's biggest attractions (such as Navy Pier, the Museum Campus, McCormick Place and the Museum of Science and Industry).

Other possible future expansions include:

There have been funding problems recently provoking a scare of service cuts and fare increases, but a bailout from the state has subdued the so-called "doomsday plans," at least for now.

Chicagoland connections

The Chicago 'L' does not connect directly to any Metra station in downtown Chicago, and at no point connects to an Amtrak station. If you plan on transferring between services in Chicago, plan ahead. The connections are not intuitive and often confusing, especially to visitors. Connections to commuter rail, intercity rail, intercity buses, and airports: Outlying transfer points between "L" trains and Metra: Outlying transfer points between "L" trains and Greyhound Lines bus service: Suburbs served by the "L", in alphabetical order:
The Purple Line primarily serves Evanston and Wilmette, running express services to downtown Chicago, sometimes via Wrigley Field in Lake View East.
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The Purple Line primarily serves Evanston and Wilmette, running express services to downtown Chicago, sometimes via Wrigley Field in Lake View East.

Name Debate

There is a long-standing debate over how to print the common nickname for the CTA rail system.

The use of 'L' for the entire system, derived from the common "el" as short for "elevated railroad" dates back to the system's earliest days and is used as a formal moniker in the same way that "Subway" (with a capital "S") is used to refer to the New York City Subway, even where elevated.

The official, registered, trademarked name for the CTA rail system, including elevated, subway, at-grade, and open-cut portions of the system, as used by CTA, is the capital letter "L," in quotes. Both 'L' and "L" are used by CTA.

While, in the earlier days of the system, "L" (with double quotation marks) was often used by CTA predecessors such as the Chicago Rapid Transit Company (CRT), it would appear that a stylistic decision inside CTA resulted in single-quotes (') being preferred on certain printed materials and signage rather than double quotes ("). This seems to not be a firm policy today, but is still visible in some signage, including recent, full-color fiberglass 'L' system maps posted in CTA stations.

The more generic "el" is widely-used to describe segments of elevated systems that have or do exist in other American cities, including New York City and Philadelphia and, because of its informal nature, should not be used to describe the entirety of the CTA 'L' system, which includes infrastructure over elevated, through subway, at-grade, and open-cut structures.

Still, many people use "el," to describe the entire system—and even "El" (capitalized as though it's formal and a proper name), including a number of media organizations. Time Out Chicago once responded to a letter regarding this debate explaining that it chose "El" stylistically because it would be easier for many people, especially people originally from outside of Chicago, to decipher.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
[media]

External links


Currently operating heavy rail rapid transit systems in the United States
MBTA Blue, Orange, and Red Lines | MTA New York City Subway and Staten Island Railway | PATH | SEPTA Market-Frankford and Broad Street Lines | PATCO Speedline | Baltimore Metro Subway | Washington Metro | MARTA | Miami Metrorail | Tren Urbano | RTA Rapid Transit Red Line | Chicago 'L' | BART | LACMTA Red Line

 

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