CTA Tattler

Your comprehensive source for CTA crime

I think CTA trains and buses are safer than ever, with more police there ever before assigned to patrol the CTA and its property.

But that doesn't mean there's no crime on the CTA. And I've found the most comprehensive source for CTA crime facts -- and Chicago crime facts in general -- is chicagocrime.org.

There are four handy location categories on the site: CTA bus, CTA garage/other property, CTA platform and CTA train.

The site downloads data from the Chicago Police ICAM Web site and applies Google Map technology to it to map the crimes.

There's lots of information to help keep you safe on your commute. For instance, under the CTA train location, the page reports that the most common crime for that location is Theft by Pocket-picking. There have been 117 incidents of pocket-picking, compared to just 40 of the most common crime on CTA trains: 40 simple batteries.

So people, watch your purses and wallets.

Bits and pieces for holiday weekend

Some random news and notes for the Easter/Passover holiday weekend. Enjoy, everyone!

The Love Bus supplants the Love Train: The Trib's Ray Quintanilla yesterday told us how the #66 Chicago bus has becomes the Love Bus. Toward the end of the piece I reminisce about the Love Train. So, have any of you made love connections on the Chicago bus?

Lakeview bus rerouting: The busy northbound #135, 145 and 146 buses will be rerouted around water main work for the next month.

C-pass debuts at Gay Games: The CTA will introduce the Convention Pass (C Pass) during the Gay Games in July. The Gay Games will pay the CTA $150,000 to provide all participants with the pass. Following the games, CTA staff will analyze C-Pass usage to calculate the market value of all rides taken. The market value of a ride is the regular full fare that would be paid for a comparable ride by a member of the general public during the period of validity. If the market value of the rides taken exceeds $150,000, CGI will pay CTA the difference.  And speaking of the Gay Games, check out my friend's blog - the "Insiders' Guide to Gay Games VII Chicago 2006."

CTA Chair Carole Brown posts - two days in a row! For the first time since June of 2005, CTA Carole Brown actual had posts two days in a row on her Ask Carole blog. I give Carole lots of credit for starting the blog, but she needs to post at least once or twice a week to really have any credibility.

More Brown Line service this weekend: "Brown Line Kimball and Francisco stations will remain open this weekend and CTA will implement a single track shuttle train between Kimball and Western stations from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, April 15. There will be no weekend bus shuttle service." So says the CTA Web site.

Bizarre results from CTA's Trip Planner

I had jury duty this week. I served on a jury for a three-day trial at the criminal courts building at 26th and California. My jury duty service is a story for another day, another blog.

But let me tell you about my attempts to get to 26th and Cal. via the CTA. First, the jury notice suggested taking the 54th/Cermak Blue Line to California and Cermak (about five blocks south of the court building), and transferring to the southbound #94 California bus. Fair enough. Makes sense.

So I went to the CTA  Trip Planner Web site, and plugged in the coordinates to get some idea of the schedule for the #94 California bus.

That's when I discovered that the above-suggested route was not even mentioned by the CTA Trip Planner. In fact, the first suggestion was taking the Red Line south to Cermak-Chinatown, the # 21 Cermak bus west to Ashland/Blue Island, and the #60 Blue Island/26th bus to 26th and California.

In fact, there was no mention of the Blue Line. The Harlem Green Line to California was a suggestion. But nothing about the Blue Line train that puts you just five blocks from your destination!

I never trust bus schedules, so I almost always prefer to take a train over a bus when given a choice.

Bogus announcement: Leaving the motorman behind?

We're cruising between Morse and Loyola, picking up some speed after leaving the Morse station, when suddenly we hear that dreaded announcement:

"Your attention please. This train is experiencing an equipment problem. The operator is off the train for a few minutes. We expect to be moving shortly."

Well geez! I sure hope we didn't run over the operator when he stepped off the train!

"Doorkers" called-out on DC Metro

Rachelle B. has a photo of a DC metro train ad admonishing those who crowd or block the doorways as "doorkers."

She thinks the ads are more lame than the CTA's own "Don't be Jack" ads, but I disagree. Like the commenter on Rachelle's post, I agree that the Jack ads are very poorly designed, with their stick figures. And I think the use of humor on the DC Metro is much better than on the Jack ads.

