For years, Chicagoans have been vocal about their desire for expanded CTA service--and Red Line users on the South Side just might get it soon enough.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the CTA has made a Red Line extension plan its "No. 1 priority among major capital improvement projects." The extension would add four new stations along the South Side route--including stops at 103rd, 111th, 116th and 130th streets.
The CTA hopes the project will offer improved transportation and economic recovery for under-served Chicago communities.
Transit has always been denied to our community," John Paul Jones, an organizer with the Developing Communities Project in Chicago, told the Tribune. "But a new process is beginning that will make it much easier and safer for people to get to work, school and hospitals, and for business people to develop commercial plans for housing and retail around new stations on the Red Line extension."
Adding the four new stations will cost an estimated $1.4 billion. The expansion could begin within the next several years and be completed as soon as 2016, depending on the availability of money, CTA officials told the Tribune.
"If you don't have a car, you don't have nothing out here," CTA rider Carl Mables told ABC 7 Chicago. The five-and-a-half mile extension hopes to include more stores and business to expand economic growth and improve the quality of life for residents.
The CTA has already received $285,000 in federal money for the project.