CTA gets green light to extend Ashland Avenue bus route to Ravenswood Metra station

The CTA got the green light Wednesday to extend a popular North Side bus route that hasn’t changed since Chicago’s streetcar days.

If the full City Council follows the Transportation Committee’s lead, the No. 9 Ashland Avenue bus will run farther north, to Lawrence, instead of ending at Irving Park Road, its currend terminus.

That new route goes all the way to the newly-renovated Ravenswood Metra Station. The new service is expected to begin Aug. 25.

The existing route has been in place since 1912. Northbound Ashland buses turn east on Irving Park Road to Clark Street before heading northwest to Belle Plaine.

The new route would continue on Ashland all the way to Lawrence Avenue to make a seamless connection with the newly-renovated Ravenswood Metra station just south of Lawrence.

That would provide the “intermodal connectivity” so many riders and mass transit advocates have long demanded.

“This is something that’s going to unlock access to 1,000 riders a day and improve by 100% the access to jobs. It’s gonna go from about 15,600 accessed jobs available through the Ashland route to over 30,000 jobs that will be accessible by the Ashland Avenue extension It also represents an important integration that we’re working on with Metra,” said Molly Poppe, the former city budget official now serving as CTA’s chief planning and innovation officer.

“We continue to hear from the community that they want those multi-modal points between CTA and Metra and Pace. And this is a really critical step that allows us, through a one-mile extension, to achieve that integration."

Buses along the extended route are expected to operate every six to 15 minutes, with up to 10 buses per hour during rush periods.

That prompted some area residents to question whether the street can handle the increased tonnage.

Poppe sought to reassure them.

She argued the five-ton weight limit on signs posted by the Chicago Department of Transportation since 1982 “applies to trucks moving through the area. It does not apply to commercial vehicles. … It does not apply to vehicles delivering or picking up, which is very specifically what CTA is doing.”

“We asked them about the structural integrity of Ashland Avenue. CDOT said they did not identify any records indicating structural pavement concerns on North Ashland Avenue between Irving Park to Clark. They also are going to pick up Ashland Avenue as part of their regular arterial resurfacing next year,” Poppe said.

“They are comfortable with our buses operating on Ashland Avenue.”

Jon Czerwinski, the CTA’s director of service planning and traffic engineering, said the Ashland extension is long overdue. The current route dates back to "Chicago surface lines, which ran streetcar service up here all the way back to 1912." That leaves a "large gap of north-south bus service north of Irving Park Road," Czerwinski said.

“The Ashland bus runs all the way down to 103rd Street. … This will be a benefit to the entire Ashland corridor. … The connection to the Metra UP North Line will expand regional connections all the way up to the Wisconsin border, actually," he said.

Without swift approval by Council, the extension could be delayed into December or January, Poppe said.

But Transportation Committee Chair Gregory Mitchell (7th) said he has some concerns he wants addressed, even after Wednesday’s vote.

“If you resurface it and expand that line, the heat from the buses is gonna melt that resurfacing if you don’t have the bus pads,” Mitchell said, demanding that local Ald. Matt Martin (47th) get bus pads installed “at each stop.”

As heads nodded in the audience, Mitchell said: “Your concerns did not fall on deaf ears. … I’m encouraging for it not to be rushed because I would like for it to be done the right way.”

Martin vowed to respond in writing to the concerns he heard again Wednesday.

"If we do need to wait several months to have CDOT give this additional look or to have issues addressed, we will, of course, do that because we want to make sure we are setting ourselves up for success mid- and long-term," Martin said.