The reason? There's no money. Since 1997, annual ridership has jumped by 50 million.
The line is the agency's second busiest, behind only the Red Line. The Blue Line had about 32.6 million riders in 2006, a 2 percent increase from 2005.
Today, Blue Line service to O'Hare, which began in 1984, and through the Dearborn subway, which opened in 1951, is unraveling into a mess of worn out tracks and rotted railroad ties. That's causing a growing number of slow zones and overcrowded trains. Trains must travel slower over about one-third of those two sections.
CTA officials estimate that a trip from the Loop to O'Hare should take no more than 50 minutes. Many riders say travel takes more than an hour. Unlike the Red Line, where many stations are closely spaced and trains don't have a chance to get up to top speed, there are long stretches on the Blue Line to O'Hare where the normal track speed is 55 m.
p.h. But trains must travel either 35, 25 or 15 m.
p.h. over bad track to ensure safety.
If maintenance crews are present, trains have to go even slower, cutting back to 6 m.p.h.
The shortfall is part of a total $500 million necessary to get rid of slow zones on the entire rail system, which more than doubled this year to about 185,000 feet of track, the CTA said. The agency's capital budget provides for $62.7 million through 2011 to address the problem.
The same problem existed on the Congress and the Douglas (now Pink Line) branches of the Blue Line until the CTA, using Illinois FIRST capital-improvement program funds, recently conducted major overhauls. Those branches--along with the Orange Line to Midway Airport, the Jackson Park branch of the Green Line, the Pink Line and sections of the Loop tracks downtown--are now classified as having no slow zones. Meantime, the rehabilitation on the Dan Ryan branch of the Red Line has cut slow zones to less than 5 percent.
But 45 percent of the Red Line on the North Side and 47 percent in the State Street tunnel still are designated as slow zones. "Where is the outrage over the so-called `maintenance' on the Blue Line?" asked commuter Errick Christian.
"The trains have been traveling at 6 m.p.h.
I can moonwalk to work and back faster than the darn train." The decline in Blue Line service will continue until the General Assembly approves a capital-improvement program for transit, said CTA President Frank Kruesi. "We are in a phase now where new capital funding is zero," Kruesi said.
"When the money is turned off we fall behind very quickly and it is hard to rebound." Trains must travel below normal speeds on almost 65,000 feet of Blue Line track, according to the latest CTA maps. That's up from only 7,300 feet of slow zones in March 2006.
The peak in the last year was August--74,700 feet of slow zones on the Blue Line, the CTA said. More than 10,000 feet of slow zones were eliminated in the last six months, said CTA spokeswoman Noelle Gaffney. "But as we make gains in one area, conditions may deteriorate in another," Gaffney said.
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