The Congress (Forest Park) branch right-of-way is a lot wider than it needs to be. What is the extra space for?
The extra width was for extra tracks. In 1953, the Chicago Aurora & Elgin interurban cut itself back from the Loop to Desplaines. The Garfield Park Line began operating on a temporary grade-level right-of-way during the construction of the Eisenhower Expressway and the CA&E felt it was too difficult to run their interurbans there. It was hoped, however, that the CA&E would resume running downtown when construction was over. There was extra room provided on the Congress right-of-way for the CA&E to lay separate tracks down the median for their own use, but the CA&E folded in 1957 and this never happened. A second island platform was built at Desplaines for them next to the CTA® platform ended up going unused and was eventually demolished. Later, there was a 1958 plan to divert the Lake Line onto the Congress at Kedzie. The Lake “L”TM would (or might) have been demolished between Kedzie and the Loop and trains would have run south around Kedzie, then east to downtown on the Congress expr
