For $5.7 billion, South Side Chicago deserved far more than the Red Line Extension

Last week, federal funding for CTA's Red Line Extension was finalized, accompanied by news of a 58% cost hike from $3.6 billion to $5.7 billion. The Red Line will be extended from 95th/Dan Ryan south to 130th Street along a combination of at-grade and elevated alignments. With 4 stations over 9 kilometres, the new cost estimate is just over $630 million per kilometre, an outrageously high figure for an above-ground suburban extension.

This is a particularly salient case of anglosphere transit cost disease, as the project avoids the suspect features of transit expansion (well, besides oversized CTA parkades) that usually increase costs in peer cities: deep tunnels, overbuilt underground stations and other overbuilt infrastructure. In the absence of obviously overbuilt physical infrastructure, the above-ground Red Line Extension (RLX) clearly illustrates the heart of our cost problem: the hidden "soft costs" of building transit.

Despite the cost explosion, there has been no exploration of a cheaper "metrofication" of the existing and underutilized Metra Electric commuter line, which provides greater coverage of the South Side (and Far South Side, which RLX serves).

Between this cost increase, higher-value opportunities to upgrade existing commuter rail, and changing travel patterns post-2020, the value of this isolated project should be called into question. How could $5.7 billion be better spent to deliver real transit improvements to Chicago's South Side and uplift transit-dependent communities equitably?

Is the Red Line Extension still worth it?

The Red Line extension will see 40,000 daily transit trips by 2040. The Dan Ryan section of the Red Line saw 20,000 daily trips in November 2024; 42,000 in 2019. For reference, the RLX's ridership projection is higher than the Brown Line (third busiest line in the system) or the Green and Pink Lines' combined ridership. These are rosy projections.

Regardless, the Red Line extension has funding support and is on track to start construction in late 2025. Under the current political climate, pursuing alternatives could incur delays and push timelines back enough to risk a loss of funding.

Nonetheless, transit remains underfunded in Chicago's South Side, where more lower-income and Black communities rely on transit than anywhere else in Chicago. The South Side has far less access to rapid transit when compared to the North Side, despite similar populations — and the RLX alone is inadequate. It's worth discussing a holistic and broad plan for better South Side transit to connect residents with better access to work, education, healthcare, and other opportunities, in the places and directions where the RLX falls short.

Here's what less than $5 billion could've built for the South Side

I've quickly drawn up a holistic alternative for South Side rapid transit that I believe would deliver higher value per capital dollar spent than the current Red Line extension alone. This alternative aims to:

• Build a full network across the South Side

• Prioritize access to denser, low-income and/or non-white neighbourhoods

• Leverage existing passenger rail infrastructure to cheaply and effectively expand rapid transit

• Meet ridership where it is growing on existing CTA bus routes rather than solely doubling down on suburb-to-downtown commuters

• Support integration between Metra and CTA

Here's a dive into the key components of this crayon. Version 1 (V1) presents an alternate design with a revised RLX. Version 2 (V2) assumes current RLX proposal is built.

Turn Metra Electric into a CTA-integrated rapid transit service

The centrepiece of this South Side expansion is the modernization of Metra Electric's Blue Island and South Chicago branches in place of a Red Line extension. Unlike the rest of the Metra network, the Metra Electric corridor is fully electrified and owned by Metra . This presents a unique opportunity to leverage existing rail infrastructure with unrestricted track capacity for proper rapid-transit style service — something that cannot easily be replicated elsewhere on Metra, as rail infrastructure is typically owned by freight companies which limit service potential.

An upgraded Metra Electric offers greater expansion of frequent rail rapid transit across South Side Chicago, and its catchment area is more densely populated than that of the RLX (or even the existing freeway-median Dan Ryan Line). The highest population density in the South Side trends towards the lake, and the intersection of lower income and racialized households with high population density occurs along the South Chicago branch of Metra Electric.

Chicago is sitting on a gold mine with Metra Electric, yet there are no active plans to truly transform the line into rapid transit and integrate it fully with the CTA network. Local advocates have already dived into much greater depth with this decades-old proposal, dubbed the Gold Line (or Gray Line).

