As local, state and federal officials ponder ways to incorporate rapid transit into the Chicago area’s transportation mix and reduce our dependence on the automobile, they might want to consider a time-tested technology that was in place 50 years ago and worked just fine. A model that was unceremoniously junked in favor of the perceived wave of the future-superhighways.
Until July 3, 1957, the Desplaines Avenue station in Forest Park wasn’t a rail terminus, but a transfer point where riders on the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin railroad connected with CTA trains heading downtown to Chicago. The CA&E rail system transported thousands of riders comfortably and quickly from Downtown Chicago to Oak Park and Forest Park, Westchester, Broadview, Maywood and points as far west as Wheaton, Aurora and much of the Fox River Valley.
For 50 years, until 1953, the electric CA&E trains ran over the Garfield Park Elevated tracks that went from Downtown Chicago to Forest Park, carrying passengers comfortably and quickly at speeds of up to 75 mph. Equally important, the electric rails were powered by fixed location generating plants, now known to be far less polluting than thousands of individual internal combustion motors.
The beginning of the end started in 1952, when the CTA sold its right-of-way for its tracks between Racine Avenue and Sacramento Boulevard, and agreed to the destruction of its elevated structure as part of the planned Eisenhower Expressway.
In February of that year, plans were announced for the extension of the Congress Street Super Highway 30 miles west, through DuPage into then-distant Kane County. The next month a Tribune article predicted that “Super Highways may strangle Aurora-Elgin.”
In April 1952, the CTA proposed the extension of the CA&E rail service to Oak Park, Forest Park and possibly to Maywood at First Avenue. CTA chairman Ralph Budd said that the longer service would permit retention of the CA&E’s electric interurban service. The extension’s right-of-way would be owned by Cook County.
The CA&E’s general counsel, Joseph T. Zoline, called the CTA’s proposal “the most intelligent suggestion” thus far for maintaining the existing rails.
But intelligence-or at least vision-were in short supply in the 1950s regarding rapid transit. Cars, most believed, were the wave of the future. The money to support the plans was never appropriated.
In December 1952, the CA&E finished its presentation before the Illinois Commerce Commission seeking to permanently abandon its rail line west of Wheaton and temporarily abandon its line east of Wheaton. A nearly five-year court fight then began to keep the service going. Officials at all levels of government attempted to intervene, hoping to work out a deal that would save the rail service. None would prove successful.
The situation became even more problematic when Cook County later moved in court to condemn the right-of-way it controlled between Austin Boulevard and the Des Plaines River. The city of Chicago had plans to eventually build the Garfield elevated rail system in the middle of planned expressway, then allow the CA&E to transfer service to those rails. No money was committed to the project, though, and the privately owned CA&E board of directors balked at the massive losses the likely years-long delay would cost.
The CA&E board asked for $3 million to compensate them for their losses but was turned down.
Money was always the determining factor. As is still largely true today, there were large sums for highways in 1957, and next to nothing for rapid transit. On June 21, Illinois lawmakers approved the appropriation of nearly $645 million over the next two years for highways but overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would have allowed the state, counties and cities to use gas tax funds to support rapid transit needs.
That additional tax revenue would have allowed the CTA to purchase the CA&E outright for $9 million. Also, the CTA was seeking around $20 million annually for 15 years to pay for badly needed track and car improvements and to extend the line.
“There may have been sound arguments against subsidizing mass transit with gas tax funds, but none was presented in the house debate,” the Chicago Tribune reported at the time.
In a June 22, 1957, editorial, the Tribune rather bluntly questioned the legislature’s wisdom. Noting the massive imbalance between funding of roads and rails, the Trib called the decision a blow to the CTA, and, “More especially, it was a blow to the people of Chicago and its suburbs.”
Foreshadowing a debate that would go on for the next five decades, the Trib concluded, “In some future legislative session there will be [lawmakers] capable of seeing that transportation in a large city cannot depend on the private automobile … .”
At noon on July 3, 1957, after numerous injunctions and challenges and ongoing financial losses, the CA&E pulled the switch on its commuter service-unbeknownst to some 3,500 to 6,000 commuters who’d traveled downtown on CA&E trains earlier that morning.
Julie Johnson, now 65, was a 15-year-old Wheaton resident when she headed downtown to the Chicago library with a friend that morning. She would miss the final full-length run by a CA&E train by just a minute or two. When her train pulled into Forest Park around 12:20 p.m., she was greeted by a posted notice and an apologetic stationmaster.
“They just said, ‘We’re sorry, but the railroad’s been shut down,'” Johnson recalled.
She was one of the lucky ones. She and her friend took a cab to the Marion Street Northwestern station in Oak Park and caught a train home to Wheaton. For thousands of other returning commuters later that afternoon, their once-routine trip turned into a mob scene as trainload after trainload arrived in Forest Park only to find their means of going home no longer existed.
Making matters worse, CA&E officials reportedly didn’t notify CTA officials of the shutdown until 5 p.m., by which time an estimated 3,500 riders had arrived at the station.
Officials at the Leyden Motor Coach company, which was planning to eventually pick up the slack when the CA&E eventually ended service, were also caught unprepared. The West Town Bus Company in Oak Park sent four to transport people to train stations in River Forest and Elmhurst. Other people took cabs, if they could get one, or called home to arrange for a car to pick them up.
If only officials could have found a middle ground. In March 1960, nearly three years after the CA&E made its final commuter run, permanent service on the Eisenhower Expressway line (now the Blue Line) began between downtown and the city limits at Austin Boulevard. Tracks were also laid in the Oak Park section between Austin and out to Desplaines Avenue in Forest Park.
On October 12, 1960, the last three miles of expressway, between Austin and Desplaines Avenue, opened for traffic. Oak Park President J. Russell Christenson joined Gov. William Stratton, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and Cook County Board President Daniel Ryan at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Any chance that the CA&E model could have been resurrected died in 1961, when the entire length of the CA&E tracks was abandoned without ceremony. The right-of-way eventually gave way to various housing developments and the Illinois Prairie Path.
In the 50 years since the CA&E ceased service, cars have increasingly been the primary mode of travel from the far western suburbs to downtown and back. That may now finally be changing, as Oak Park and other west suburban communities have come to realize that they’re getting swamped by “the wave of the future” and its ever-increasing environmental impacts.
If that change does come, it will look a little like we’ve returned back to the future.