Most of the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red/Purple Line is more than 100 years old. On the city’s north side between the Lawrence and Bryn Mawr stations, the wooden tracks are supported by structural steel supports that are held together by rivets. There is no drainage system below the tracks.
“It has its own beauty, in my eyes,” says Chris Bushell, the CTA’s project executive in charge of the modernization, “but it also isn’t particularly modern.”