Chicago Survives the Months-Long Red Line South Reconstruction Project

For the last five months, half of the main elevated rail artery through Chicago has been shut down, a painful necessity as the Chicago Transit Authority ripped out and rebuilt 10 miles of train tracks that typically serve as the busiest route in and out of the South Side. The tracks themselves were four decades old. Some of the stations around them weren't accessible to wheelchair users. They needed new canopies and lighting and paint. And the drainage system under it all required reconstruction, too.

The $425 million project threatened – as many things in Chicago do – to turn into a story about a city divided by race. The Red Line is a well-known symbol for the city's divisions, running as it does from one tip of the lower-income, predominantly minority South Side to the other pole of the well-heeled northern suburbs. Ride from one end of the line to the other (something hardly anyone has a reason to do), and you get a conveniently elevated tour of the city's extremes. You can actually watch a time-lapse of the riders in a Red Line car in a WBEZ project on segregation.