Don't meet me on the El-Train

Chicago is wonderful. Really, really wonderful (more, plus photos, to come). But O'Hare is really far away from the heart of the city.

Early this morning I left the B&B I'd been staying at and took the elevated-train (subway/LRT) to Chicago O'Hare airport with a friend of mine who was on the same flight. We were leaving from just north of downtown, so took the Red Line down and transferred onto the Blue Line, which is the only line that goes to O'Hare. On the way in, it had taken me an hour to get in on train and I expected something similiar. All was going well until an announcement that due to construction on the tracks, the Blue Line train ended at Belmont Station, we'd have to disembark and take a shuttel to Addison and Irving Park stations. At Irving Park we could board another train to continue on. So we got off, went on a bus, saw more parts of Chicago, and finally got back onto a fuller, lurchier train.

The delay was due to construction to enable the train to go faster than 15mph on the tracks. How slow is 15 mph? On that part of the Blue Line, the tracks are placed in the middle of what looks like the interstate highway—four lines on each side. At one point, I looked outside, and realized that cars were passing us. Easily.

Construction is scheduled to be finished Dec. 2008, at which point all parts of the Blue Line track from O'Hare to downtown should have top speeds of 55 mph. And oh yeah, the trip out took 1.5 hours in all, and that's not counting the 2o minute walk through O'Hare. It felt like I had already gone on a long trip before even getting on the plane.