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I feel like this would have worked, and worked even better today because this area around Rosemont has only grown and needed more local transportation for the entertainment districts

1:47 is that a live analog train tracker?

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🫂Thank you for posting.

This is an area where I really think they had something. The only issue with this plan was making the system one way.

Every time I see someone with a WVU bumper sticker or banner now, I think, "hey that's the one with the funny train thing"

Another Stormy banger

Americans will do anything but build a train /lh

PRT reminds me of the Detroit People Mover. It being slow small of loop almost makes it useless. I can see where maybe this works well at WVU with its complex geography, but kinda pointless in the Midwest.

That would have been awesome for Rosemont. Walking in Rosemont does suck though, big wide streets and parking lots. Nothing is even remotely close to the Rosemont Blueline stop.

cow talking about transit? cow talking about transit! cow talking about transit❤

Well that’s neat!! I had no clue that something like this was even being talked about in Rosemont. (I grew up north west of there in Palatine!) I’d go to WV to ride the existing one but uh…it’s not exactly a friendly state to uh…yeah.

I wonder if they ever resurrected this Rosemont plan, they could do a high-speed PRT with Schaumburg/woodfield and have it combined; three nodes of concentration along the tollway, with the trucking office parks along Busse (ill 83) sandwiched in the middle?!

It would have been interesting to see how such service might have affected and evolved some of the other suburbs which made proposals, had they been chosen. As much as this plan had clear faults (at the time, I would think that the convention center might have seen the most immediate use as a destination from the L, so why wouldn't it be the first rather than last stop?) it seems that the sort of service it might have offered would make Rosemont much better to get around now that all of these destinations are pretty fully built up. The bus circulator, though helpful, has limited stops and isn't the best utilized. (It is also one way, with the convention center served last.) And the Allstate Arena has become even less accessible since the discontinuation of a Pace bus serving it for special events (which was never a great delight, either, as you typically had to wait on it for extended time.) Why doesn't Dempster Pulse at least serve the stadium more directly, with a stop on Manheim? Or could the 223, maybe, be rerouted for some semblance of stadium service, which isn't a healthy walk away? Nor does the circulator take anyone north of the transit center. The Metra station in Rosemont is entirely underutilized and poorly connected to the rest of the area. It really is an irony that for an suburb with one of the busiest transit centers in the metropolis, and plenty of buses passing through to terminate, local service is pretty pathetic, in practice. I wonder whether, if Rosemont had instead invested in a people mover system similar to what's at O'Hare, with greater capacity, perhaps they would have effectively moved things forward and had something quite useful available today.

Honestly this is one of the few places I think PRT couldve worked - if they integrated it into O'Hare's train system, I could see it being pretty popular for getting to hotels, restaurants, and the outlet mall from the airport

I love videos like this. Uncovers a history that I never knew about

Interesting video. What was Deerfield's proposal?

STORMY IS BACK BABBY

That would have been really cool if Rosemont did this. May have been a different place than it is today. I always hated going there.

Stormy, this is absolutely fantastic, by far the best thing you've ever made. Had no idea this thing was ever a part of American Transit history, and you explained it really really well. Glad you could use my footage!

As mentioned, limited capacity is an issue when you build a PRT system. And if you're gonna spend on building an elevated system that unifies Rosemont and goes over the highway interchange, you might as well spend on something that has a higher capacity, whether it's a frequent BRT system, airport-style people mover, or high-capacity monorail like in Chongqing. The fact Rosemont has a free circulator bus ran by Pace is already a great start! And don't do it so that you can only take it in one direction! Chongqing's monorail lines work because not only do they have rapid transit capacity and can handle the steep grades of the area, but they're also double-tracked. Chongqing is mountainous city with multiple river valleys, so like Morgantown, their geography caused them to think more creatively with transit. Fun fact, Chongqing's Line 2 monorail has a station inside a 19-story residential complex that it goes through called Liziba. It uses specialized noise reduction equipment to isolate station noise from the surrounding residences. In 2015, Lines 2 and 3 had a total of 94 million and 250 million rides respectively! Besides monorail lines, Chongqing also has some impressive metro lines! Hualongqiao station for example has Line 9 trains stopping 48 meters above the surface, making it the highest metro station in the world, surpassing Smith-Ninth Streets in NYC. As of 2024, the network currently has the world's highest metro-only bridge, the Caijia Rail Transit Bridge for Line 6, spanning the Jialing River, around 100 m above the water! The system also has some pretty deep stations like Hongyancun station reaching 116 m below the surface, Hongtudi, and Liyuchi.

