So I just want to rant on tumblr.com about civic infrastructure, this will probably go on for a while
Of course when talking about civic infrastructure, you wind up in Chicago, and there is no better place to start with that than the proposed Circle Line which would have allowed people to make trips between L lines without going to downtown Chicago, the L is Chicago's public train system as we all know, it was studied in 2002 giving us this image showing how it would connect the city and transit lines
The Chicago Circle Line is very easy to build because the majority of the trackage uses existing infrastructure such as the current Pink Line or simply runs on Ashland Avenue. The main difficult section is building connections to the Red Line and Orange, which do not have easy-to-follow roads. In fact, the first phase has already been built because it used existing infrastructure The first phase which connected the Blue and Green Lines used the Paulina Connector, an abandoned line that was restored when the Pink Line was created. This means that the project is even easier because all that needs to be done on the west side is a bridge over the Chicago River to the Orange Line which would go through largely industrial, low density areas and some elevated tracks over Ashland Ave which would have been phase 2
Additionally the construction of the circle line would increase frequency on the Pink, orange and red lines making transit easier and more popular and would open 3 new infill stations and one which will significantly boost ridership along the line
The issues that killed the project come up more with the 3rd phase which was controversial, went through wealthy neighborhoods and was expensive to build. the cost of construction of the northern segment was so high because it went through dense neighborhoods like Wicker Park and the Near Northside requiring numerous studies and a subway to be constructed, and with the limited funding in the era, the Locally Preferred Alternate was adopted, which in this case meant the project was shelved and has never been finished since, it would have been the last of the grand projects of the early 2000s that happened within Chicago and would have significantly boosted the transit of the city, but due to the poor financial decisions and corrupt of the Daley Mayoralship, there was never enough funding to build the line even without the financial crisis as the city was so cash starved, it had to sell off the parking meters which was an incredibly bad decision as it immediately lead to the city effectively no longer having control over its own streets
