Doors Closing

The L, Chicago’s rapid transit system, has been more than a means of transportation for the city’s residents. “There is no Chicago without the L,” writes Tal Rosenberg. “It’s part of the fabric of our civic identity.” But even before the pandemic, ridership has been way down. Riders face unsafe and unsanitary conditions, along with abysmal wait times (or trains that never arrive). For Chicago Magazine, Rosenberg provides a deep dive on the L’s issues, including a lack of funding as well as mismanagement under former CTA president Dorval Carter. “If the city and state do not find a fix, we’ll be on the path to transit dystopia,” he writes. Rosenberg’s thorough and thoughtful feature examines why the once-beloved L is still worth saving.

Here, you don’t say “downtown.” You say “the Loop,” because the buildings that form our skyline couldn’t have grown so tall without the circle of elevated railways beneath them. A great city doesn’t just deserve a great transit system — it needs one. But getting the L back to being a source of pride will mean tapping into the same ingenuity that made it a triumph of civic engineering in the first place.

For all its problems, the L holds great significance for Chicagoans. It’s more than a means of moving people around — it’s integral to the city’s character. As a child, I could feel the gentle vibrations of a Red Line train underneath our floors at home. When I was a teenager, my miscreant friends and I would slide plastic L maps out of their slots above the train doors and proudly display them on our walls. For years I wore a CTA button-up shirt I bought at a Salvation Army because I thought it looked cool.