Step aside, Shia LaBeouf and Lindsay Lohan. The CTA Blue Line has been stealing the spotlight for some odd incidents lately.
The line has generated some eyebrow-raising headlines, from a man charged with opening fire - with an assault rifle - at a train in the LaSalle Street station to a train that derailed at the O'Hare stop and climbed an escalator in March to a ghost train colliding with an another train carrying riders last fall. No one was injured in the shooting, but injuries were reported in the derailment as well as the collision.
But finally, there's some good news for the CTA's second-most popular rail line. The CTA is spending $492 million to rid the O'Hare branch of the Blue Line of slow zones and upgrade 13 North Side Blue Line stations.
The four-year venture will mean faster commutes and cosmetic fixes such as better floors and brighter lights at some Blue Line stations, but it's not a complete transformation and has brought rider headaches with closures and reroutes.
The project focus now is on the Damen stop in Wicker Park and Western stop in Logan Square. The California stop in Logan Square reopened Thursday after six weeks of platform and stationhouse repairs while the Damen stop, which sees nearly 7,000 station entries on an average weekday, is slated to close Monday until Dec. 22 for similar fixes.
In this project, neither California nor Damen will get elevators to make them accessible for riders with disabilities. The CTA says its goal is to have all stations accessible with elevators but the aim of this project is to extend the life of the station. Logan Square's Western stop, which already has elevator access, is remaining open during station work, which has already started.
Some Blue Line riders and neighboring businesses say they appreciate the improvements but have grown weary of continuous years-long fixes to the line. The most recent Blue Line work caused partial track shutdown and multiweek station closures that have forced some riders to change their routes and some businesses to come up with a way to make up for the loss of foot traffic - especially around the holidays.
Tim Lydon, 38, said his commute has been 15 to 25 minutes longer than usual since the CTA shuttered the California stop in early September.
During the closure, Lydon walked, biked or hopped a bus from his Logan Square home to the nearby Logan Square Blue Line stop to catch the train to Rosemont. He said he is glad he now can use the California stop, which typically sees about 5,000 riders on an average weekday.
"From the exterior, I really like how they brought back the old-school light fixtures [like the ones at Damen] and made the stop certainly much brighter," Lydon told RedEye. "I was hoping the CTA would've gotten creative with installing something for those with disabilities."
The Blue Line project is not the same type of massive overhaul that occurred on the southern end of the Red Line last year. Slow zones have been removed, but the Blue Line will not be a new railroad like the South Side received in the five-month Red Line project. The 45-minute commute between O'Hare and downtown is expected to be as much as 10 minutes faster once track work is completed. Elevator access will be implemented only in one Blue Line station, the Addison stop in Avondale.
The California and Damen stations, which both opened in 1895, were targeted to undergo structural and platform repairs and get a paint job as well as new lighting, signage and bike racks. The fixes are meant to add years onto the station's life, CTA Chief Infrastructure Officer Chris Bushell said Wednesday.
The CTA will not provide shuttle buses during Damen work, just as it did not for California work, but will implement extra bus service. Blue Line trains will bypass the Damen station for two months but will stop at neighboring stations.
There also will be overnight street closures on Damen and North avenues near the Damen tracks that will affect car, bus and taxi traffic.
This may make the complicated intersection of Milwaukee, North and Damen avenues near the Damen stop even more problematic. The Blue Line, which parallels the Kennedy Expressway, has long been seen as an alternative to the stop-and-go expressway traffic, especially since the line provides direct access to O'Hare Airport.
David Gariano said he uses the Damen stop daily to take the Blue Line to the Clark/Lake stop to go to his gym in the Loop. He plans to take the No. 56-Milwaukee bus, which parallels the Blue Line, south to the Division stop in Wicker Park to pick up the Blue Line during the Damen closure.
"I think that [the CTA's] timing could have been better. Who would start a project at the beginning of winter?" Gariano told RedEye. "It's a lot less stressful waiting for a bus when it's 60 to 70 than 20 to 30 degrees."
CTA spokesman Brian Steele said the Damen work is beginning as early as feasible, and the CTA completed prep work in September to keep the closure time as short as possible.
In the spring and summer, the agency performed track work over 10 separate weekends, which required multiple stations to close. Shuttle buses were provided to replace the affected sections of the Blue Line.
About 7 percent of the O'Hare branch of the Blue Line is under slow zone, where trains travel 35 miles per hour or slower because of track condition or age, according to CTA slow zone data current as of August. Track work continued into September.
Before work began this year, trains moved slowly on about 21 percent of the O'Hare branch. The percentages of slow zones have yo-yoed since Blue Line track underwent an upgrade from 2007-08.
Despite slow train travel, which can seem like a car stuck in Kennedy rush hour traffic, ridership has soared on the Blue Line on the Northwest Side.
The O'Hare branch has seen a 30 percent increase in ridership over the past five years. There were nearly 13 million entries this year on the O'Hare branch through June, the most recent CTA ridership data available.
Scott Starbuck, founder and CEO of City Soles, a European shoe store near the Damen stop, estimates 10 to 20 percent of the foot traffic to his store comes from the Blue Line.
Starbuck said he wished the CTA would have waited to work on the Damen stop until after the holidays. He said the closure will impact him but he's not sure how much. He is hoping for a mild winter so customers choose alternate methods such as biking and walking to get to the store.
He said any station improvements are welcome but was surprised to hear the station would not be receiving elevator access.
"I would hope we would come out with a shiny new contemporary stop. If they're just patching it up, that's not that fun," Starbuck said.
tswartz@tribune.com | @tracyswartz