Drove by this last night....signs are up, lights are up, but not due to open until early spring next year.

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Advocate Center is up, they seem to be going forth with this development plan, now build this L station.

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I'm with you.

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Nobody alive right now will also be alive for self-driving anythings. The Google Car everyone trumps up as the "near finished product" has more problems than I can list. It's a fun, interesting technology that people enjoy reading about, but won't exist for a very long time.

Also, and to me this is the biggest impediment to self driving cars, is its still using energy to only move 1 person to work or wherever. That's the problem with cars right now (incl Tesla), they are not efficient. So even if you get the tech you aren't going to want to pay for the energy to move it.

I don't see what's so bad about public transportation? Is it because you have to be around *GASP* other people? You can read or watch stuff on the train. Nobody cares, unless you don't look like you just got off a plane from Nebraska (Ricketts) nobody is going to rob you.

It sucks and always will. It's good for short distances where there is no parking and during rush hour and that is it. You can base your whole life around it and get away with it but it's basically just a slow traffic avoidance device.

I've lived outside of Chicago and New York City now, and 98% of the places I have ever wanted to go were cheaper and quicker to drive to. Realistically, the only exception to this is Madison Square Garden, and that is because it is directly above Penn Station and it would still be more expensive. We took the train in last weekend, and it was a long train ride, then a walk to the subway, then another subway ride, and then a walk to my destination.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

This opens on Sunday in all its tubular glory.

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Oh, hey, they're going to do this, kind of!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/colu ... tml#page=1



coooooool. Of course, this won't fix the fundamental problem with Union Station, that the waiting room is across the street from the tracks, so people just do their waiting crouching on the concourse floor like a bunch of bums, but opening up big secret rooms is still appealing.

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Did you know?

There were five major train stations in downtown chicago? Union station (part of it) is the only one left.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I know there was a Dearborn Station. I think it's condos now.

Are you counting North Western Station as separate from Ogilvie? You can still use the old boarding gates from North Western instead of entering from upstairs if you feel so inclined.

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SIX! I forgot about Dearborn. That one exists too, again, part of it.

Chicago & Northwestern Terminal was torn down around 81 and was replaced with that abomination Citi building that sits there today. The tracks are still there obviously.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

last time i took someone to Union Station to catch an amtrak, they made them line up single file along the perimeter of the Great Hall or big ass room. And then vaguely Homeland security looking dudes and chicks stood in the opera boxes half-way up the hall and stared intently at everyone in line.


:tinfoilhate:

Really? I just had to line up in the chintzy DMV-esque Amtrak waiting room. There were no TSA agents. There were many Amish. I haven't taken Amtrak in almost four years, though.

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self-driving cars, especially as they are being implement first in cities and then via services like uber in those cities, could lead to greater use of inter-city rail. as people living in urban environments forgo private car ownership for the convenience and more flexible cost structure of uber type self-driving car services.

so if you want to go to St Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Minneapolis, Indy etc for a weekend. You'd uber it down to Union station, take amtrak to your destination city and then uber-drone-car it around whatever city you're visiting.

Amtrak should upgrade the food and beverage services on their trains as a way to increase ridership and revenue. Why not feature, say, New Glarus beers on the train ride up to Milwaukee.

Ogilvie, Union, LaSalle and Millennium. There are four commuter rail terminals in Chicago.

This Union Station shit would really be worth it if they can either 1) Get this HSR shit finally going (THANKS SCOTT WALKER THANKS A LOT YOU FUCK) 2) Direct CTA L connection. Still, I'm not opposed to it because I'm generally a big fan of Amtrak having ridden it at least 250 times in my life. Its a great service that gets shat on by people who've never used it.

O/U on how long it will take a self-driving car to get from Union Station to, say, the Hancock Bldg: 2 hours

I've taken Amtrak probably 15 times to Ann Arbor in the past 2 years. It's a very relaxing nice way to get somewhere. However, a thorny issue is freight traffic. Sometime that adds 30-45 minutes in delays.

those are four terminals but all the original buildings are gone except for Union.

Central Station
Grand Central Station
Union Station
LaSalle Street Station
C&NW
Dearborn

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Ogilvie is a continuation of North Western. WFMT's copywriter still refers to it as such in spots for Jos. A. Bank.


I did Chicago to Jeff City and back many times, though not as many as 250. It's a touch expensive compared to Megabus, considerably slower than Megabus, and puts you with about the same dregs of humanity as Megabus. When they were doing extensive track work on the Lincoln Service and bussing us from Bloomington or Springfield to St. Louis, they knocked the price down to almost nothing for the "inconvenience" and we got to St. Louis faster on I-55 than we did on the train. Pretty damning indictment of the service right there.

Before I learned that Chicago to St. Louis was just a segment of a greater service from Chicago to Kansas City and that I wasn't really in danger of missing a connection, I had a couple not-minor shitlosings on a trip that included a 45-minute delay outside of Braidwood and another in god-knows-where downstate.

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Every time I try to use Amtrak it is twice as much as a plane.

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Elections have consequences.

see, what I'm saying here is there was a grand old station ....big granite columns....massive concourse.... lotta bums outside. That was torn down and replaced by an office building with tracks next to it. the "waiting room" holds about 20 people.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

That's why you wait in the food court, I suppose. One time I was waiting in the concourse for a Sunday night train to Kenosha and was sent to that weird little waiting room for like an hour. It was just me and an elderly black man in a cowboy outfit. We didn't talk.

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you should have discussed the Blackhawks, you might have shared a common interest

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

I went to school in Carbondale, which has a direct Amtrak connection to Chicago and I took it back and forth a lot. Not to mention god-knows-how-many times on the Hiawatha and Coast Starlight/Cascades. Yea there were a few delays, the time one caught fire and we had to unload in Champaign and after 12 hours buses showed up to take half the people to Chicago, other half SOL until more buses came. Or when the one hit a car, the other that hit a cow...

Amtrak delays are just as likely as a flight being delayed or hitting major traffic.

On balance if you have a direct connection its much faster and much more comfortable than a Megabus. You'll have your heroin addicts everywhere, but with Amtrak its a nice crowd.

They call it Ramtrak for a reason.

just think, if you two were willing to work for a combined $50/show i bet you could get a show on howard 101.... that is if they even pay talent anymore.

but i digress..... holy shit CH do you realize what kind of conversation/story you robbed the world of by slinking back into your CH shell? you need to get out and live a little bit and ask yourself: what would DFW do in this situation? or hell if you really wanna go dark-side (no relation to the HOF member here i must disclaim) you can ask yourself "what would sini do?" and end up spending the next 18 hours with your life with the guy hoping he has the macguffin that you need to get to NYC to get backstage at that monch internal affairs LP 10th anniversary show.

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I love old black guys who dress like cowboys! Fritzy has one in his crew at Niles OTB. I call him Lonesome Cowboy Bill.

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Freedom is our Strength.