Dear Neighbor,
I just learned today that three of the six options the CTA is considering in its proposed "improvements" to the Red and Purple line include the permanent closing of the Jarvis el station. This is unacceptable.
As I reported to you last week, the CTA is hosting a series of "public scoping meetings" to discuss the proposals. I urged you to attend the 49th Ward meeting to join me in pushing for improvements to the Jarvis, Morse and Loyola stations. Little did I know that not only were improvements to Jarvis not contemplated, the CTA was in fact thinking about closing the station!
At this point, no funding for the Red Line improvements has been identified and the work is still many years away, but it's not too early to state loudly and clearly that the Jarvis el station must stay open.
Join me at the CTA's "public scoping meeting" TOMORROW ( Wednesday, January 26th), 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. at New Field School, 1707 W. Morse (at Clark). Tell the CTA you OPPOSE the closing of the Jarvis el Station. Instead, demand the CTA give our community a long overdue NEWJarvis Station, as well as improvements to the Morse and Loyola stations. I apologize for the last minute notice, but as I indicate above, I just learned today that the CTA was contemplating the closing of Jarvis.
Below I've attached a flier urging people to attend the meeting. Please feel free to make copies of the flier and distribute to your friends and neighbors:
Save_the_Jarvis_El[1].pdf (115 KB)
Save_the_Jarvis_El[1].pdf (115 KB)At a time when the CTA is looking to increase ridership, it makes no sense to close a train station and force commuters to walk blocks out of their way to another station. Moreover, the Jarvis Square business district depends on the Jarvis station for its survival. The recent rejuvenation of Jarvis Square would be undone in an instant if the el station were to close.
Please note that the public scoping meeting is not a traditional community meeting. Instead, it's more like an open house. The CTA will have six tables and display boards representing the six different options under consideration. Make sure you visit the tables that contain the closing of the Jarvis Station as one of the options and register your opposition to that plan.
If you are unable to attend tomorrow's meeting in the 49th Ward, you can attend one of the other northside community meetings. There is one tonight in the 48th Ward and another on Thursday in Evanston. Below are the time and locations of all three meetings:
48th WardTonight (Tuesday, January 25)
6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Senn High School
5900 N. Glenwood Ave
49th WardTomorrow (Wednesday, January 26)
6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
New Field School
1707 W. Morse (at Clark)
6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Senn High School
5900 N. Glenwood Ave
49th WardTomorrow (Wednesday, January 26)
6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
New Field School
1707 W. Morse (at Clark)
EvanstonThursday, January 27th
6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center
1655 Foster St.
6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center
1655 Foster St.
In addition, the CTA is also receiving written comments. Please write to the CTA and tell them you oppose the closing of the Jarvis station and instead you want to see the station fully renovated. Comments may be submitted by mail, e-mail or fax, with attention to:
Steve Hands
Strategic Planning & Policy
Chicago Transit Authority
P.O. Box 7602
Chicago, IL 60680-7602
E-mail: RPM@transitchicago.com
Fax: (312) 681-4195
Thank you for your help on this very critical issue to our community.
Sincerely,
Strategic Planning & Policy
Chicago Transit Authority
P.O. Box 7602
Chicago, IL 60680-7602
E-mail: RPM@transitchicago.com
Fax: (312) 681-4195
Thank you for your help on this very critical issue to our community.
Sincerely,
Joe Moore
17 comments:
I was wondering when this was going to be discussed.
What does Alderman Joe Moore think of this? His office is right by the Jarvis EL stop.
I know its weird to have a stop at Jarvis, its so close to Howards stop. But it brings so much life to that part of Rogers Park that I think its a necessity that it stays.
And also in general Im wondering whats up with RP in general, not much discussion. Dead zone......
The CTA was planning a public hearing on Wednesday to discuss the various options and [Joe} Moore said he’ll be there with local residents to oppose any plans to close the Jarvis stop.
“We’ll have a call of arms to everybody to come to this meeting tomorrow night so that the CTA knows in no uncertain terms that this community wants this station improved, not shut down,” Moore said.
“Every 10 to 20 years, the CTA comes up with one of these hare-brained schemes to close the Jarvis station,” Moore added. “And every single time, the community rises up in anger and the CTA backs down, so we’re going to do it again.”
What's more interesting is that Craig has become another one of Joe Moore's mouth pieces. After all those years of campaigning against Joe, Craig has is now a 49th Ward house pet.
Hey Broken Heart you got linked to Curbed Chicago with this article.
What the heck is Curbed Chicago?
Its a real estate Blog.
Curbed has Newyork, LA, Hamptons, National, SF too I think, sections.
It has alot of good news about restaurants opening, developments, just good city stuff news.
You should check it out.
Chicago was just added this past october but Curbed has been around awhile.
http://chicago.curbed.com/
They planned to close the Jarvis station throughout the '70s and '80s too. It was only open weekdays and rush hours then. So, now that "Jarvis Square" is a destination people might actually go to, they plan to shut it down. What would that save? One CTA "attendant" salary? Maybe one or two minutes per Red Line run? Typical short-sighted thinking by the CTA.
Close Jarvis already!
It is too damn close to Howard & there's no money to fix it up because any fix up will require it to be brought up to ADA standards.
And don't waste your time on these idiotic scoping meetings, they're just required because the CTA has wasted more money paying overpaid & useless consultants to come up with six plans for the future of the L north of Belmont. Four of which are totally ridiculous, one of which is completely insane: Replace the four track main & build a two track subway from Belmont north to Howard while leaving the tracks above ground from Belmont to Armitage.
