Residents Protest Yellow Line Extension in Skokie

Updated: Friday, 25 Sep 2009, 12:18 PM CDT
Published : Friday, 25 Sep 2009, 12:05 PM CDT

STNG Wire

Skokie - Mayor George Van Dusen urged the CTA to drop its plans to build a train station in the Niles North High School parking lot as the terminus of an expanded Yellow Line .

Van Dusen still maintains that some kind of public transit expansion in Skokie is needed to address future roadway congestion, but he now agrees that the CTA should abandon the Niles North plan, which the CTA has labeled the locally preferred alternative.

The mayor made his statement at Wednesday's CTA town hall meeting at Oakton Community Center after hours of heated testimony from a room of 300 interested persons. More than 50 of those citizens spoke, most of whom lambasted the plan and expressed incredulity that the CTA and the mayor even entertained the idea in the first place.

The concerns identified Wednesday night by residents included security, student safety, the likelihood of drawing more people from outside the high school to the campus, additional noise and the possibility of more criminals taking the train to appear at the nearby courthouse. And a smattering of the “not in my backyard” objections.

High school parents Wednesday said that the Niles North principal delivered an automated phone call message to all school parents urging them to come to the meeting and express their concerns.

By the time many finished impassioned pleas to scrap the plan, the mayor went on record for the first time to support them.

“I think we've all heard the sentiment of the residents, and I would urge the CTA to reconsider the Niles North alternative,” Mayor Van Dusen said to thunderous applause. “The residents I think have articulated reasons why they are so concerned. I can't express it any better than they have.”

While Van Dusen said that the Niles North plan should be scrapped, he said it's imperative that the village and the CTA prepare for expanded transportation to the Old Orchard area.

The CTA Board voted in August to support extending the Yellow Line tracks 1.6 miles north with elevated train tracks that would end in the Niles North parking lot with a bus terminal.

Under the plan, which has been estimated to cost as much as $270 million, the tracks would head northbound along abandoned railroad tracks from Dempster to Golf Road. At Golf, the alignment would curve east and parallel the east side of the Edens Expressway. The CTA, as part of its plan, also wants to build a parking garage that would be shared by high school and public transit drivers. The extension would open in 2016.

The Dempster Street station would be completely rebuilt to accommodate greater activity. Van Duesen would like the CTA to consider two other finalists for CTA recommendation. One would extend the Yellow Line but end the tracks west of the Edens, a plan many residents booed at Wednesday, while the other was a rapid bus transit system.

Projections show that roadway traffic in the future will increase 25 percent, the mayor said. “That will be strangulation. It will deter economic development.”

Van Dusen said that ridership on the Swift is 18 percent higher than the brown line. And developers interested in coming to Skokie often ask whether the Swift will be extended, he said. “We've got to find a way to extend it. There is an appetite if rapid transit is convenient and affordable to use.”

The mayor had pushed for an expansion of the Yellow Line, commonly called the Skokie Swift, from Dempster Street to downtown Skokie and to the Old Orchard area for years. While an Oakton Street downtown Skokie station is under construction, expanding the line north — to Westfield Old Orchard, National-Louis University, the Skokie courthouse, the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center and Skokie Hospital has always been more controversial.

But the CTA's official support for the Niles North plan this summer ramped up the controversy.

“I don't think that if I had a child going into Niles North in six years, that I'd be very happy to know that they'd be willing to put a parking lot in my child's school let alone a major CTA line with drop-off,” said high school parent Gabriela Tidhar. “I don't think there's any school in the state or the North Shore that has a parking garage probably due to safety and security reasons.”

Despite repeated requests from CTA officials to hold the applause, citizens throughout the night gave loud support to speaker after speaker who challenged the Niles North plan.

CTA officials did not respond to the speakers, but a spokesman before the hearing said that the plan is not set in stone.

Although the CTA held two public hearings prior to the CTA Board vote to support the plan, residents had to deliver questions by writing them on cards.

At the first hearing in 2008, before the plan for a Niles North station was developed, a CTA spokesman said most people who submitted cards supported expanding the Yellow Line to the Old Orchard area. But no more than two or three people voiced support for the plan at Wednesday's meeting.

Skokie Village Trustee Randy Roberts kicked off public comments by embracing an expansion of the Yellow Line.

“I'm here tonight to speak in favor of the expansion of the Skokie Swift,” Roberts said, “although I want to say from the beginning that I'm not wedded or committed to this specific alternative that the CTA has chosen. I think this is the biggest public works project in the history of the village. The economic development to our village, the lessening of traffic congestion and the reduction of environmental pollution would make us a first-class village.”

He was followed by parent Debra Yampol who also supported an expansion.

“We don't drive and we're not in a position to be buying a car,” Yampol said. “To have a way where (students) can get to school and sleep a little bit longer, get home a lot faster, have a much more direct route to me is a really positive thing.”

But these first two speakers proved to be the exception. Even if the CTA abandons the Niles North plan, many residents still oppose a Yellow Line expansion along the same route because they say trains would travel too close to many homes in five different neighborhoods.

“The concerns of the Yellow Line extension that we heard here tonight are so many and they're so obvious that we should also be addressing another concern,” said Marda Dunsky, who has helped organize and mobilize opponents of the plan.

“How did we get here? How did this happen? How has this gotten this far with so few residents knowing the details of the proposed expansion and with the CTA Board having already approved it?”

Parent Lisa Lipin called the plan “a dangerous and unwise proposition for our community.” Lipin said the combination of student and public transit parking poses safety and legal questions since part of the plan is to run a bus from school grounds to the courthouse.

“The Illinois criminal code prohibits registered set offenders from coming 500 feet of a school as well as a park,” she said.

Opponents of the plan have also been urging Niles Township High School District 219 to take a strong position against it.

Superintendent Nanciann Gatta Wednesday said the locally preferred alternative is not District 219's preferred alternative.

“We have extremely limited space on the Niles North campus,” which is attended by 2,200 students, she said. “The site is landlocked and we're already challenged by inadequate parking for staff and students and a very confined area to accommodate school buses and other vehicle access.”

Parent Irma Katz asserted there are other spaces in the Old Orchard area that would be more appropriate for a train station than on Niles North property.

The CTA recorded all comments Wednesday night and will accept written comment through much of October before releasing a report either in late 2009 or early 2010. Whether the CTA will abandon the proposal for a Niles North High School station was left unclear by the end of the spirited meeting.

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