An Old Idea for Better ‘L’ Service

Sometimes you take things for granted. In 1965, when I first visited New York, I learned just how fast Chicago ‘L’ service was.

I was on my senior class trip. A few of us decided to check out Coney Island. We boarded a subway train on Sixth Avenue and away we went.

The train barreled through swiftly under the streets of Manhattan. We crossed the East River and emerged on an elevated line in Brooklyn. Then we crept along. There seemed to be a station every two or three blocks, and our train dutifully stopped at each of them. At some of the stations, there wasn’t a prospective passenger to be seen. I don’t know how long it took us to get to Coney Island. It seemed like two hours.

That’s when I appreciated my hometown’s “A” and “B” train system. Here’s how it worked—

Those CTA stations with fewer passengers were designated as either “A” or “B” stations, while the busier stations were “A-B”. Trains running on a line alternated between “A” trains and “B” trains. An “A” train would stop at “A” stations and “A-B” stations, and run through the “B” stations without stopping. A “B” train would stop at the “B” and “A-B” stations, and skip the “A” stations.

CTA first adopted this skip-stop plan on the Lake Street line in 1948. It worked so well that it was soon put into place on all of the main rapid transit lines.

There was also a color-code, so you could readily identify your train at a distance. Lines that operated through a subway had red signs for “A” trains, green signs for “B” trains. On lines that didn’t use a subway, the signs on “A” trains were yellow, while “B” trains had blue.

The lines with the heaviest traffic ran skip-stop service all day, while those with fewer passengers—like Ravenswood—had “A-B” service only in rush hours. On weekends and at night, all trains made all stops.

You did have a problem if you boarded at an “A” station and wanted to get off at a “B”. Then you had to change trains at an “A-B” stop. But most riders simply accepted this as the price of swifter service.

The skip-stop system worked well for forty years. Then declining ridership caused CTA to make schedule cuts. With longer intervals between trains, some lines reverted to all-stop service. In 1995 the last “A-B” trains were eliminated from the Howard line.

Twenty years have passed. Rapid transit ridership is again strong. We’d have to survey current business at all stations. But isn’t it time for CTA to bring back the “A-B” skip-stop trains?

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