CTA has wanted to close the Jarvis stop for a long time, and planned to do it upon completion of the new Howard Station.
I can see why many want to keep it, but it slows the line down and it is too close to Howard. It would cost at least $10M and probably much more to build it to ADA codes, and it strikes me as wasteful in view of the proximity of the immense Howard Station just a couple of blocks away.
The important thing is to get the decrepit stretch of the Red from Sheridan to Howard rebuilt. My boss was trained as a civil engineer and he has expressed concern for the safety of the line, considering all the crumbling concrete and exposed rebar.
Additionally, the line is too slow because of the many stops. Notice that the Wilson station, which will be hideously expensive to rebuild because of its bizarre configuration that currently could not accommodate an escalator or elevator, is about 21/2 blocks from the Lawrence, which is 2 blocks from the Argyle station. This suggests that perhaps the Lawrence station should be triaged, too.
We can't have everything. This line hauls 125,000 people a day and it's of great importance and value to the city economically. It needs to run faster.
clark st is correct, the plan to build a two-track subway to replace the 4-track existing line is deeply idiotic. Constructing a subway tunnel for this distance would be nightmarishly expensive ad reducing the line to 2 tracks would mean spending much more money than necessary for a real loss of capacity. Cramming the Purple and Red onto the same two tracks would slow service and cause a lot more delays, IMO.
Best solution, IMO, is rebuild the line in place, section by section, possibly widening it at stations where it is possible to do so in order to have wider platforms, as was done at Belmont and Fullerton.
We need to rebuild it so it will accommodate as many trains as possible and enable them to move much faster, because I have a feeling that in less than a decade, there will be MUCH more demand for transit.
The North Coast: I would love to get an answer as to why the Howard station was rebuilt within its original footprint.
Why they didn't widen out the right of way is baffling since the CTA already owned most of the land to the west of the ROW. But those incompetents allowed the new shopping to be built right up to the ROW.
From what I've learned, many agencies have a voice and a hand in the development or rebuild of an el station. CTA does not decide these things on its own, nowhere near.
Maybe that's the problem- too many agencies and bureaucrats and too many turf battles and too many different plans to coordinate.
Planning the Howard rebuild had to be coordinated by CTA, RTA, the owners of the adjacent property, the city's planning commission and the city's department of transportation. It was decided early on, a couple of decades ago, that it would be rebuilt in conjunction with a new shopping plaza like the one that is there now. But the financing fell apart for the shopping center, and there had to be a TIF for that, and so the station was delayed.
I can't begin to follow all the twists and turns it took, but it looks like trying to solve a 3-dimensional puzzle that is always moving around on you in space with some pieces flying away while new ones that don't quite fit, enter. The Wilson el looks to be a similar imbroglio- I talked to some surveyers who were taking measurements down by the station pursuant to its rebuild, a few years back. That was 5 years ago and you'll notice that the place hasn't been touched, except to close a couple of ground floor businesses. So who knows what is happening, whether the project is moving forward or not. I don't think all the agencies involved can keep track half the time.
Sometimes it seems to me that everything we do these days is too complex and involves too many decision-makers, too many different agencies, and tries to please too many constituencies that are at cross purposes. We need to find a way to simplify things, at least to the point where we can figure out how much they really cost us.
Well, less government agencies would be a great start!
if the rational is because howard is so close to jarvis, and its no big deal for people to actually walk more to get to the station...
we could probably do away with half the bus stops in the city as well. many places where its every block.
how about one station and one bus stop every half mile.
Of all the businesses in "Jarvis Square", one restaurant and the theater *may* have patrons that would utilize the Jarvis stop. Those businesses *might* be impacted. The other businesses are based on serving nearby residents. Once the NIMBY argument(or, IMBY please, as the case may be) is removed, practicality shows that the stop could and should be shut down. To the short-sighted who say "jeeze, its just one person's salary"; you forget, electricity, maintenance, insurance, and whatever is allocated (whether utilized or not) for security, in addition to the salaries of employees. Anyone, including Joe Moore, who believes that keeping or removing this El stop is the difference between the neighborhood thriving or not, really needs to get off the train and take a look around.
Agree with you, c e smith.
CTA has wanted to close that stop for a couple of decades, as well as those at Thorndale and Wilson, but has been prevented from doing so by neighborhood pressure.
The train is barely out of the Howard signal circuit when it gets to Jarvis. These redundant stops slow down the line and add to costs substantially.
These stops can be rebuilt and reopened if enough demand develops to justify more stops and going back to the old Stop A and Stop B pattern. In the old days, trains were mostly A trains or B trains, something that was necessary when ridership was really heavy before everyone bought cars and moved to the burbs.
There might be a massive influx of newly carless people (or at least their teen children) back into the city in coming decades as fuel grows more expensive. Then we can add more stops, and extend more lines.
But right now, the thing is to eliminate unnecessary costs and improve the service.
.
I am relieved to know that Joe, our alderpanderer, is on the case. No doubt he is backing the most fiscally responsible option.
.
Yeah go back to A and B trains.
If you look at the Redline south where it overlaps the Brown you effectively have an A and B type situation where the Brown line stops at smaller less major stations like Wellington.
Keep all the stations,
some trains will go to some of the stations and skip the others.
Post a Comment