WHEREAS, October 16, 2018, officially marks the 75 Anniversary of the official opening of Chicago's first passenger subway, a 4.9-mile route extending north to Armitage and Clybourn Avenues and south to 17th Street underneath State Street; and
WHEREAS, the Chicago City Council has been informed of this important anniversary by Alderman Edward M. Burke; and
WHEREAS, since 1907, when initial plans were formulated for an underground rail transit system to relieve street congestion and the overcrowding of surface line busses, until October 13, 1938 when the United States Public Works Administration in Washington D.C. granted final approval for the Chicago subway project; and
WHEREAS, United States Public Works Administration granted the City of Chicago $23 million dollars to fund construction of the subway with the city contributing $11 million dollars derived from its traction fund; and
WHEREAS, following formal ground breaking by public officials and subway engineers on December 19, 1938, the first shaft for the new subway designed to make commuting easier and quicker, was driven into the ground in a vacant lot at Chicago Avenue and State Street; and
WHEREAS, work crews ranging between 4,000 and 7,000 men excavated two million cubic yards of sand, gravel and clay placing two steel-lined, concrete reinforced tubes with a diameter of 24 feet nine inches along the route; and
WHEREAS, all of the tunneling north of the Chicago River on the State Street route and west and north of LaSalle and Lake Streets on the Dearborn Street route was done by hand-mining by workers employing power knives in compressed air; and
WHEREAS, until September 30, 1947 when the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), a publicly owned corporation under the direction of its chairman, the former commissioner of subways and traction, Philip Harrington, acquired the Chicago Surface Lines and the Chicago Rapid Transit Company, the subway system itself was owned by the City of Chicago, while private transportation companies operated the bus and elevated train lines; and
WHEREAS, until the issue of municipal ownership of public transit could be fully resolved by the Chicago City Council and the consortium of private firms in 1947, the Chicago Rapid Transit Company operated the subway trains; and
WHEREAS, hailed as a marvel of engineering and technology, the new Chicago subway "compared favorably with any of the other undergrounds in the country and probably the most significant event of Chicago's history to date," proclaimed Mayor Edward J. Kelly; and
WHEREAS, engineers and public officials estimated that the subway reduced commute times by ten to sixteen minutes for commuters traveling into the city from the north and eight minutes for South Side passengers coming into downtown; and
WHEREAS, Mayor Edward J. Kelly officially inaugurated service by cutting the red, white and blue ribbon spread across the northbound tracks at the State and Madison Street station at approximately 10:48 a.m., October 16, 1943; and
WHEREAS, thousands of spectators gathered above ground to enjoy a mile-long subway dedication parade designated the "Cavalcade of Transportation" sponsored by the State Street merchants; and
WHEREAS, by the end of the day on October 18, 1943, an estimated 385,000 persons mostly sightseers took their first subway ride; and
WHEREAS, in the coming decades, additional subway routes were added including the Dearborn subway in 1951; the Congress (Eisenhower) line in 1958; the Congress-Dearborn extension to Jefferson Park in 1970; then on to O'Hare Airport in 1984; with the addition ofthe Midway Airport (Pink Line) in 2006; and
WHEREAS, seventy-five years after the opening of Chicago's first subway line, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) operates 1,450 train cars extending over eight routes and 222 miles of track providing 750,000 customer trips each weekday to 145 Chicago stations and seven suburbs; and now therefore
BE IT RESOLVED, That we, the Mayor and the members ofthe Chicago City Council assembled this twentieth day of September 2018, do hereby congratulate the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) for its seven-plus decades of unflagging service to city residents, commuters and tourists; and
derman Edward M. Burke
Alderman, 14th Ward
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that suitable copies of this resolution be presented to Michael Harrington, and to the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA).