San Francisco Area Transit: What I’m Afraid Of…

When I write about my concerns about the South Shore Expansions, this is part of what I’m thinking:

Doomsday scenario for sinking Bay Area transit: No weekend BART, bus lines cancelled or a taxpayer bailout.

The article talks about how a system which was built around people going to downtown San Francisco for work or entertainment is unable to operate without massive subsidies because few people go to downtown San Francisco anymore. They work at home, they live away from the city, and there’s no real reason to go to the city anymore.

The interesting part to me is the difference between the buses and the railroads. Buses can be reduced somewhat and made to work after a fashion – I’ve seen this in Chicago after a couple of cutbacks. Rail, on the other hand, gets hit more severely by cutbacks because of the fixed costs and their dependence on density of travel – cut back on that, and there’s no real way to inexpensively counterbalance those cutbacks.

Imagine this as the all-day service pattern, instead of for late nite/weekends

And the cutbacks can be huge – while it’s no real issue with ferry service not expanding as planned (we’ll just do with what we have for the moment, expand when we can if we can), two of the rail systems are facing crippling cutbacks. BART can be cut back to a three-line system, but the reduction of service that such a(n efficient) schedule implies and the fact that two major parts of the systems (Berkley and San Jose) will no longer have direct access to San Francisco will add inconvenience to a system with precious little redundancy, and after a 2.6 Billion upgrade to electric service on their line from San Francisco to Gilroy, Caltrain may be unable to make use of the newly electrified line’s advantages.

It’s the Caltrain work that interests me most, as we’re talking about improving a line so that it can keep up with foreseen future demand, only to find out that that demand will not be coming. 2.6 billion dollars of work done for benefits that have turned out to be useless.

This, of course, could not have been foreseen five-ten years ago – before Trump, before Covid, before remote working allowed the discovery of rural places with cheap housing and a slower pace of living that made the area’s major cities look like the unaffordable dumps that they were not allowed to be acknowledged as before. During the planning stage, all thoughts were to strengthen and empower the connections to both San Francisco and San Jose; to realize the circumstances would make such efforts unnecessary would have meant an ability to see into a future that didn’t look like an extrapolation of the present they were living in.

There were other transit expansions that were planned and carried out during this time. Marin County got their rail line that runs through to the ferry docks that are closest to San Francisco, and San Francisco finally got an extension of a tram line underground through downtown with the possibility of going through to the north side of San Francisco. BART has made a few expansion over the years (including one getting within reach of San Jose) and there’s a proposal to take BART into and through Downtown San Jose.

And all these extensions may prove to have been unnecessary, thanks to changes wrought by the past few years.

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What does this have to do with The South Shore Line Construction? Quite a bit, if you ask me.

Quite simply, we’re talking about a bunch of construction based on the idea that people would still go to Chicago for stuff, especially high-level work, and then head back to Indiana for the lower taxes and lower gas prices (and a lower level of service, but then if you don’t NEED those services…). Doubling the line from Gary to Michigan City means more (and faster) trains down the main line, allows for schedules based on regular intervals (memory, or clock face scheduling) and the possibility of decent intra-regional service (from Hammond to Michigan City and perhaps to South Bend); while a new line down to the Dyer/Munster Border will expand the service area in both Indiana and Illinois. Either way, we’re talking about a commuter railroad rebuilt with the idea of faster, better, car-free access to downtown Chicago – again, an idea that made sense in the world from before 2016 and may not make any sense in the world in 2023 and beyond.

Now, what if the expansions turn out to be unnecessary?

What if the present logjam of traffic going into Indiana is as bad as it’s going to get because the number of people driving into Indiana from Chicago turns out to be dropping? What if the main line ends up no longer able to draw the people that it had before, when the planners seemed forced to plan for expanding the main line? They can have their memory schedules, but when the level of boardings remains below their worst-case scenarios we’re having a line that was gilded for no use.

I can see the line to the Dyer/Munster border become unused the day it opens to service. It may have use as a freight connection (and I’d suggest that NICTD add connections for that purpose), but I can see the passenger stations left alone without any real use after being built.

All this because of COVID-19 and its effects. All this because anyone who can work at home wants very much to do that.

Consider that for every essential worker who was thankful for being able to go out to work, there were ten essential workers who wished they could stay (or go) home and five office workers who found working at home an absolute boon to their world. Those workers suddenly working from home got the ability to sleep a bit later than usual, the ability to dress much more casually than they could have gotten away with before, no commutes burning time and vehicle use, no need for overpriced, overtaxed lunches downtown (if they pay extra, it’s for food delivery), no need to deal with social cues or other issues of the office, and all the extra money and time gained from working at home instead of at a distant office. One could even take vacations, doing the work (either part-time or full-time) during the day and do one’s fun activities during the evening.

