[gok]

It's 37 minutes if you happen to be in the Loop and time the train perfectly. Oh, then it's another 10 minute walk to the gates. Oh and almost none of the Blue Line stations are accessible, so hope you're not in a wheelchair or carrying big bags (who takes luggage to the airport, after all?) Speaking of...where exactly do your bags go on crowded CTA car?

I keep hearing this argument about the Blue Line from people who really don't sound like they've tried it. I'm happy we have it as an option but it's really not ideal. A 12 minute express with short headway and space for bags would be a total game changer. Everyone within ~25 minutes of the Loop would now be able to take transit to/from the airport in 40 minutes, not just people who happen to be going to/from the central business district.

And the city isn't paying any of that $1B, they're really just giving Boring Company permission to try to pay for it on their own. It's not money that would otherwise be spent on CPS. I'm not completely convinced this is really the right solution. My personal pick would be using the Metra NCS route to run an express train and then moving the the O'Hare Transfer Station to be actually inside the airport, which would also make transfers with Amtrak and other Metra services easy. But that too would cost a lot more than $1B, and no one's jumping up to do it.

[lvh]

You are comparing the current state of the Blue Line against a proposed system, though. The argument is that you could improve the Blue Line significantly for $1B, and also that there's good reason to believe it's not actually $1B.

(Doesn't have to be the Blue Line! Metra at Jeff Park or whatever with a track to OHare makes a ton of sense too.)

[gok]

If we were going spend a cool billion to improve the Blue Line, I'd spend it on anything but making the airport experience better. Make the stations ADA-compliant. Use the extra space on the Congress branch for triple- or quadruple- tracking. Upgrade the power system.

But again, this is $1B not coming out of the CTA budget, it's $1B Elon Musk has burning a hole in his pocket.

[pas]

What's triple- and quadruple-tracking?

[Turing_Machine]

> I keep hearing this argument about the Blue Line from people who really don't sound like they've tried it.

Yep. I traveled from the Loop to O'Hare on the Blue Line with luggage. Once. Never again.

The L just isn't designed for people to be carrying anything larger than maybe a small bag of groceries.

[tqi]

It just seems like this would serve a very narrow market. When I lived in Lincoln Park, I usually planned on the trip to O'Hare taking ~90 minutes (Red->Blue). This was to avoid a $40-$50 cab fare. Would I have been willing to pay an extra $25 to shave off 30 minutes? Probably not.

If I was a business traveler, I would almost certainly prefer taking a car from wherever I was directly to the airport unless I happened to be staying/working right near the stop. The convenience of not having to get to the station, privacy, not having the transfer, etc would outweigh the 20-30 minute savings. Unless traffic was completely backed up in which case having that option is nice.