Upgrading Metra Electric should encompass:

• Key grade separations where necessary

• Consolidation of closely-spaced low-ridership stations to speed up service and offset operating costs; with this, a reasonable case can be made to remove express service and only offer a simple high-frequency local service along the line

• Replacement of aging commuter rail bilevels with modern single-level EMUs appropriate for rapid transit

• Necessary infrastructure for minimum 10-minute all-day service on both the South Chicago and Blue Island branches, with combined 5-minute frequencies or better all-day to Millennium Station (includes double-tracking of Blue Island branch, and some grade separation of merging junctions)

• Certain policy changes to unlock the full potential of the line, increasing access to communities in South Chicago that stand to benefit from Metra Electric but are discouraged by a financial barrier or poor service integration. Chicago should consider funding:

Standardization of CTA fares between trains and buses to $2.25 (and equivalent amounts for other fare concession types)

• Fully seamless fare integration with the CTA, such that transfers between CTA and the upgraded Metra Electric lines are free, and Metra Electric fares are also flat at $2.25 within Chicago proper

• Improved bus frequency, station infrastructure, and reconfiguration of CTA bus routes to funnel transit riders onto Metra Electric

Revise the Red Line Extension to connect to Metra Electric (V1)

By optimizing existing infrastructure along Metra Electric's Blue Island alignment, the need for a costly and new Red Line extension to 130th Street would have been voided.

A short, above-ground, 2.9-kilometre, two-stop extension of the Red Line to the 103rd Street Metra Electric Station would facilitate transfers between the lines, with an intermediate stop at Chicago State University. This connection and high-frequency Metra Electric service jointly add more access to frequent rail transit across the South Side than a 9-kilometre RLX does.

Build an LRT (or BRT) along South Chicago's busiest bus route

Not everyone goes to the Loop. CTA's Route 79 has long been among the busiest bus routes in Chicago despite being far from downtown, and it is the busiest bus route on the South Side. Upgrading the busiest surface transit routes to higher-order transit is an effective formula to generate high ridership and improve the lives of existing transit riders.

Investment in crosstown routes like 79th Street puts transit capital where ridership has been most resilient to the changing travel patterns induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. While ridership on radial subway lines fell sharply and hasn't fully recovered in most US and Canadian cities, many crosstown buses operating in transit-dependent, lower-income, and racialized neighbourhoods have recovered ridership faster. The same is true in Chicago, where CTA bus ridership stands at 75% of pre-pandemic levels versus 56% on rail. In the South Side, the Dan Ryan section of the Red Line has lost nearly half of its prepandemic ridership and now only carries 5,000 more daily riders than the CTA 79 bus.

A BRT or LRT on 79th would invest where transit riders already exist, link more working class communities with crosstown transit that is sorely lacking in Chicago, and serve more diverse trip patterns.

A modern surface LRT could be constructed relatively cheaply within the existing profile of 79th Street. Key grade separations at interchanges and major junctions (such as Western or Ashland) would support greater travel time savings. A careful balance of spot grade separations and strong signal and traffic management can deliver an LRT line that offers real time savings to riders over existing bus service, without breaking the bank on fully grade-separated transit.

Bus network upgrades

CTA already has plans to improve frequency and utility of its grid bus network. Further upgrades in the South Side could include:

• A southern extension of the planned Western BRT from 79th to Blue Island Station

• A mix of inexpensive priority measures including queue jumps, dedicated lanes, relocated stops and signal priority along 63rd Street, and potentially other key bus corridors like Jeffery or Garfield

The cost

I've opted to use similar and relatively cost-effective US transit projects built in recent history as a reference point to estimate costs (adjusted for inflation, of course). For example, the Silver Line is largely at-grade and elevated, which makes it appropriate to compare to RLX. Costs are from Eno and the Transit Costs Project.

Concluding Thoughts

Chicago and other US cities are struggling to capture new ridership, having never recovered from the impacts of the pandemic and recessions over several decades. New rapid transit schemes need to adapt to a changed world, where the downtown-bound office worker is no longer the face of the system. Increasing costs mean that public agencies must work collectively towards higher benefit-cost projects in the short-term and ensure transit capital dollars go as far as possible to deliver improved outcomes for real people — not just lines on a map. At the same time, the root causes of increasing transit costs must be addressed across North America. Through this lens, the value of the Red Line Extension project seems dubious and insufficient to meet the transit needs of the South Side. Regardless of whether the RLX is built, elected officials and CTA governance shouldn't pat themselves on the back. Chicago needs to rigorously pursue a holistic vision for a high value and cost-effective rapid transit network that serves the riders of the present and future, and it won't happen without addressing costs.