And where does that leave NICTD? With a setup of white elephants on a scale similar to the 2.8 billion spent on CalTrain for an Electrification that looks like it won’t be worth it. Imagine a group of underused facilities, or facilities which go from mainly passenger rail to almost exclusively freight rail, with the passenger aspect either set aside or stopped fully with the station platforms becoming obstacles for the freight lines (until they’re removed).

And that is what concerns me about this.

South Shore Line Expansion: Four Possibilities

As I’ve posted on before, Northwest Indiana’s South Shore is busy expanding. Not only is the main line being double tracked between Gary and Michigan City (with the stops getting some work done, some stops MAJOR work), but they’ve started work on The Westlake Corridor from Hammond to Dyer. Under normal conditions this would a major leap forward for public transit in Northwest Indiana.

But this isn’t “normal times.” Plans put forward when the trains were filling up and downtown offices were full are now being put into motion when trains run mostly emptied and there are massive vacancies all over downtown Chicago office space. Not only that, but we now have the Secondary and Tertiary results of Covid-19 in the form of inflation and continuing labor shortages – this, in a year when construction and building projects seem to have multiplied as a result of two years of enforced “benign neglect.”

Right now, with what’s happening in addition to the ambitious mix of projects going on with the South Shore Line, I can see four possible outcomes from the efforts:

I: Both projects completed and ready to run (Ideal).

There’s enough money to complete the project, either in full or with strategic corners cut (and by that, I mean knowing where a slight less money won’t lead to a major decline in quality or service). The main line is fully running by the end of 2024, the Westlake Corridor by 2025 or 2026.

II: Both projects left incomplete with major issues (Greatest Fear).

They try to complete both projects but are instead left with incompletions at every turn. 11th Street in Michigan City is completed and Miller is rebuilt, but single track is jerry-rigged over the rest of the construction area or “temporary” busing becomes “semi-permanent” as money is scrounged around to maybe complete the rest of the work ten years into the future; in addition there are skeletons of what’s supposed to be the Westlake Corridor but none of it is useful as the whole thing is left incomplete.

III: Projects are completed but unused for Transit (Another Worry).

The projects are complete, but at the cost of draining the Transit Agency of all funds to run the system. The tracks could add flexibility to the local freight lines, as having an extra set of tracks allows for timely repairs without delays in the system. In no way ideal, but it has its pluses.

IV: Westlake Project set aside to focus on rebuilding the Main Line (Acceptable).

Seeing how things are going inflation-wise, NICTD decides to “indefinitely delay” the Westlake Corridor to insure they can finish up the Double Tracking (plus other related works) on the Main Line. While the dream of The Westlake Corridor is put aside – possibly for good – the main line is duly improved, and service improves as a result.

Again – I’d like to see both expansion done, with work soon started on expanding Westlake down to St. John and Lowell, but I will accept a Lily-Gilding of the main line. What I DON’T want to see is construction only being partially completed before it’s stopped and band-aids being applied to keep things running – or the work being completed only to find out that it won’t be used for its intended purpose.

Viewing The Underpass – Three Thoughts

Walked over where 45th avenue is to go underneath the CN Railroad in Munster (Sorry, no pictures. Just went for the joy of exploring). Three things came to my mind:

