CrossTowner is a proposed regional-rail tunnel for the Chicago area, from Star:Line Chicago. This site shows what it would change: how much faster rail trips across Chicagoland would be, who could reach O'Hare by transit, and where the tunnel would run.
Trip planner
Enter any two Chicago-area addresses and compare the rail trip today with the same trip once the tunnel is built.
Popular trips
The trips people plan most, with a map and the travel time for each one today and with CrossTowner.
O'Hare workforce
Where O'Hare's 48,921 workers live, and how many more could commute there by transit with CrossTowner.
3D map
Fly along the proposed Clinton–Roosevelt Connector Line, station by station, over real 3D buildings.
What is CrossTowner?
Regional rail is the “missing middle” between CTA's ‘L’ service and Metra's commuter rail operations. Star:Line Chicago's proposal would connect all of Chicagoland with it, largely on existing infrastructure. The new piece is a tunnel, the Clinton–Roosevelt Connector Line, a proposed subway in Chicago. Six CrossTowner routes, X1 through X6, would run on the combined network.
Read the full proposal at buildthetunnelchicago.org.
What the tunnel changes for your trip
The CrossTowner Trip Planner compares two networks side by side. One is today's CTA, Metra, and Pace service. The other adds the CrossTowner routes and the CTA Red Line Extension, which is under construction. For each trip it shows the travel time, the route, and the walk to and from stations. It also reaches O'Hare's terminals and South Shore Line stations in Indiana.
Every trip is computed ahead of time with Conveyal R5, an open-source routing engine used by transportation planners. The methodology page lists the data sources, assumptions, and limitations.
A bigger labor market for O'Hare
O'Hare is one of the largest job sites in Illinois, and most of its workers live outside the city. CrossTowner would put about 48,500 more workers within a 60-minute transit commute of the airport.
See the maps and the full analysis of O'Hare's workforce.
See the route in 3D
The 3D map flies a camera along the tunnel's alignment and pauses at each station to show the residents, jobs, and households nearby. It also covers the Red Line Extension and new lines in Austin, Bogotá, Toulouse, and Hamburg.