Chicago Union Station Canal St Entrance Closed

[Seaboard92]

Personally I prefer the German method. You look to see what track it is on and go. Then board your car or any car if on a regio or rail pass. We couldn't do that here but it's a nicer system.

 

[neroden]

Personally I prefer the German method. You look to see what track it is on and go. Then board your car or any car if on a regio or rail pass. We couldn't do that here but it's a nicer system.

This is how all trains are boarded worldwide, except at a short list of "crazyland" Amtrak stations.

 

[PaulM]

What is so wrong with this process?

- Besides the two reasons you provided, the boarding of trains in the major stations uses a needlessly high number of station employees. It is not cost effective.

I wondered about this the other day as I observed the new kindergarten walk from the Great Hall. Is the cost of the new walk exceed by the money saved having less whip and chair personnel in the pen?

One thing I can say for sure is that the echo in the Great Hall makes the boarding announcements unintelligible.

 

[MisterUptempo]

Forgive me in advance if these have been posted already, but for those inquiring about the future Metropolitan Lounge, here are a few presentation boards that might help clarify things.

 

[MisterUptempo]

To provide proper attribution, the boards above came from the following URL-

http://www.scribd.com/doc/285286008/24x36-BOARDS-w-Master-Plan-LoRes

 

[cirdan]

That looks simply huge, much bigger than the present one.

Is Amtrak really expecting such an upturn in ridership?

Won't most of the lounge be empty most of the time?

Also, where is the reception desk gone?

With all those multiple entrances, won't it be difficult to control access?

 

[tricia]

Except for the image of the woman outdoors, none of the people in this depiction has any luggage with them. Wide-open spaces, pointless low tables with no seating anywhere near, benches without backs--none of that meets the needs of someone who's en route with luggage, looking for a comfortable chair to sit in with their luggage at hand. Since Chicago's Metro lounge serves so many long-distance sleeper passengers, that's a serious shortcoming.

On the plus side, more space and a less cave-like ambience are big pluses.

 

[willem]

Thanks for posting the images. Interesting comments. I wonder if the top (north) area of the lower level is part of the lounge. Since there appears to be one door from that area to the rest of the area, it might be that access will be controlled there. But there are still other doors shown; perhaps they are emergency exits.

Backless benches would seem to be a waste of space in the context of a Metropolitan Lounge. But there does seem to be a lot of floor space for the luggage that is not shown. And the most reasonable place for the luggage storage looks to be outside the door that I suggested might be one of the access-control points.

 

[Eric S]

It looks like one of the dark gray areas on the lower-level diagram is labeled "self service baggage storage" but it's obviously a little difficult to read the labels. There also appears to be a "reception" label on the both the upper and lower levels. If it's easy to restrict access to the upper level, I could certainly imagine that upper/street-level entrance only being open for limited hours (or being a budget cut at some point).

As far as the furniture throughout the lounge, it's really hard to tell from the diagram what sort of chairs, benches, couches, etc. are supposed to be depicted, so it's entirely possible that the central corridor area (as such) has the furniture shown in the images while the "rooms" off to the side have soft furniture.

 

[willem]

Thanks for interpreting for me.

My ancient eyes just laughed at me when I asked them to read any of the fine print. I thought about looking for high-res versions of the images, and my lazy fingers laughed at me. I can't get no respect!

 

[neroden]

Thanks for the link to the designs.

I think you should consider the seating layout as provisional; it's all supposed to be loose chairs and tables, so the architect won't have put too much thought into it.

The architectural designs are nice. The lounge isn't as much larger as it appears; if you look at diagrams of the whole station, you realize that the existing lounge is only a little smaller than the concourse-level portion of the new lounge. The new lounge has maybe 1.5x as much space, after accounting for space lost to the second reception desk, stairs, and elevator. Amtrak *does* need a significantly larger Metro Lounge than the current one; at the "rush hour" when all the Western trains are leaving, the current lounge is standing-room-only. Another point: with a more roomy lounge, Amtrak can more comfortably sell day passes for extra revenue. I think the intention is also to have heavier use of the Metro Lounge by business class passengers on the Chicago corridors. And I do think that there will be more sleeper riders on the Capitol Limited with Pennsy through cars, and on a daily Cardinal, so there's expansion there too.

The lounge currently usually has two staff members at the desk. Assigning one to the lower-level and one to the upper-level entrance will work. Converting the baggage storage to "self-service" will free up a red cap, so it might reduce the number of staff members. I see that the new lounge will also have an exit into the taxiway; this might be used for "backdoor" service to the trains as in the current lounge.

Depending on the final layout of Canal Street (I haven't seen an updated plan for that in quite a while) the upper entrance could be used for people heading to and from the Amtrak buses, or for people being picked up / dropped off. Or if the final Canal St. layout doesn't include crosswalks in the right place, the upper entrance might end up being closed most of the time.

The downstairs reception desk is well-designed. While there appear to be multiple entrances, two of them are facing the same reception desk. The bathrooms are actually outside the "reception desk control point", although they're visible from the reception desk, which means they could be used for non-Metro-Lounge passengers in a pinch. The taxiway entrance will presumably be controlled like the current entrance from the tracks is controlled.

