Chicago Central Area Transit Plan - Transit Planning Study, Chicago Central Area (1968) - Distributor Subway

Distributor Subway

The most novel part of the 1968 Transit Plan was the Distributor Subway system.

It was to be routed from a terminal at Harrison and Morgan Streets at the University of Illinois at Chicago. From there, the line was to run north to Adams Street paralleling Morgan Street. At Adams Street the alignment was to turn east, meeting Monroe Street at Peoria Street. It would then follow Monroe Street, first under the Chicago River then across the Loop to a station just east of Michigan Avenue.

East of Michigan Avenue the Distributor would split — with one branch extending north to Walton Place and the other south to the vicinity of McCormick Place. The latter branch was to consist of two tracks leaving the subway at Adams Street and occupy Illinois Central Railroad right-of-way at grade to the Stevenson Expressway.

The double-track line to the north was to follow an alignment just east of Michigan Avenue under Stetson Street to the Chicago River serving the Prudential Building and the Illinois Center. North of the river, the line would turn north under Fairbanks Court to Chicago Avenue serving the Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the River East area. Operating counterclockwise, a single track loop was to extend under De Witt Place, Walton Place, Rush Street and Chicago Avenue to the point of beginning at Fairbanks Court.

The plan called for subway construction to start in 1969, with the system opening in stages between 1973 and 1978.

By 1990, said the report, the new Loop and Distributor Subways should have carried more than 390,000 passengers on an average weekday, including 152,000 daily passengers using the Distributor system. The total daily Distributor Subway travel by passengers who transferred to or from the commuter railroads (today's Metra and Amtrak) or other CTA rapid transit lines would have been twice these volumes. The Central Area Transit Plan's financial recommendations were, in retrospect, overly optimistic even for those days before the runaway inflation of the late 1960s and 1970s. The projected cost of building the Loop and Distributor Subway systems was $478 million in 1969 dollars. In this and other financial projections, Transit Planning Study Chicago Central Area assumed an "escalation" of 5% per year, an unfortunate estimate of the unforeseeable 8%-11% inflation rates of the next few years.

Read more about this topic:  Chicago Central Area Transit Plan, Transit Planning Study, Chicago Central Area (1968)

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