Slow Zones Not going away

Listening to a news report yesterday saying that slow zones wont go away anytime soon unless there are enough funding to fix the system.

This is an article from the Chicago Tribune.

Warning: More slow trains ahead, CTA officials say
$500 million needed to fix infrastructure


The Chicago Transit Authority on Tuesday presented a bleak scenario of longer travel times on the system's eight rail lines due to a growing number of slow zones caused by a half-billion dollars in deferred maintenance.

Slow zones have more than doubled since July 2005, and the situation is expected to get worse unless new funding is provided to repair the aging system, according to CTA officials.

Almost half of the Howard leg of the Red Line has slow zones of 35 m.p.h. or less. It has led to a more than 40 percent increase in late trains, officials said.

Trains have also been slowed on the Blue Line as a result of stepped-up track inspections after a July derailment near downtown that sent more than 150 people to hospitals.

In addition, trains are moving slower due to work at Clark Junction on the North Side, where the Red, Brown and Purple Lines come together.

In the agency's 2007 budget that the CTA board unanimously approved Tuesday, $35.7 million will be spent next year to upgrade railroad tracks, elevated structures and viaducts on which trains have had to operate at reduced speeds because of deteriorated conditions.

But no additional money to further reduce slow zones is budgeted in 2008 through 2011, the remaining years of the CTA's five-year capital program.

The CTA is $500 million short of the state and federal funding it needs to erase slow zones on the entire 225-mile rail system, said CTA President Frank Kruesi.

"Absent a new capital program from the legislature, it's grim," Kruesi said.

Not counting any additional help to address the slow-zone problem, the CTA is already hoping for an additional $110 million subsidy from the General Assembly to make ends meet on its $1.13 billion operating budget for next year.

The CTA produces a monthly lineup of rail routes where riders should allow extra travel time due to slow zones related to construction. The current list, which runs through Sunday, advises leaving up to an extra 20 minutes for commutes during non-rush hours on all eight rail lines, due mainly to signal work and track maintenance.

More than 20 minutes of extra travel time is recommended during weekends on the Brown Line, where a $530 million overhaul is under way.

"Route travel times are conservative estimates," the report said.

The one bright spot concerning slow zones is on the Dan Ryan branch of the Red Line, where a $282 million track and station renovation project is moving toward completion this year. Slow zones on that leg of the Red Line will go down from about 24,000 feet of track to about 4,000 feet by the end of the year, officials said.

Here is the link on the CTA web site that link to maps of the current slow zones.
http://www.transitchicago.com/news/what ... eid=107056

Wow, what a shock. But the CTA is merely paying the piper now, as the years of deferred maintenance have made slow zones an ongoing fact of life. They may as well stop referring to the "L" and subway system as "rapid transit", because that's definitely a misnomer nowadays...