 

[neroden]

I also found this:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/285286186/CUS-MDP-Briefing-Presentation-press-Copy-10-15-15

The most interesting part of the document is the list of "phase 1" priojects:

1.Renovate Canal Street Lobby, NS/EW Concourse Expansion, HVAC Overhaul (S1)

The HVAC overhaul is apparently already in progress. I'm not quite sure what the other two parts of this consist of.Part of it is probably the stairs renovation currently being done.

Not sure what the "NS/EW concourse expansion" is -- maybe that's the big plan to relocate the main escalators to open up the path from the Great Hall to the concourse, maybe it includes the planned direct connection to the tunnel leading to the former mail platform, maybe it includes the relocation of the Amtrak ticket desk to open up "north south" flow.

2.Renovate and Expand Adams Street (ADA) Entrance (S2)

I found a pic; this is basically making the Adams St. entrance ADA accessible and decent-looking.

3.Renovate and Expand Jackson Boulevard Entrance (S3)

I'm not clear on which corner of Jackson Blvd and Canal St. this is referring to; there are entrances planned on three corners.

4.Install Canal Street Headhouse (ADA) Entrance Elevator (S4)

Not clear where this is going to go, but presumably this is an elevator from the street to the Great Hall?

5.Add Vertical Access Along Canal Street (S5)

Presumably this is a different elevator from the street to the Great Hall?

6.Widen Platforms 6/8 and 10/12 and Add Direct Access (ADA) to Street Level (P1)

This is the Metra plan to eliminate a couple of the baggage platforms to widen the BNSF line platforms.

7.Add Platform 2/4 Direct Access (ADA) to Jackson Street (P2)

Clearly another one of the three Jackson St. / Canal St. entrances, for Metra

8.Add Platform 1/3 Direct Access (ADA) to Madison Street (P3)

Expansion of the north side entrances, for Metra again

 

[neroden]

(Wouldn't allow me to put this all in one post)

9.Convert High-Level Mail Platform to Passenger Platform (P4)

Woo-hoo! In the near term, this means level boarding for the Lake Shore Limited and Cardinal.

10.Interlocking Improvements Within Terminal Area Limits (T1)

No specifics.

11.Pedestrian Passageway and Street Access to Ogilvie (C1)

Not clear to me exactly where this would go. Is it basically a plan to have an entrance on the north side of Madison?

12.Pedestrian Passageway to CTA Clinton Blue Line Station (C2)

This has already been sketched out. The plan seems to be to place it under Canal Street, perhaps because Canal St. has to be reconstructed anyway, though I wonder how it gets fromthere to the Blue Line station (Tilden St. maybe?)

13.Renovation and Modification of Existing Station Retail (R1)

Vague.

 

[neroden]

So Amtrak is planning to spend two years, starting now, to hire the master developer for that list of improvements, before they actually start getting built.

It says that the contracts will allow Amtrak to proceed on early action items before the developer is contracted, however.

The Metro Lounge isn't on the list so it may start construction earlier.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

I'm glad there will be more space in the new lounge - that's my main objection to the "Kindergarten Walk".

Personally, I don't like to board the train early. If I'm going to be on a train for several days, I'm happy to get on shortly - maybe 5 minutes - before it departs. And since the current lounge is so small, dark, and crowded, I'd personally rather spend the time somewhere else in the station, or walking around Chicago if the weather is nice. On several occasions, I've returned to the lounge only to find out that the Kindergarten Walk has already happened. Under those circumstances, I wish they'd just let me walk to the train, but no - I have to wait a while until one of the attendants can be freed to personally walk me to my platform.

This is stupid. There's no kindergarten walk back into the station when a train arrives, so they clearly aren't really worried about people walking around unsupervised. I get wanting to get the bulk of the passengers to the correct platform in a group. However, if I've already missed the Walk, getting lost and missing the train would be my own fault - why can't they just let me walk to the train on my own then?

 

[Eric S]

If you dig into the documents on the CHI Master Plan site, it explains in more detail what the particular projects are.

1. NS/EW Concourse Expansion - the area where the Amtrak ticket counters, the large water fountain, and stair/escalators from Canal Street meet - moving some of these items to open up this area.

2 & 3. The Adams and Jackson entrances - these are the entrances at Adams & the River and Jackson & the River

11. Passenger corridor between Union and Ogilvie stations - I don't believe it explains specifically where this would go, but it would be an underground/sheltered connection between the two stations.

12. Passenger corridor to CTA Blue Line subway - Again, I don't believe it explains specifically where this would go, but I assume it would tie into the existing tunnel from the station to the parking structure (and soon to be bus transfer center) south of Jackson and extend that tunnel to somehow tie into the CTA subway station.

EDIT: Here's a pdf from the Master Plan website that shows some of these proposals, although they are numbered differently on this document. There's another document somewhere that I couldn't find on a quick search that shows the proposals for the Adams and Jackson entrances.

 

[neroden]

Thanks Eric. I found an Amtrak press release claiming that they will move the Metropolitan Lounge into the headhouse location next to the Great Hall "next summer", i.e. summer 2016. We'll see if it happens.

By the way, we somehow ended up with a long Metropolitan Lounge discussion in this thread -- maybe a mod could move it over to the "New Metropolitan Lounge" thread or something.