PAINFUL N. SIDE CTA PLAN IS RIGHT MOVE FOR THE FUTURE
Most Chicagoans, we are sure, really feel for the people who live or own a business in the path of the CTA’s proposed flyover bypass, slated to be built just north of the Belmont L station.
It’s going to be ugly — 16 buildings near Clark and Belmont may have to be seized, displacing residents and businesses to make room for an elevated bypass track designed to unsnarl a bottleneck involving Red, Purple and Brown Line trains. Even if you don’t lose your home, years of construction and a new set of tracks — which some already are calling a “CTA roller coaster” — right outside your window is a miserable prospect.
But weigh that against the likely upside of this $320 million construction project. Once complete, the bypass is expected to end interminable delays heading in and out of the Belmont station, speed up travel times on all three trains and increase the number of trains that can run on the three lines. Work won’t begin until 2017 at the earliest, the CTA announced on Thursday.
Adding capacity is a particularly powerful argument in favor of the flyover; the Red Line is the backbone of the city’s public transportation system. Over the last four years, rush-hour ridership in the corridor north of Belmont has jumped 40 percent, the CTA says. If you’ve ever ridden during rush hour, you understand the plight of a packed sardine.
This is a classic case of a small number of folks being made to suffer for the sake of the greater good. We urge the CTA to move forward with these ambitious plans, though not without doing everything possible to make affected homeowners and businesses whole.
These are same owners who, just a few years ago suffered through the Brown Line expansion. About 12 buildings were lost then.
The CTA should do all it can to ensure residents and business owners who lose their buildings are fairly compensated and also attend to the very real concerns of condo and businesses whose property values and retail traffic will be hurt by construction and possibly by the presence of the new elevated bypass itself.
As Ald. Tom Tunney, whose ward will be impacted most, put it to us: “It’s good for the city but we also have to make sure it’s good news for the neighborhood.”