The change in upkeep and maintenance of the roads and other architecture really speaks volumes and is no question why the land value in Indiana is so low.
Moody people don't think Chicago has an East side, but when he got on the 100 Jeffery manor bus, he was DEFINITELY on the little known Chicago east side.
Very true! I have always said things like "Chicago doesn't have an East Side", which I would still say is somewhat true as Chicago on a macroscopic scale is still very much set up in a semi-circle with north, south, and west, as opposed to most cities (at least in the U.S.) which tend to be more circular in shape. Although, as the name of the neighborhood suggests, there is in fact some sort of east side, it is just a relatively small corner of the city.
I frequently visit that park. Goes into wolf lake and into Indiana and back into IL. Nice for Bikes and gets busy on the weekends. There is some sort of factory on the indiana side that makes soap. You can kind of smell it when you ride past. Go to steelworkers park in IL next.
I hate that I just learned that the city of Chicago itself borders Indiana.. I always thought there were some smaller towns in between. What a fun outing!
NOTE: I've seen several comments now, pointing out that I could have simply taken the South Shore Line for my trip. Yes, I was aware that this option was available to me, but that was not the purpose of this video! This video was much less about actually getting to Indiana than it was about noticing that I could use regular CTA trains and buses to get there! As I mention in the outro of the video, this was not the most practical trip for me to take, it was more for the adventure and seeing where the CTA could get me. At the end of the day, it's all about showcasing how far public transit can get you. If I had broadened my criteria out to include SSL, Metra, or even Amtrak (which can get you pretty far for about as much as some Metra tickets), the possibilities would have been enormous!
You realize you could have taken the South Shore Line trains (NICTD) from Chicago's Loop through Hammond, the Dunes and all to South Bend. Walking is fine, but not needed for this trip.
Yes, would have been LOT faster and more direct to take the South Shore train. Most of people at Walmart are Illinois residents avoiding higher grocery taxes on IL side or buying cheap cigarettes in IN.
Indiana is right on the suburbs of Chicago though. More interesting transport journeys are places like Lille 🇨🇵 with transport operated by SNCF (rail) and Transpole (bus, metro, trams) from Hauts Du France and local and regional trains to Belgian 🇧🇪 suburbs along with Dutch speaking De Lijn buses and Belgian French TEC buses. All the same currency and no border checks since the 1960's
I will admit you're more adventurous than I. I could not have risked being stranded in Indiana for any length of time. I once stepped off my porch to chase a squirrel away and found myself alone and afraid. It was a exhilarating and frightening at the same time.
Instead of doing CTA to Indiana, why not take that South Shore Line Commuter Rail? You could take it to South Bend and then take local buses into Niles, Michigan for an all day affair.
WHOOOA, Indiana turns into West Virssippi when you get east of West Virssippiapolis Blvd. Bad things happen to civilized people between the Illinois Stateline and the Ohio state line😬
Transit systems like the CTA, having enough decent coverage and reliability throughout the entire city, inside a navigable city grid that has many redundancies and with the city itself being such a diverse region, will inevitably make you feel adventurous and make you tempted to go as far as you want to go. It's just a matter of willpower and time ultimately, and of course feeling insecure about making "meaningless" or "potentially dangerous" trips like these plays a factor too.
Next time you are down that way, you should check out downtown Whiting, Indiana. Which does have a pretty decent downtown, on 119th Street. You also aren't too far, from a bike path that you take you towards Wolf Lake. Also for the southeast side of Chicago, its interesting to walk around the area of Commercial Ave north of 91st. While that area is past its peak, there are so many interesting historic buildings around there. And at some point soon, I imagine Calumet Fisheries(on 95th, it is right by the drawbridge) will reopen.
There is so many ways to travel to Indiana using CTA and Pace. I took route 350 to Morton/Willow and walk to Downtown Hammond. Great video of showing us how to do it.
I'm thinking the oldest steel on the network may be in a yard somewhere. Some place that has low speeds, so they can last a long time. love your videos!
If you want to impress me, I will wait to see a video if the Racine stop on the GREEN LINE will reopen . The tracks leading to the Pink Line are open. This this tge only connection between the Blue Line and the rest of the system. This is how the new 7000 series cars get to the Blue Line.
I was hoping to find out why the line from Belmont to Howard is "inside out", with locals stopping at island platforms between the two center tracks. Whose bright idea was it, and what was the reason? Also, you said skip-stop service was discontinued because "it had outlived its usefulness". This implies that some external change in the environment triggered the change. What exactly happened to warrant this?
Those are both great questions! I'll do my best to answer both: 1) Your question about the local/express service is a very interesting one that just underscores how much interesting history there is to get into. The more I tried to type out an answer for this, the more I realized I should probably answer that with a video at some point in the future, instead of trying to fully explain it here. To give the short answer, it has to do with the line to the north of Wilson, being built at a different time from the line to the south, and then the two we're kind of streamlined together under the CTA, in the 40s. The part between Wilson and Belmont is kind of an outlier which has its own interesting history as to how it is the way it is now. 2) Yes, my comment about skip-stop service was a bit quick, as that's also a somewhat complicated thing to get into in an already relatively long video. The A/B skip-stop system was somewhat flawed to begin with. It was essentially the CTA's best effort to introduce some form of express service on lines with no infrastructure for it. For instance, some trains end up being faster than others and have no means to pass. Some things that did change over time were the wider spacing of stations, as well as the fact that service has become less frequent. With the population moving further out into suburban areas, higher prevalence of cars, and overall decrease in profitability of public transit, service inevitably has been run less frequently over the years. By the 1990s it was not uncommon to find service running every 6-8 minutes on some routes, even during rush-hour, meaning that if each train only stopped at every other station, a passenger who just missed a train could have to wait 12-16 minutes for the next vehicle, which was considered unacceptable (at least for the time of day). As such, the A/B skip-stop service was gradually cut back as stops were further and further spaced and service was run less frequently. It would become, sometimes, restricted only to the busiest parts of the day when service ran the most frequently, and eventually it was just seen as too complicated for so little benefit. Thus, by 1995, it had been eliminated system-wide.
I actually had the opportunity to tour the Lawrence to Bryn Mawr Modernization site about a year or so back. I got a couple shots then and use them frequently in my videos now, as that definitely afforded me the opportunity for some very unique clips.
As a native New Yorker, I enjoy your history about the origin of the Chicago Transportation Authority rapid transit lines. It is thorough and comprehensive. I just subscribed to your channel. I am a subway buff.
This is a re-uploaded version of the video I posted a week or so ago! I noticed a fairly major editing mistake in the previous one and figured I'd put enough work into this one that it was worth correcting!