I think it's worth mentioning that the reason the PRT works so well in Morgantown is because of its geography. As WVU expanded in the 1960s, geographic constraints, as the city is in a valley along the Monongahela River, forced WVU to build a second campus over 3 km away in Evansdale. While free busing was offered for students so they can move between the campuses, all the roads led through the city center, creating gridlock more typical of a megacity, so Morgantown needed something more efficient to move its students than buses. And for them, this was cheaper to build than mass transit. The Morgantown PRT has three modes, demand, schedule, and circulation. Demand mode is true PRT and acts like an elevator as you said. In schedule mode, this is activated during periods of well-known demand patterns, and operates the cars on fixed routes of known demand, lowering wait times. And then there's circulation mode, and in this mode during off-peak periods, it acts like a bus route with a small number of vehicles stopping at every station. While the construction for it ran far over budget, it still resulted in an efficient way that unified the campuses despite the terrain, offered on-time service rates better than the buses it replaced, eliminated the gridlock in the city center that the buses caused, and no injuries were reported for over four decades until an accident happened in November 2016!

Ah yes, personal rapid transit, the most expensive way to move a single person yet devised

What a story, Stormy

Thank you for the very informative video! Before this, all I knew about Rosemont was from the advertisements at O'Hare. Now I know a bit more about this suburb sandwiched on two sides by Chicago :)

ROSEMONT MENTIONED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goodness, Fullerton? That's great to hear. East-west transit on the North side is so slow. Like, take the blue line downtown and then the red line north because it's faster than heading straight east on a bus level slow. Glad there's going to be a street out there that does better than that.

3:00 look like a transgender

The ones I see actually happening are the UP-W extension to De-Kalb and MD-W to Rockford.

12:09

Been staying for a few days at River North. We often took buses on Michigan Ave. Boy, the bus has to fight through traffic and cars double parked. That would be a slam dunk if they put bus lane in the median road on that avenue.

what is the map u used for the extenisons

I think Western is a good compromise between Ashland (too far east) and Cicero (too far west). A Green Line stop at Western and Lake could easily be added. There was one there once upon a time. If you look at the map of the L system, you can see that, in someone's old master plan, a crosstown L line was planned. Where? On Paulina, one block west of Ashland. The Metropolitan West Side Elevated (today's blue and pink lines) had tracks over Paulina all the way from Cermak to Milwaukee, and the Ravenswood (today's brown line) also ran along Paulina from just north of Belmont to Wilson. If the Paulina crosstown were extended south from the Pink line, it could have stretched all the way to 63rd Street, where it could have turned three blocks east to connect with the old end of the Englewood branch of the Green line at Racine. Today, it's just a fascinating fantasy of course. But it could have been.

I think they should leave western alone it already has a 24 hour western and Lawrence bus not too far the brown line runs late. They should improve the 11 lincoln bus

Hi lol im in this video at 1:54, you can see me going up the escalator looking down. I had the orange juice

OBER DEAIRRR

CMAP probably isn't wrong that so many of these extensions are low cost-benefit, because the fundamental problem is that our costs are minimum 4x (RLE compared to Orange Line after choosing the worst-possible inflation adjustment), possibly 10x (compared to the lowest-cost peer country) what they should be. Under that condition it's nearly impossible for any transit project to be justified. It's a disaster for the city.

Stormy, you missed Dunkin donuts at 35th Archer Orange Line

Alot of those Rails to Trails programs ruined alot of future expansion opportunities. I dont have a problem with them doing it if it left opportunities to rerail them if needed, but alot of towns sold the land to businesses making it impossible to rebuilt the rail, Lake Geneva for example sold the land so they could built buildings on top of it. Its still possible but would require the station to be built on the edge or just out of town

When is the south shore line to dyer gonna be open? ...I heard it's gonna be next year, but riders might have to transfer from Hammond to the train going towards munster and on to dyer...and soon, I'm gonna be getting off at munster I have an old friend's widow that lives in munster that I'll be visiting sometime next year 😉

If it uses the track it says, it will pass through the union train museum!

Is the internet the same or faster on this train? Other Amtrak with this same route the internet was slow

I miss the old trolley buses, they looked more like actual trolleys. I laughed the first time I saw the new ones and how they just put a cowcatcher on it. Been living in the Schaumburg area for many years (and have purchased many Blåhaj from them) never actually rode one.