As the Chicago Transit Authority continues trying to cram more and more trains into the Loop’s elevated rail loop, new bottlenecks are emerging. At the same time, some of the CTA’s infrastructure is in a desperate state of repair. So, what’s being proposed on Wabash Avenue will kill two pigeons with one stone.

The CTA is going to close its Randolph and Wabash station along with its Madison and Wabash station. Those two stations will be replaced by a single new station at Washington and Wabash. It will serve Brown, Green, Pink, Purple, and Orange line trains.

The new station was designed by Exp. You may know it by its previous name, Teng and Associates. It features dozens of curvy white fins, making the station seem something like the carcass of a whale washed up on the shore of Lake Michigan.

When someone moves to Chicago, they do sense a certain amount of absurdity about the number of L stations in close proximity to each other. The CTA’s long-term goal is to have just two stations on each of the Loop’s four sides. Moving toward that goal, it shuttered the Randolph and Wells station in 1995 when the Washington and Wells station opened. The Randolph and Wells station still exists, and is used as a platform for electrical transformers and storage of other materials.

By cutting down on the number of stations in The Loop, CTA trains can make fewer stops, speeding journeys. It also means fewer stations for CTA employees to clean, staff, maintain, and secure, saving precious operational dollars. In the world of transit financing, shiny new trains are often bought with grant or stimulus money from your federal tax dollars, but actually running those trains and their stations comes out of a different bucket of money. This new station will be paid for entirely with your federal tax dollars.

This will be the first new CTA station since the one designed by Ross Barney Architects opened on the Green/Pink lines at North Morgan Street in 2012. Though, railfans will be quick to point out that that was a replacement for the original Morgan station which opened in 1893 and closed in 1948.

The CTA is also moving forward with plans for a new Cermak station on the Green Line, also designed by Ross Barney Architects, intended to serve McCormick Place and the planned South Loop entertainment district anchored by the McPier Event Center, two new hotels and some kind of “Music Row” attraction.

The complete press release from the mayor’s office follows the photo gallery: