LT Grads Ride the Rails to Hit Every ‘L’ Stop

One hundred and forty-four “L” train stations. One very, very long public-transportation commute.

Andrew Karas, Ryan Faucher and Grace Flaherty, three 2011 Lyons Township High School graduates, recently took the “‘L’ Challenge”—a quest to pass through every single “L” station on the Chicago system’s eight rail lines in the space of a day.

On Friday, June 24, they started at Ashland/63rd in Englewood on the Green Line, and finished just six miles away, at 95th/Dan Ryan on the Red Line. Their total time: 9:57:00.

The trip was Karas’ inspiration, fueled by the similar-but-better-known Tube Challenge (London) and Subway Challenge (New York), records acknowledged by Guinness. The blog CTA Tattler acknowledges the unofficial record to be 9:36:33, set by a British man named Adham Fisher.

Karas, of Western Springs, spent his senior year independent study analyzing the transportation systems of various global cities. He worked extensively to find the best way to cut down the Challenge time (which allows running and taking public transport, but no private driving—and no using express trains that zoom through stations.)

“The system is kind of like a hub and spokes, and the spokes are completely disconnected from each other,” Karas said. “We realized that if you pair up the ends and somehow get from one end to the other, you’d shorten your time by a lot.”

The trip included a 15-minute run from the tip of the Green Line (Harlem) to that of the Blue Line (Forest Park), and a bus-aided trip from the tip of the Orange Line (Midway) to that of the Pink Line (54th/Cermak.) And after taking the Blue Line all the way out to O’Hare, the group stopped mid-way on the return trip to take a bus from Jefferson Park to Kimball, the terminus of the Brown Line.

Karas noted that experimenting with the transportation system in Chicagoland had a local theme as well—after all, the Metra is a critical part of what makes up Western Springs.

 “Communities like Western Springs came about because of the railroad,” Karas said. “if you look at a map of Chicago, more than any other city in the country, it looks like some explosion happened and all these railroads shot out in every direction.

Faucher (Western Springs) and Flaherty (La Grange Park) say they joined Karas’ plan for fun, out of a “why-not” mentality.

“It sounded fun and like a great way to see the city,” Faucher said.

But, she cautioned, “Nine hours on paper looks a lot shorter than nine hours in real life, especially on the train… You have to be willing to spend an entire day. But I would encourage people to do it. It kind of introduces you to public transportation in general.”

The trio met with a few interesting adventures and character along their trip, including students on the Purple Line loudly discussing their fake IDs and men on the Skokie Swift (Yellow Line) getting drunk on 24-oz cans of beer and discussing failed hook-ups.

At another point during a moment of altruism, they realized that for all their research, they could still goof up about the “L” system. While attempting to help some non-English-speaking Chinese women get to Chinatown, they attempted to put them on the Orange Line—when only the Red Line stops in Chinatown. (Another passenger corrected their mistake in time.)

The team missed their record—partially due to luck and partially due to Faucher’s recent leg surgery, which left him unable to run. But they were happy with coming close, and don’t plan to revisit the experience.

And Faucher said that, despite dealing with drunks and iffy sanitation, the trip showed him some of what fascinates Karas about transportation systems.

“I’m more intrigued by the El system and the transportation system than I was before,” Faucher said. “It’s definitely a lot more interesting than I thought. There’s a lot more to it.”