1. Looks like certain corners were cut.
   Not so much the depth or the width in relation to the roadway (45th is divided underneath the railroad, as per the plan), but the rail overpass looks to have been built with the minimum amount of space given the angle of the road passing over it. I was hoping for something a bit more elegant with a bit more space for the Railroad passing above, but even with the zig-zagging of the overpass structure there’s only enough space for the two rail lines passing through.
   Update: While a minimum of coverage to the roadway is still in effect, there is definitely enough space for the trains to go over – even to the point of a minor derailment over the bridge.
2. Beauty Is In The Details…And Details Are Being Tossed Aside.
   I remember the difference between the bridge barriers that were built in the Fifties and Sixties. Those built in the Fifties may not have been the strongest, but they were at least built to be looked at and seen, while the sixties were built with strength, but not looks, in mind. The seventies and eighties went with the full “Jersey Barrier” (invented with compact cars in mind, similar but smaller than the GM (Texas) Barrier that was designed where Utility Trucks and Suburbans were more the norm – yes, they named a barrier after General Motors back when such a name made sense), and while more recent bridge barrier construction (as well as some other constructions) have at least made a nod to the perceiver, the focus on thickness pretty much limits them to certain stylizations of what works – whether it looks good or merely has enough noise in its facade to keep the brain from fully disengaging.
   Update: A pedistrian bridge has been added over 45th street south of the railroad tracks. It has the usual architecture to at least present as viewable from the road. Interesting note: the retaining wall facade has been painted the usual varieties of browns and beiges, again to keep the eye halfway engaged.
3. Looks Like The Full South Shore Line Expansion to Valparaiso is Kaput.
   With 20/20 hindsight, it looks like the idea of expanding the South Shore Line to Valparaiso through Hammond and Munster was a bridge too far, to invoke the irony. Better to have pushed forth expanding down the Monon line to Lowell back in the ’80s or ’90s, when the tracks were pretty much clear and the EJ&E was a quiet connector line run by United States Steel (USS or USX, depending on the year) or a related company instead of the outer bypass that remakes four separate lines into Chicago into a unified, connected system (link goes to map, note how the bluish line complements the solid red lines). However, more to the point: The bridge is a definite two rail lines wide with no space for expansion – and with the odd, zig-zag structure of the bridge itself meant for present-day efficiency instead of future expandibility, the idea of sending a branch of The South Shore Line down to Valparaiso via Griffith and Merrillville is not meant to happen.
   Update: The rail lines have been realigned to go over the bridge (back to the original line), and while it turns out there is ample space for the safe operation of two rail lines, there’s no space given for expansion – and note that CN required a third rail line to allow for the expansion of the South Shore line to Valparaiso via the CN line. And with bridges being an additional expense (especially with the walkway right up by the line on the south side), finding space for the once-expected expansion will be very likely impossible.

Those are my impressions of my two quick walkarounds where 45th Street will cross under the CN (formerly GTW) rail lines in Munster. It will be worth the work when 45th east of Calumet Avenue is finally opened back up – backups at the crossing will be reduced, if not eliminated at first, as the traffic for 45th gets diverted off Calumet Avenue – but do let the drawbacks be noted.

First finished September 9th, 2020.
Updates with new information made November 1st, 2020.

Update on South Shore Line Expansion

It’s been a while since I posted on the possibility of South Shore Expansion – mainly because it ended up being a nonissue (Valparaiso didn’t want any commuter trains coming to them to begin with, and in the end it seemed that the expansion was looked at out of duty instead of actual desire and forward planning), my enthusiasm for the project nonwithstanding. However, there are plans afoot and it looks like they’re serious for once.

To start with, though, we’re talking about a smaller footprint – nearly a Stub line in many ways, as the plan only goes so far as the Dyer-Munster city limits. I would have thought they would have wanted to at least go as far as to the Dyer Amtrak station and turn that into a true stop instead of what has to be seen now as a glorified Amshack (it is nice, but since there’s no ticketing and the station is used but twice a day…), but it appears that future plans for the West Lake line involve a station closer to US 30 in Dyer itself, and a station at the present Dyer Amtrak station would probably cause problems – especially once commuter-based development starts near the station, wherever it may be placed. Maybe they could move the Dyer Amtrak station where the South Shore Station is when the South Shore is finally extended south from the Dyer-Munster border.

How serious is this? Well, they’ve started drilling holes along the bicycle trail in Munster, checking out the soil conditions for the expansion. Now this shouldn’t be an issue simply because The Monon Line was laid back in the 1880s and used until the early 1980s, however the land was originally a swamp and a flood plain before a system of ditches drained the area and turned Munster into the Suburban Paradise that they pride themselves as being. While one could make the case that the land along the old rail line should be stable, it doesn’t hurt to check, as there have been lines built over old swampland that have ended up doing some mean leaning over the years.

Further Update On My Job (and what’s going on around me while I’m at it)

Just so you know, when I last talked about my job things were going pretty well for me. While people working mornings were taking hits on their hours, the afternoon people were getting full days and sometimes more. While whole areas were getting removed from regular (medicaid) service, the core of the service seemed to be going on as usual.

Well, things seem to have changed yet again. Now the afternoon people are getting hit, mainly by pushing the start times a bit later. Not only that, but the boss has actually grown a backbone with workers who pick days off – a driver who decided to take a weekend off without warning was given a week off.

