Despite Grassroots Push, CTA Will Not Restore Green Line To Jackson Park

By Stephen Gossett in News on Aug 24, 2017 7:22PM

Photo via Change.org

With the impending arrival of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, now seemed like the ideal time to consider restoring Green Line tracks all the way to the park, at Stony Island and 63rd. But the grassroots push for that rebuild has come up short—at least in terms of the near future. CTA officials said this month there are "no plans" to extend the line to its former endpoint.

Current funding uncertainty at the federal level makes any such campaign difficult, a top CTA official said at a City Club of Chicago event last week. “I regret to tell you there are no plans at this time to extend the 63rd Street line to Stony Island," Dorval Carter, President of the CTA, said, according to the Sun-Times. "Many of you would recall that there was a time when we had the line that went out to Stony Island. Unfortunately, decisions made back then resulted in that line being torn down."

“It’s safe to say that the funding challenges that [Transportation Commissioner] Rebekah [Scheinfeld] and I were speaking to earlier, particularly at the federal level, really make it a difficult task to pursue at this point in time," Carter added.

An online petition to reinstate Green Line service to Stony Island gathered more than 700 signatures. The most southeasterly station on the line is now Cottage Grove. The petition called for the Stony Island plus the old University and Dorchester stops to be rebuilt. By 1994, all three stations had been closed; and the then-unused branch of track was demolished in 1997.

At the same talk, Scheinfeld also revealed that plans were being considered to integrate the Divvy bike-share system with Ventra cards and announced that the Washington-Wabash superstation "L" stop would open on Aug. 31.