THE PACE WOULD PLEASE NEITHER YERKES NOR INSULL. The Chicago Transit Authority plans to extend the Dan Ryan, Midway, and North Shore Skokie lines. The editorial board at the Chicago Tribune approves.

Extending the Chicago Transit Authority's Red, Orange and Yellow Lines has been debated for decades, long enough for entire generations of commuters to have come and gone. But these extensions made good sense when they were proposed back in the 20th Century -- and they make good sense today.

Residents of the relatively poor neighborhoods of the Southeast Side and Southwest Side, who have never had rapid transit, tend to approve.

Residents of the Skokie-Old Orchard neighborhood, which was once home to the Mother of All Bullet Trains, aren't keen on the idea.

For the most part, the 1.6-mile leg from the Skokie Swift Terminal north to the Old Orchard shopping center area would pass through open space, industrial areas and run along the eastern frontage of the Edens Expressway. The route would end near Niles North High School.

A three-block cluster of homes near Golf Avenue is in the path of the proposed elevated line. With power lines towering nearby, many of these homes along Terminal and Laramie Avenues are near recently dormant freight tracks. "It's the route of least resistance," said Steve Marciani, planning supervisor for Skokie. "The power lines have always been there, and the railroad was there until a couple of years ago."

The railroad that recently left there was Union Pacific's former Chicago and North Western line that ran from Mayfair to a connection with the Freight Main near Deerpath with another line that connected to the Passenger Main in Wilmette.

The power lines once marked the tracks of another railroad.

Harmswoods Station at Golf Road, looking southeast.
George Krambles photograph from B-107 Route of the Electroliners.

The proposed extension of the Skokie Swift will deviate from the current right of way to run into Old Orchard shopping center.

Elevated tracks would be built to carry Yellow Line trains over the 1.6-mile extension from the current terminus at Dempster Street to a station at Old Orchard Road, between the Edens Expressway and Niles North High School, near Old Orchard.

The article suggests a single-track elevated structure, which immediately constrains future train frequencies, and the terminus at Old Orchard precludes easy extension to Northfield, Briergate, and Deerpath. I've read that Chicago and North Western purchased one track from the estate of the North Shore Line to preempt extension of Transit Authority service in competition with its bilevel streamliners. (There were detailed plans to run the Transit Authority to Clavey Road or possibly Mundelein, and some experimental cars were built with that possibility in mind.) Union Pacific might be pleased to be out from any plans to run commuter trains onto the Freight Main, which would be feasible if at some expense.