Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday - Chicago “Superstation” Never Opened
Topline: The corner of Randolph and State Streets in central Chicago looks perfectly ordinary, but only because the pavement covers up the bureaucratic mess hidden below the ground.
The city spent $400 million in 2006 — $635 million in today’s money — to build an underground “superstation” with trains to Chicago’s two airports. The project was cancelled before the station opened, and not even support from Elon Musk could get it over the finish line. The half-finished project is still abandoned today in a padlocked cavern the size of a football field.
Key facts: The superstation was originally estimated to cost between $771 million and $1.5 billion, which NBC5 Chicago says was “an expensive, pie-in-the-sky option which was never funded or even fully engineered.”
The Chicago Transit Authority issued 12-year bonds and accepted federal loans to help fund the project. Later, the bonds were refinanced to push the maturity date back another 12 years, raising the cost of interest.
During the Great Recession in 2010, it became clear the city could not raise the full $1.5 billion it needed, and the project was put on pause.
The city later created a commission to study the best way of opening a train line to the airport, but the group’s chairman, Lester Crown, told NBC5 they never held a meeting. "There was a desire to do it, but there never was a way to accomplish it," Crown said. "From a physical standpoint, it just didn’t seem possible."
In 2013, reporter Greg Hinz visited the station and described it for Crain’s Chicago Business: "If you can imagine this endless dark space, so big you can’t see the end of it … Big high pillars, water over in the corner, and every so often, this distinct, rumbling from the train upstairs … "It’s absolutely wacko. Somebody in power wanted it, so they did it.”
Chicago gave the superstation one more chance in 2018, with support from Elon Musk’s Boring Company. Musk said in a press conference that the station had “potential for a revolutionary transport system” and showed off plans to build moving glass pods that would bring riders to the airport at up to 150 miles per hour. He said he would build the station without using any public money.
Reporter David Greising told NBC5 that Musk’s proposal sounded like a “pipe dream,” and he was right. Greising said he “never saw any evidence that there was anything serious underway,” and future mayors showed no interest in finishing the superstation.
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Summary: Taxpayer money is often wasted on public transit projects that have delays and cost overruns, but usually they do eventually open for service. Chicago’s underground money pit has no such saving grace.
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