Riders may need to find an alternative route around downtown on Saturday, as service along CTA elevated rail lines through the Loop will be halted for the weekend while crews conduct track repairs.
Beginning at 4 a.m. Saturday, Brown, Green, Orange and Pink lines will be suspended downtown while CTA crews replace “critical track switching equipment” at the Tower 18 rail junction at Lake and Wells streets, the CTA said in a news release Wednesday. The temporary line cut will stretch through 2 a.m. Monday, ahead of morning rush hour service.
All Loop elevated stations — including Clark/Lake, State/Lake, Washington/Wabash, Adams/Wabash, Harold Washington Library-State/Van Buren, LaSalle/Van Buren, Quincy and Washington/Wells — will be closed through the line cut. Through the closure, crews will also be making a variety of improvements to stations, including flooring and platform repairs, pigeon mitigation, lighting changes, staircase and canopy repairs and painting, the CTA said.
The service suspension will only affect the Loop, with the Brown, Green, Orange and Pink lines operating normally outside of downtown, according to the CTA. Service along the Red and Blue lines will be unaffected, the agency said.
In response to the service impact, the CTA will operate two bus shuttles to provide connections for affected riders.
The Tower 18 rail junction is the busiest section of track in Chicago’s rail system, with about 700 trains passing through in all directions on any given weekday, per the CTA.
Weekend service changes are listed in full at http://bit.ly/4njaGaD.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/22/cta-train-downtown-line-cut-chicago/