Granted, it’s about time – after all, it’s patently unfair for the morning crew to suffer all the pain from the dropoff in business. However, I wonder if there’s going to be some other impacts on the job.

Such as the ability to take time off whenever I want/need.

Since we’re talking about less people at work as time goes by, the remaining people will become more and more necessary. Since the remaining people will become necessary, time off will become rarer and more precious…or even nonexistent. I can see myself working the last months of my job (assuming it dies off) seven days a week, 14+ hours a day because they only need a few people to do everything.

Meanwhile the area becomes more and more deserted-looking. The factories that once pumped jobs in the area have been getting torn down, some extremely rapidly. While there’s still an excess of housing, that is being shrunken down – not by people buying houses (WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL THE ECONOMISTS THAT HOUSING IS NOT AN ECONOMIC ENGINE AND THAT CALLING IT THAT IS JUST HIDING THE FACT THAT THERE’S NO LONGER AN ECONOMY?????) but by the local housing falling apart in an increasingly rapid rate. No news will comment on that, just something I see driving around. Malls are getting emptier (if they’re not emptied already) and those malls staying filled have accepted payday loan stores, rent-to-owns and multiple tax return offices to replace the Piano stores, upscale clothing shops and music stores of the past (Yes, there used to be Piano stores. Pianos were a sure sign of a settled, middle class lifestyle that started disappearing during Reagan’s presidency). There’s the constant shrinkage of businesses downtown as lots of once-useful stores are disappearing, replaced by such fufu as massage parlors, hairstyling places (when combined with massage it’s called a “spa” nowadays), Mexican restaurants, payday loan/pawn shop/check cashing/tax return place (yes, they combine nowadays) and antique stores. Even the big box stores are trembling as their customers find themselves with nothing.

Meanwhile people order online, happy in knowing that Amazon.com still doesn’t pay taxes (yes, Virginia, even “Liberals” cheer when they gyp the state they live in, which Amazon always tries to do). These same people cheer when factories that once gave workers a living wage are torn down to make “Green Space” and bellyache when someone wants to do something to improve things that doesn’t involve tourism or bike-friendly pathways (never mind most people get to and from places only in cars, using the bike paths for recreation on the weekends).

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It seems that the United States of America only has enough money to give to the rich, either directly or indirectly. Can’t get veggies to the city kids so they’ll eat something other than Doritos (nor can we teach their mothers how to cook) yet we fund Monsanto’s constant suing of everyone who chooses non-GMO’d seeds. Can’t fund Medicare or Medicaid properly anymore, so we gotta make sure the rich can take their Medical Vacations (they pay less for the whole Angioplasty plus a week’s tourism than I pay for a night at the hospital for a fake heart attack!). Gotta pull eyeteeth to save GM and Chrysler, but a bank whispers “I need more profits” and we hand it to them without asking or even checking up on things. Can’t fund a purchase on a new house, but Trump’s new castle for the nomadic elite – up and running.

And I’m left watching the detrius of the world left behind. Houses collapsing, malls emptying out and/or downclassing. People saying “we can’t afford anything” while supporting those who cut everything down to fund their xanadus.

Build Mass Transit? We can build enough to insure it fails.

Build Expressways, then? Just well enough to we can watch it fall apart in front of our eyes.

New Electrical Grid? Why, when the good (read: wealthy enough) can get their own generators to pollute the air for the poor around them?

Decline? Sure, as long as the rich get to watch millions die at the hand of their starving neighbors.

Welcome to 1984, only Orwell ended up blind as to what happened ten years after Winston Smith was shot… Who would have thought that Winston Smith ended up the lucky one?

Looking Again at South Shore Expansion

So now the on-again, off-again expansion of the South Shore Line to Valparaiso seems to be on again, even if one of the so-called supporters seems to want to put up a ballot to dismantle the South Shore LIne instead of expand it.

Problem is, now they’re reconsidering all the plans again, including a plan to split the South Shore from Gary instead of Hammond or in Illinois.

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First, here’s the “favored” expansion plan, going from Hammond/Hegewisch to Munster, then Valpo/Lowell:

It was the running plan, in part because of the NICTD’s ownership of a right-of-way from Hammond to Munster. It also has the possibility of expanding service to the southern part of Lake County, with benefits spreading into Illinois. Also, many of the proposed rail stops along the line would actually be open to transit-friendly development, allowing for the ability of the line to survive on its own, instead of just a commuting line to and from Chicago.

