Beginning at 5 a.m. Monday, August 4, customers will be able to enter the Diversey Brown Line station via a newly renovated stationhouse located on the south side of the street at 943 W. Diversey, across from the old historic entrance. Since March, customers have used a temporary station on the north side of Diversey to access Brown Line trains.
Elevators have been installed at the new stationhouse and will make it newly accessible to customers with disabilities when it reopens Monday morning. Diversey is the eleventh of 18 stations to be completed as part of the Brown Line capacity expansion project. With the reopening of the new Diversey stationhouse, a total of 84 out of 144 CTA rail stations will be accessible.
The Diversey station closed for construction last summer. In March, CTA opened a temporary station at Diversey, three months prior to the originally scheduled opening date. Work to lengthen the platforms had been completed and allowed the agency to operate eight-car trains along the Brown Line for the first time. The introduction of eight-car service occurred nearly 18 months earlier than originally planned.
The new Diversey stationhouse replaces one that opened for service on the Brown Line in 1900. Additional improvements include accessible turnstiles, brighter lighting, new signage – including Braille signs – and a bike rack. Construction crews will continue to work in the weeks ahead to remove the temporary station and install additional bike racks, original artwork and landscaping.
The Brown Line is the third busiest line in the CTA rail system. Prior to the June 2007 closure, the average weekday ridership at Diversey station was 4,378. Prior to closing, total Diversey ridership in 2007 was 604,944; annual ridership in 2006 at Diversey was more than one million. Between 1979 and 2005, annual Brown Line ridership increased by 85 percent.
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