What do you think?

15,000-layer Photoshop file of Damen station

In my weekend Web browsing I came across a gorgeous photo of a train approaching the Damen stop of the Blue Line.

Check it out here.

The image was created by Bert Monroy. Here are details of how he did from his Web site:

Adobe Illustrator was used for generating the majority of the basic shapes as well as all the buildings in the Chicago skyline.  The rest was created in Photoshop.

• The image size is 40 inches by 120 inches.
• The flattened file weighs in at 1.7 Gigabytes.
• It took eleven months (close to 2,000 hours) to create.
• The painting is comprised of close to fifty individual Photoshop files.
• Taking a cumulative total of all the files, the overall image contains over 15,000 layers.
• Over 500 alpha channels were used for various effects.
• Over 250,000 paths make up the multitude of shapes throughout the scene.

Awesome!

Escalator accident at the Jackson Blue Line stop

A CTA Tattler reader emailed me with this account of the escalator accident at the Jackson stop of the Blue Line.

"A bad scene at the Blue Line Jackson station at about 7:50 am today.

"The escalator was jammed with tons of people and tons of people were waiting to get on. I was walking up the stairs (because a crowded escalator just looks dangerous to me). Suddenly, the escalator reversed direction and started speeding up. Some people were yelling, "BACK UP!" to the people below, and a few people were running up the moving stairs to keep from piling on the crowd below. People were crushing each other at the bottom. It was pretty ugly.

"The Trib report doesn't make it sound as bad as it looked."

Quickies: Brown Line Saturday closings; likely no CTA bus strike

Some quick hits to start the weekend:

• The Kimball and Francisco Brown line stations will be closed this weekend after all, but only on Saturday. Earlier in the week the CTA said they'd be open this weekend. Maybe they're a bit behind when they kept the stations open a few weeks back because of rain.
• The bus drivers union reports that drivers probably won't strike now, because they are happy with a resolution to their rostering beef. Read the Trib for details, particularly on what rostering is about.
• And check out this funny post on John Tolva's Web log about his encounter with a fainting woman on the El. It seems a guy in white coat swooped in to help, except he was a chef, not a doctor. Read his description about how fellow passengers all took on various roles to help the woman. John reports that his role was "mentally blogging."

A good day to use CTA Alerts system

I was wiping sleep from my eyes at about 5 a.m. today, making coffee, when I heard my cell phone chime with the first of six CTA Alerts this morning:

4:59 a.m.: "No Rd Ln serv btwn N.Clybourn & Fullertn. Bus shuttle N. Ave to Belmont. Also use CTA bus service. Allow xtra trvl time."

Then two more in the next hour.

5:15 a.m.: "Southbound Red Line power is suspended b/t North Clybourn and Fullerton. Bus shuttles at No & Clybourn and Belmont."

And 6:01 a.m.: "SB Rd Ln trns travling to Loop on 'L' tracks instead of subway. Bus shuttle making Rd Ln stops N. Clybrn to State/Lake."

I was able to warn my daughter to leave early for high school and hopped into the shower earlier myself for what I figured would be a longer commute.

All these alerts came directly from CTA headquarters. Then this happy one came at 6:59 a.m. from ChicagoPoe: "Normal red line routing restored."  Whoo hoo!

Click here to join the other 417 members of our CTA Alerts Upoc group.

Oh, and it was a Red Line derailment at Armitage that caused the problem.

Help find this skateboard for Tovi

My good friend and neighbor Tovi sent me this email and photo this week:

While riding the train today, at the Jackson blue line stop I saw a kid with a skateboard that had the Blue Line Forest Park map on it and the Chicago flag stars. I thought it was really cool and that you might be interested in showcasing it on your site so I asked him if I could take a picture of it.

I've been searching online to see who makes it and to what pro-rider it belongs to without any luck. If you find out anything more let me know as I would really like to get one of these to keep for me as it combines two things I like (skateboarding and Chicago).

So people, if you know where to find this skateboard, please let us know. We gotta get it for my buddy Tovi.