Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration set an ambitious three-year goal Thursday to move forward with high-speed rail service to O’Hare International Airport, but aides offered few details for a project that has long proved elusive for Chicago.
Emanuel brought up the new rail line to the busy airport during an infrastructure speech at a West Side union hall in which he reviewed projects the city has tackled in recent years and laid out new ones, many of which already have been announced.
"To connect people to O’Hare even faster, we’re going to embark on a project that has been imagined and discussed for decades, but is essential for our city’s future," Emanuel said.
Since winning a second term in 2015, Emanuel has mentioned express rail service as something he’d like to tackle to shorten travel times to one of the nation’s busiest airports and noted the appeal to corporations. In the months that followed, the mayor named Ginger Evans aviation commissioner and the city hired an engineering company to start studying a new rail line.
Still, the project remained mostly under the radar until Emanuel raised it in his speech Thursday by announcing the city had retained a former federal transportation official to help lead it and "begin working with potential partners who are anxious to work with us to create an express train from O’Hare to the Loop."
Emanuel did not give a timeline or costs for the project in his speech, but an administration news release suggested the city would start the project within the next three years. Emanuel aides had no cost estimates, nor did they say how much of the project might be funded by taxpayer dollars.
City plans new CTA Green Line station at Damen, near United Center Mary Wisniewski
The city of Chicago on Thursday announced plans for a new CTA Green Line “L” station at Damen Avenue and Lake Street near the United Center to serve a growing residential and business area.
The new station will fill a 1.5-mile gap between existing Green Line stations at California and Ashland avenues….
The city of Chicago on Thursday announced plans for a new CTA Green Line “L” station at Damen Avenue and Lake Street near the United Center to serve a growing residential and business area.
The new station will fill a 1.5-mile gap between existing Green Line stations at California and Ashland avenues….
(Mary Wisniewski)
The mayor did, however, tell an invitation-only crowd at the Chicagoland Laborers’ District Council Training & Apprentice Fund center that the city had retained Bob Rivkin, a former general counsel at the U.S. Department of Transportation. In a news release, the Emanuel administration said Rivkin would "provide legal expertise in identifying a clear path forward and working with potential partners."
The mayor’s office did not respond to requests on how much, or for how long, Rivkin would be paid by City Hall. Rivkin is a veteran of the Richard M. Daley administration, working as CTA general counsel and in the city Law Department. He has contributed $1,250 to Emanuel’s campaign fund. After returning to Chicago from seven years in Washington, D.C., Rivkin penned a September opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune titled "It’s not all bad in Chicago."
Dubbed "express rail" by the mayor’s office, the project is designed to connect the Loop with the airport in a model of high-speed lines in Asia and Europe. City Hall already hired engineering and design company WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff to assess possible routes for the rail line, potential station locations and the "viability and cost of the overall project," the mayor’s office said.
The Emanuel administration did not respond to requests for how much City Hall has paid the company or the terms of the contract. In his speech, though, the mayor said the engineers had "made progress in identifying the routes to move it forward."
Daley, the mayor’s predecessor, frequently mentioned the possibility of a high-speed rail line to O’Hare. During his final months in office, Daley invited worldwide technology experts to submit concepts for a line that would whisk travelers from the Loop to O’Hare in 10 to 20 minutes.
Emanuel tries to resurrect O’Hare express train plan John Byrne
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying to resurrect Chicago’s long-elusive plan for an express train from downtown to O’Hare International Airport by hiring an engineering firm to look at possible routes and costs.
It’s a preliminary step, and the Emanuel administration isn’t sure who would pay for the massive…
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying to resurrect Chicago’s long-elusive plan for an express train from downtown to O’Hare International Airport by hiring an engineering firm to look at possible routes and costs.
It’s a preliminary step, and the Emanuel administration isn’t sure who would pay for the massive…
(John Byrne)
The Daley administration wanted high-speed trains to operate 20 hours a day and wanted the project built without public money. Daley frequently mentioned his ride aboard a magnetic levitation train in Shanghai as a possible model for Chicago.
Daley envisioned the Block 37 shopping center near City Hall sitting atop a station for the high-speed rail. But after the CTA and city spent more than $250 million on the Block 37 "superstation," Daley ordered work stopped in 2008, saying the technology was outdated with more than $100 million still needed to complete it.
In early 2016, Evans, the new aviation commissioner, announced the city would look for a private company to cover construction costs and operate an airport express system. She said the mothballed Block 37 station would not be considered for the downtown terminus because of "technical concerns" raised by representatives of the CTA and other regional travel agencies.
Instead, Evans said it was likely public money would go into building new stations at O’Hare and downtown. There also might be one other station along the line, she said, if it looks like an opportunity exists somewhere between downtown and the airport to spur development and increase ridership. Evans did not offer any guarantee that additional tax money wouldn’t be needed for the project beyond the cost of building the two or three new stations.
Emanuel resurfaced the Daley rail dream in a May 2015 interview with the Chicago Tribune, shortly after he won re-election. "This is going to be one of the top five things I do for the future," Emanuel said then of continuing to modernize O’Hare. "I want to build direct rail service."
The mayor mentioned the project again Thursday as part of what he promoted as a "major address" on infrastructure, marking the five-year anniversary of another speech on the topic he gave as mayor in 2012.
Emanuel’s midafternoon event had all the markings of a political rally, with guests politely applauding various construction projects he touted. As Emanuel continues to pivot toward a likely run for a third term, he also veered from the infrastructure topic, highlighting educational gains, population growth, city finances and college scholarships.
The hallway of the large union hall and warehouse where Emanuel gave his speech were peppered with 40 oversized poster boards, almost all of them featuring photos of Emanuel smiling at various job sites and cutting ribbons at groundbreaking events.
During his speech, Emanuel said tens of thousands of jobs had been created on infrastructure projects so far and he pledged to create tens of thousands more in the future.
When asked for the project-by-project job breakdown to support the mayor’s claims, an Emanuel spokeswoman said Thursday that she had a large spreadsheet detailing all the jobs and on which projects they had been created.
She promised to send the information right over, but failed to do so.
Chicago Tribune’s John Byrne contributed.
bruthhart@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @BillRuthhart
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