The State Street and Dearborn Street subways of the Chicago Transit Authority will remain closed at least through the Tuesday morning rush hour in the wake of the underground flooding that forced an evacuation of the Loop, CTA officials said late Monday.
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While CTA riders will be able to get downtown by bus if not by subway, many of those who rely on rapid transit will have to make adjustments to their routes that could lengthen their rides.
”We encourage people to leave earlier to allow themselves additional travel time. I`d say about a half-hour,” said CTA spokeswoman Rosemarie Gulley. ”We definitely will not have power back to the subways for the morning rush period . . . nor probably for the afternoon rush as well.”
Thousands of workers were forced to make an early trek home around midday Monday as subterranean flooding spread, cutting off electrical power to scattered sections of the central business district and prompting city officials to advise an evacuation.
The exodus was made easier, in part, because businesses sent employees home over a period of several hours, spreading out the rush and lessening its impact on transit systems and local roads.
Flooding in the subway tunnels will affect 126,900 weekday riders who board trains at 17 closed stations, from the North-Clybourn station on the Howard line to the University of Illinois-Halsted stop on the Congress-Douglas line, said CTA spokesman Jeff Stern.
Howard-Englewood-Jackson Park trains that usually travel the State Street tube have been rerouted over the Ravenswood elevated track to the Loop. The north-south trains will travel over Lake and Wabash Streets and rejoin their regular tracks on the Near South Side.
But riders on the Dearborn Street subway will have no ”L” option. Southbound O`Hare line trains will stop at the Division Street station. CTA buses will plug the service gap between there and the Loop, to where rail service resumes at Racine Avenue on the Congress-Douglas line.
Gulley estimated that the bus ride from Division would add about 20 minutes to the commute. CTA officials recommended that O`Hare line riders consider switching to one of the north-south lines.
The Metra option, meanwhile, would have riders on the O`Hare line transferring to the Chicago & North Western train at Jefferson Park or Irving Park Road, and users of the Douglas line opting for a Metra/Burlington Northern train. However, one would have to pay an additional fare to ride Metra.
Metra spokeswoman Marla Karlin said that a regular schedule of trains would be run Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation reported no unusual traffic tieups Monday afternoon, even through the construction zone on the Kennedy Expressway. Normal traffic operations were expected Tuesday.
However, highway officials were keeping watch Monday night on the
”Hubbard`s Cave” section of the Kennedy just north of Lake Street. The expressway at this point is 15 feet below the surface of the Chicago River.
A leak seeped out of the east wall of the tunnel, presumably from an old sewer line, said James Klafeta, bureau chief of traffic and maintenance for the state Transportation Department.
Pumps were brought on line, and emergency electrical generators were standing by to keep the roadway dry, Klafeta said.
To clear out the Loop as quickly as possible, the CTA threw open the turnstiles to its elevated stations and waived fares for bus riders for all service originating downtown from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Stern said.
But the CTA was hampered by water seeping into the Lake transfer subway station on the O`Hare-Congress-Douglas line, a leak that forced transit officials to cut electrical power to the Dearborn Street and State Street subways at about 10:30 a.m. Monday.
Metra had its own scare Monday afternoon when about 5 inches of water seeped into the underground station at Randolph Street on the Metra Electric line. Workers stemmed the flow with sandbags. Had they been unsuccessful, Metra would have had to stop its south suburban trains at Van Buren Street, Karlin said.
Metra was forced out of its West Jackson Boulevard headquarters at about 10 a.m. and took up temporary residence in Union Station.
The Regional Transportation Authority left its headquarters at 1 N. Dearborn St. for the O`Hare Exposition Center in Rosemont, where the agency plans to have its travel information line, 312-836-7000, back in service from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Rush hour times three. That was Metra conductor Dennis Malone`s succinct description of the commuter crush aboard his train, which left Union Station at 1:15 p.m. on the Milwaukee District North line to Grayslake.
Most days, about 150 people ride on the line at midday, Malone said. But on Monday, Malone`s three-car train groaned out of Union Station with more than 600 passengers-so packed that ticket collectors were unable to collect fares.
Commuters took the cattle-car ambience in stride. They laughed about relief from the Monday blahs. Some made plans to play golf or catch the White Sox home opener on television.
Malone barely squeezed aboard. He had to ride with the engineer because space was so tight. Smiling and a bit flushed, he squeezed back into the passenger section of the train on its third stop from Union Station.
”Everybody`s been friendly,” he said. ”They laughed. I think everyone understood. They were all kind of making light of the situation. . . . They seemed like they were happy to be going home early. Most of them on the normal rush hour are kind of quiet, tired after a long day of work.
”I even got a few thank yous today. Normally they just get off the train and don`t say anything to you.”
Cindy Sybert of Elk Grove Village described her Metra ride to Arlington Heights as ”the train from hell.”
”It was packed,” Sybert said, and Arlington Heights was little better.
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”Usually the taxis are out here, but it was a madhouse. Usually there`s not that many people that get off the train.”
At the Illinois Highway 59 station in Aurora on the Burlington Northern line, trains started pulling in every 20 minutes starting at about noon. By 2 p.m., the parking lot was half emptied.
Mike Lesnik lives in Lockport and usually takes a Heritage Corridor train into Union Station in Chicago. But Metra runs only two trains a day on that southwest suburban line, and Lesnik said that he didn`t find any at noon Monday.
At the nearby Burlington Northern platform, Lesnik added: ”I saw a train that said `Extra` and I told myself, `I`m getting on.` My wife (Debbie) isn`t familiar with the stops on the Burlington, but she knows where Route 59 is. I told her, `I`ll meet you there.` ”
”When I walked into the station I couldn`t believe it,” said Patti Eganhouse of Warrenville. ”People were walking down the track so they could get to the train. They (Burlington personnel) were closing the doors behind us so more people wouldn`t sardine their way in there.”
Country Club Hills resident Sharon Stubblefield said the Metra Electric trains to Homewood were so crowded she walked to the LaSalle Street station, boarded a Metra/Rock Island train to Oak Forest, and took a taxi to her car at the Homewood station.
The flooding also disrupted the business of people flying into Chicago.
Ronald Coleman, an Atlanta native, said he arrived at O`Hare International Airport shortly after 10 a.m., intending to meet with his tax attorney in downtown Chicago to finish his income taxes.
Coleman never got out of the airport.
”I have been calling his Loop office all morning, and now his answering service is telling me that he was forced to leave his office,” Coleman said. ”Now I`m going to have to go all the way back home without my taxes.”
As commuters jammed the city`s transit systems, some cabdrivers allegedly seized upon the opportunity to turn an extra profit on fares from the Loop to O`Hare, a trip that should cost about $25.
Uwe Brasch, an Arlington Heights lawyer who parked his car at O`Hare and rode a CTA train downtown, looked into a cab ride to the airport but refused to do so ”because I had one cabbie tell me it would cost me $55 to get to the airport, and the other one told me $75.”
Brasch ended up catching a Metra train.
A spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Consumer Services urged people who believed they had been gouged by cabdrivers to call the
department`s complaint line, 312-744-9400.
Assuming, of course, someone is there Tuesday to answer the phone.