CTA Tattler

So I wondered what the riders' response was and how the motorman could have heard it through locked cabin doors and a series of emergency doors. :)

Well, it's at least a laudable idea to get feedback on the matter from the people being affected. However, even if the motorman could hear the response from passengers, wouldn't that take just as much time as just opening the doors for the latecomers? Be decisive man! -g- In my experience, it seems to be standard practice to reopen the doors once and then to pull out thereafter even if more folks appear.

Speaking of noteworthy motormen, yesterday I was travelling downtown at about 9:20am. It took too long for a train to arrive, and it was crowded, so I rolled the dice that it was late and that another train was following. Luckily I was right, a nice empty train pulled in a couple minutes later. Anyway, the notable thing was that while our train was delayed at Addison and Belmont because of trains immediately ahead of us, the motorman was making regular announcements about the delay, along with the time. At Fullerton, besides announcing the time and the Brown line train coming into the stations, he informed passengers that they could transfer to the Lincln bus and disembark for DePaul. Then there were multiple wishes for passengers to have a nice day and to watch their step while getting on and off. All this while moving the train smoothly in and out of stops. This may not seem like much, but in light of CTA's general inability to communicate effectively, my impression was that this guy should be praised for having initiative and pride in his work. The cynic in me wondered if he was just new. If so, will he be ground down by the prevailing unmotivated attitude at the CTA? Hopefully not. I wrote an account of this on Carole Brown's blog, so it would be ideal if someone at CTA would pass the note along on how to cultivate good customer relations.

Last night our motorman told everyone to have their butts by the door if they were planning on getting out at the next stop. Then he blew into the microphone a whole bunch of times to be sure we were paying attention. Also, whenever we were supposed to stop he played a really fun game called "Let's Wait Until The Last Possible Second and Then STOMP On The Brakes With All Our Might." The poor law student next to me ended up highlighting a lot of things in his textbook that he didn't really want to. And my shoulder kind of hurts.

That's a fun game to play. Wanna know how to win....you have to play the "I-got-whiplash" card. You bypass your stop and go straight to the hospital and collect free transit for life :)