Day 86: Fly Me Away on the CTA (Part 1)

     The Southwest Side of the city has been home to an airport since 1923.  When the State Street Subway was being planned in the 1930s, there were preliminary plans to extend the subway system much further than it ended up going, including the placement of a stop at Midway Airport(in fact, the plans also included laying subway tracks in some of the territory now served by the elevated lines outside of the downtown area)  However, those plans fell through, and the facility was lacking a rail connection to the rest of the city for 70 years after it was first built.  That all changed in 1993 when the Chicago Transit Authority introduced the Orange Line, its first new rail line in 35 years.  The line originated in the Loop, and terminated with a station at Midway International Airport.

     In 1990, the CTA broke ground for the new Midway Station at a ceremony attended by Mayor Daley, amongst others.  The station is connected to the rest of the airport via an enclosed moving walkway that goes from the head house to the airport terminal.  In 1997, the station was involved in the transition to fare cards(as was the Roosevelt station), and there were information kiosks located in the station to aid commuters trying to figure out the ins and outs of the new system. Vending machines were installed as well, and eventually the information kiosks were removed, leaving just the automated machines.

     Five years later, the station was involved in yet another innovation when the RTA installed Active Transit Station Signs in four stations as a test, one of those test stations being Midway.  The idea of the signs was to provide real-time transit information, including traffic updates, transit times, general CTA information, and a countdown to the arrival of the next departing train.  However, the ATSS displays in the airports did not include a countdown to the next train, as each airport served as the terminus for its respective line, therefore a train would almost always be there.  These signs are present on the platforms as well as the actual station house, in order to give commuters ample warning of the next train times.  You can still see elements of that experiment on many platforms throughout the city to this day.