Takeoff time for CTA's Midway Line - Chicago Transit Authority - includes related article

Railway Age, June, 1993

When Chicago's new Loop-to-Midway Airport rapid transit line opens this summer, it will not only fill a critical gap in the city's rail transit network. It will also provide the Chicago Transit Authority with a valuable testing ground for innovations that could one day alter the character of all CTA operations.

One of these is single-person crewing. Another is an exact-fare system that precludes the handling of cash by station agents.

"The other lines are going to copy what we do here on Midway," predicts Leon Fields, a 23-year CTA veteran who is general manager of the new line. "People are sometimes reluctant to change. The Midway Line gives us the opportunity to do new things, because the people here don't have ingrained habits."

* How Midway differs. Opening of the Midway Line for revenue service was, in late May, still on the waiting list of Chicago's coming attractions. But most systems were "go," test trains were running smoothly, and takeoff time seemed imminent.

The Midway Line runs nine miles from Midway Airport into the Loop, circulating the elevated downtown structure shared by three other CTA lines. It marks a high point for the CTA in both advanced technology and customer service orientation.

While the line has been engineered to match the characteristics of other CTA routes, Midway is undeniably CTA's state-of-the-art. A new fleet of up to 108 Mornson Knudsen-built 3200-series vehicles with microprocessor-controlled propulsion systems will traverse the ballasted track, in consists of up to eight cars. Many of the cars that will be dedicated to the Midway Line are already running on the CTA, and if production continues at its present rate, the entire 256-car order, for service throughout CTA, may be filled by year's end.

A dramatic difference between Midway and other CTA line operations is that Midway trains will have single-person crewing, an option made possible by such advances as electronic communication between passengers and operator, and a conductor's control and slave unit arrangement that allows the operator to perform all train functions without leaving the cab.

The new MK cars represent a gain for CTA on another important front. They are being delivered at a cost of around $800,000 each, compared to nearly $1 million for the preceding 2600-series delivered more than a decade ago. The new cars offer seating for 39, plus accommodations for the disabled and standing room for more passengers than previous CTA vehicles.

Because of the good price, the budgeted cost of $111 million for Midway Line cars was revised down to $86 million. And MK, according to Rail Systems Group President and CEO Tom Smith, feels the company also did well, ben&ting from the sizable contract and the chance to enter the new-transit-car market with a high-profile project. Smith reports that the "success of the CTA program helped considerably" with three or four additional new-car contracts, including agreements with Bay Area Rapid Transit, CaITrans, Chicago's Metra, and Amtrak.

In another marked departure from previous CTA systems, and in contrast with the way the rest of the system presently operates, the Midway Line will use an exact-fare collection system, which the CTA hopes will contribute to cost savings for itself and time savings for passengers. In fact, the line in its entirety should contribute to a modest cost savings over the existing fleet of express buses that presently serve the corridor.

The Midway line offers a smooth fide--smoother than any other CTA line. Maximum speeds of up to 55 mph are expected to allow the trains to travel the eight-station route one-way in around 25 minutes. On opening day, rush hour trains will run with six-minute headways, while off-peak traffic will operate with 10-minute headways.

"I've had test trains run, and we've carried people who have been in the system longer than I, and the comments have been that the ride is unbeatable," says Leon Fields.

* A need for Chicago. As Chicago grew, transportation corridors quickly developed along the economically successful, densely populated corridors that radiated from the downtown Loop to the north, northwest, west, and south. The addition of the Dan Ryan transit line in the late '60s, which runs parallel to the expressway along the southern corridor, left only one of the city's major transportation corridors unserved: the southwest.

Long recognized as needing fast, efficient rapid transit that would not be subject to the whims of traffic and weather, the southwest corridor of the city did not, unfortunately, meet certain criteria as well as did those corridors that developed earlier. "The southwest side historically was a fairly low-density area in terms of population," explains David Larson. senior project director for the Southwest Transit Project, the special-purpose branch of the Chicago DOT's Transit Division that has handled the Midway Line's design and construction. "It was after World War II that the area south of 47th Street and west of Kedzie was developed."