Its main disadvantage is that it runs over the main Canadian National (CN) line, which can see over forty trains a day. CN wants the Northwest Indiana Transit Authority to pay for a third rail line along the CN portion of the route, and at over $1 million/mile, it won’t come cheap.

Seen what now happens to uninhabited houses?

Almost every day I drive around the Northwest Indiana area, and while most of the area is filled with used housing and busy businesses, Gary is a town well on the way down, with many empty houses and empty storefronts.

What’s really sad about all this is watching all the houses slowly stripped and gutted. Wherever theres’ aluminum siding, it gets stripped off a few rows at a time. Sometimes you see the stuff underneath it, other times there’s nothing but the original material sheltering the house from the outside; and sometimes you see the stuff that’s supposed to be the protection underneath (let’s say there’s worse stuff to put up than chip board; I’ve seen it).

And when buildings of any sort are abandoned, the windows get busted and the insides get gutted. Plumbing and wiring are stripped, porcelain and kitchen items are carted out of the house, and the walls are knocked down in search of hidden treasure. Eventually the building burns down, or collapses under its own weight and decay.

I remember back in the seventies there was this one house in our neighborhood that was pretty much uninhabited throughout much of the seventies. I even remember walking through it a couple times, both times finding it both intact and with pickles stored in the cupboards. In the early eighties I toured through the neighborhood and saw that the house was rehabbed and reinhabited.

Try doing that with a house in Gary nowadays. Nowadays you’d be better off letting the house burn down and rebuild a house with vinyl siding, PVC plumbing and chip board for walls. At least you can put up multiple layers of insulation so you won’t get too cool in the winter (or too warm in the summer, as long as you use trees to shade you).

Of course, that’s not the only stuff getting pilfered. That’s right, Catalytic Converters are being stolen for money. People are crawling underneath your car, cutting a few nuts or connections, and running off with the thing that makes your car’s exhaust cleaner.

Why? Because there’s some rare metals in the Catalytic Converters; stuff that can bring lots of money for someone desperate enough to stuck themselves under your car (or SUV, which is easier than people think). So a lot of Meth heads, crack heads and other druggies go underneath and start sawing stuff apart to get at the converters.

Now, ask yourself: When stuff can’t stand around anymore without it getting gutted and ruined, what does that mean for our nation? What is meant when we’re now stuck with a quickly-developing scavenger class?

I’ll tell you what it means: We’re on the quick path to third-world status. No longer can the United States consider itself fully first-world, as first-world nations are wealthy enough to not need to tear itself apart for money.

Yes, there were scavengers around even back in the seventies. When non-returnable bottles and cans became the standard for pop and beer drinking, people would leave them things all along the side of the road; people would collect them and get a few cents out of them. Occasionally you’d hear of people who scavenged for a living and ended up paying their kid’s way through college, but they were always myths everyone had heard but never knew about.

Now they’re around, looking for the next tweekend’s high and not letting usage or ownership get in their way. And our currency and system has gotten so bad that metals now cost enough for the scavengers to profit.

It’s getting ugly.

Gary Suffers from Closed Grocery Stores

You know, this actually looked like a year of some good news for Gary. While too many houses caught fire and burned up, while too many windows started getting busted, while Chicago gangs started taking over neighborhoods throughout Gary, there were two grocery stores that actually opened up! One was a rebuild of an old store, another was new.

Well…

First the rebuild burned down after one month of being open. Heard lots of residents mourning the fresh produce and convenience lost when that building burned down. Many think it was arson.

Then this!

I hope this is temporary; otherwise Gary, a city which had suffered much over the past year, looks to have lost yet another battle in the war against the forces arrayed against it — gangs, industrial aging and abandonment, disinvestment, red-lining, gangs, ghettoization, ugly reputation, etc.

Don’t You Just Love Modern-Day Planning…

…with its inability to plan ahead for growth?

The key for me is the bottom article, with its focus on the South Shore:

The problem is, according to Parsons, the number of riders during rush hour is near capacity, about 97 percent of the NICTD fleet is in use every day, and the time frame for purchasing new equipment is two years.”We really don’t have much room to handle additional people and provide everyone a seat,” Parsons said. “(The Skyway construction) is just going to exacerbate our capacity problems.”

In other words, they have no space to add on cars or trains.

Isn’t Metra Electric Getting some new cars? With potties? Why don’t they loan us a couple of trains while we go through this problem?

Heck, I can see an addition to a couple of CTA lines which would free up plenty of space on the Electric for South Shore Service.

But hey, what do I know? I’m just a resident, I don’t know enough to be an expert…