Renovated Brown Line Station Platforms Rotting Faster Than Anticipated
By Chuck Sudo in News on Aug 30, 2011 2:00PM
The Francisco Brown Line Station, where the entire platform will be replaced starting in September. (Image by toast322)
Tribune transportation columnist John Hilkevitch followed up on a story first reported last December by Chicago News Cooperative. Hilkevitch writes (and many of us can confirm) the platform at the Francisco stop is so bad CTA will spend between $150,000 to $175,000 to replace it starting in September.
In Chicago News Co-Op's report, the cause of the rapid decay was pinpointed to a failure of the treatment method used to protect the wood. CTA went with a product called Flame Safe X-T, which is supposed to act as a flame retardant and weather sealant. Louis Jacobi, the principal owner of the company that makes Flame Safe X-T, said the product wasn't meant for long term protection from the weather. To stave off further rotting, CTA applied another weather resistant material called CedarShield from April through August of last year. But the president of the company that makes CedarShield said he was "appalled" CTA hadn't separate weather and flame retardation treatments.
Doing so may have saved CTA some of the $350,000 Hilkevitch says the transit authority has meted out to date to repair rotting wood at Francisco and other platforms. Compounding the bad decisions, Hilkevitch notes none of the wood is covered by a guarantee because manufacturers wouldn't provide warranties for products used in commercial settings or to protect against decay and decay.
"It means the CTA, which faces more than $7 billion in capital improvements systemwide that the agency cannot afford, will be forced to spend more money on Brown Line stations that should have been virtually maintenance-free for years," Hilkevitch writes.
The deterioration of the platforms is spreading at such a pace it's keeping CTA carpenters so busy they can't keep up.