Initial details and renderings have been revealed for a new entrance to the CTA’s Clark/Lake station around 110 N Clark Street in The Loop. Just announced by the CTA, the relocated entrance will be funded by Google’s subsidiary JRTC Holdings. This comes a few weeks after Google gave us a sneak peek into the revamped atrium of the Thompson Center.
Interior rendering of Thompson Center redevelopment by JAHN
Clark/Lake is known as one of the busiests stations in the city with over 9,000 passengers per day on average, serving as a major connector between six of the city’s transit lines including the Blue Line subway. Currently its main entrance is along Lake Street under the existing tracks, with a large part of it inside the Thompson center which will remain.
Rendering of renovated Clark/Lake station via CTA
The new plans call for its relocation to the corner of Lake and Clark Streets, giving it a much more prominent spot and easier to find entrance for visitors. Aside from the new main entry, work will focus on renovating much of the existing facility with new wall finishes, ceilings, floors, lighting, and wayfinding. This will also include the mezzanine level.
Rendering of renovated Clark/Lake station via CTA
With CTA approval in hand, work can now commence soon as plans call for the entrance to be completed by November 2025, with additional scope wrapping up in June 2026. After that, CTA will embark on a $10 million renovation of the platform itself expected to be completed by the end of 2026. CTA also hopes to partner with Google in the future to test out other tech improvements.
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This is great, but only ~9k riders per day passing through with this many lines connecting here? We’ve got to do more in this city to get people out of their cars and to take the impact of driving on everyone more seriously.
Agree. Three things to increase ridership is to increase service, improve safety, and, make the quality of the ride better by maintaining clean vehicles, stations, and preventing things like smoking, drinking, camping out and selling things on trains and buses. Unfortunately, we may need to focus on these things at the state and local level because the federal government will be hostile to public transit and the urban density that promotes it for at least 4 years.
Not sure it’s a driving issue- more of a WFH issue since you can see the ridership went from 22k per day to 6-9k per day during the pandemic and the start of WFH.
For what it’s worth, I think that’s just the number of people passing through the fair gates, not people passing through on the trains or switching between lines. That undercounts the station use.
Right. The CTA ridership report says 11,660 transfers take place at Clark/Lake on an average weekday. Not exactly sure how they came up with that number, but station usage is likely over 20,000 per day.
Oh wow. Those elevators have been caked in cigarette ash for 35+ years.