legalalien

Rental Car Center / Parking Lot F busses used to stop on the lower level, but effective April 1 they have been relocated to the upper level at T1/2/3 as well.

ORDnHKG

But I still see the "test train" today, maybe it is on the train too long and the sticker peeled off in one of the cars ?

legalalien

It's definitely been too long. They might have to start another repair job immediately after finishing this one. Kinda like pothole patching .. a never-ending project.

FWIW, it took China about this long to build the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail line. Over 800 miles. From scratch.

BCH

This is such an embarrassment for the city. One of the largest airports in the world, and they cannot get their act together to fix and re-launch a limited airport train service.

HNL

It’s rediculious. The Chicago Department of Aviation is spending $85K+ per day on replacement bus service per the Chicago Tribune.

guflyer

Now that more people are flying again, does anyone have any estimates for when the TTB will come back into service?

Snuggs

[QUOTE=legalalien:

FWIW, it took China about this long to build the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail line. Over 800 miles. From scratch. [/QUOTE]

But wasn't it the Chinese that "built" the Hanoi "CAT Line. 7 years into it and they "discovered" the above ground portions wavered like a cheap roller coaster?
I read a great article comparing the Hanoi to Saigon systems, started about the same time.

But, back to the ranch. It always seemed to me like the upper echelon at CDA have never actually been to the user side of MDW or ORD.
Their crowning achievement remains nuking CGX. But that just reminds us, any department is just a pawn to the thrown at City Hall. And we
know the Mayor is still trying out for the muddle wrestling championships. Or at least, from what I read in the papers.

I stick by my projection from 2 years ago. It'll be done in April. Now whether that is 2022 or 2024, I don't know. I do know there are some great people involved in the project, and it must be as frustrating for them as it is for me when my customers call me to ask where their IRS refund is. All you can do is shrug.

GUWonder

It's been ridiculously good service for me during this pandemic, at least compared to what I would have expected from Chicago/ORD. It's actually worked out better for me in the past 12-13 months than the ATS used to work out for me.

How much does ORD spend for janitorial services per day?

ords

It's been extremely frustrating for all parties including passengers.

There's currently another high level testing phase taking place that have the trains running about 20 hours a day, this will continue for 2 weeks. Then a short pause for data collection and review and then another 2 week test running the full complement of trains 24/7.

I'm also hearing rumblings about resumption of the TTB around July. This is based on airlines needs, so given it's T5>T3,2,1 how countries open up for travel will drive the discussion.

Putnik

WGN will have an investigative special on the ATS delays during their 9 pm news tonight.

Putnik

https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investiga...ns-to-nowhere/

cheltzel

Here is the bit from the link that I find really depressing

Putnik

For how much they spent on permanent busses, they could have spent the same on a designated bus system with proper stations and everything.

cheltzel

And run separate systems, one landside and one airside connecting all the terminals without needing to go through security.

GUWonder

Given the heavily beat-up condition of so many of the landside buses being used as replacement service for the ATS, the buses must have been very cheap or they overpaid a lot.

Can they sell the buses when the ATS is back in service? Either way, having the ATS out of service was going to be almost inevitably more costly than not having it out of service for so long.

Maybe getting away from buses at ORD and going for an ATS was a bad idea from the moment someone thought of having ATS at ORD.