CTA Tattler

Christmasy train sparks

My friend and neighbor Tovi shares this very cool video he caught of the sparks that the Red Line train makes when leaving the Belmont Station. "They're kind of hypnotizing and look like Christmas lights!" Tovi reports.

Check it out here on his blog.

CTA employees brighten spirits with food gifts

This writer and you readers have been known to criticize CTA employees in the past for various reasons. So when those employees do good things, they deserve credit and praise.

Good things, like donating money to buy many baskets of food for poor families on the West Side.

The Tribune reports: "The donations collected this season were used to buy 500 baskets for 17 local organizations, CTA spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler said. The Santa's Express train has delivered the baskets along the Red, Blue and Green Lines for 15 years. Each basket has enough food to feed six people, she said.

"Saturday's delivery took place at the Conservatory stop on the Green Line, where members of the Community Action Council, SAKAL Ministry and St. Stephen AME Church loaded the baskets into vans."

Nice going, CTA employees!

Aldermanic call for conductors on trains a panacea?

I'm just a little skeptical that adding conductors to in CTA subway trains is the key solution to communication problems during subway accidents. But that's what our aldermen are demanding from the CTA.

The alderman demanded yesterday that the CTA  use Homeland Security funds to hire conductors, "but a top CTA official said the agency plans to spend its federal grants on technological upgrades, including a network of subway cameras, instead of more employees," The Trib reports.

I can't fault the logic of one alderman, who said he had never seen a camera carry a person out of a smoke-filled tunnel. And the two sides bickered over the cost of hiring 25 conductors for a year, with the union saying the tab would be $1-2 million, but the CTA says it would cost $24 million. But still, I just don't know how one more person can make that big a difference in getting 1,000 people to safety.

I'd like to suggest a compromise: The CTA should run a yearlong pilot to determine if conductors really do help, and Daley should cough up the money to pay for the pilot, rather than sap other funds for much needed capital improvements on the system.

Smooth ride turns rocky

Thursday was the first day since last Friday's ice and snow that I experienced a smooth morning commute on the Red Line. Well for the first 10 minutes anyway.

All the promising signs were there:

• Only waited about two minutes on the platform.
• Train pulled in, doors opened smoothly, closed smoothly.
• There were no madding delays in slow zones waiting for signals ahead.
• We smoothly and easily glided to a stop at each station, took on a normal passenger load, and just as smoothly pulled away, without the motorman playing with any persnickety doors.

All this on a very cold day with temperatures in single digits.

And then we hit the Lawrence stop. We pulled about 25 feet out of the station. And stopped. And waited. For about five minutes.

Then we inched into Wilson. And stopped. And waited. Same deal between Sheridan and Addison, only now the delay was about 10 minutes.

All this happened with no automated nor man-made announcements.  The usual 40-minute commute that looked so promising in those first 10 minutes was now a full hour.

I expected the usual crush at Belmont and Addison, but the problems must have occurred on a couple of trains ahead, because only the usual number of passengers boarded at those busy stations.

But I feel for those before them in stood in the icy cold waiting to board those defective trains.

Broken window in train

Jim shares this odd story with us:

On Nov 6, 2006, my friend Christina and I finished night class at DePaul and boarded the southbound Red Line Train at Fullerton around 9. We got in the last car and noticed that the one of the windows on the left hand side door were smashed, laying on the floor, as was another window on the same side. There were only a couple of people in the same car, among them a CTA employee who had no explanation for the windows.

The ride was extremely loud, and by the time the train got to Jackson, it stopped and a CTA employee told everyone in the last car to move to another car while he radioed someone.

Thought your readers might want to hear about this.

Jim

Click below to see more images.

Last one on the car

Am I the only one who is really creeped out and feels vulnerable to be the only person on a train car?

Seems like it rarely happens, but when it does I'm always looking around and checking out carefully who gets on. And I'm a middle-aged guy. Can't imagine how a woman feels.

Call me paranoid. Or smart?

Avoiding the F word at all cost

It was a hectic Friday morning commute on the first snowy day of winter 2006-07. By 7 am, riders were reporting via CTA wireless alerts that a fire had closed the Harrison station. Then by 8:30, heavy smoke forced evacuation of passengers at stations in the Red Line subway tunnel. But the CTA was always careful in describing what had happened.

My motorman had this to say about the Harrison event: "Passengers, we had been delayed earlier in the tunnel due to an electrical, uh, situation that has been rectified.

"We are experiencing a delay, obviously." Well, duh. But still, thanks for letting us know.

The smooth-talking motorman actually kept us well-informed in a clear, calm voice about troubles on that snowy Friday morning.

Yet, I note that all CTA personnel studiously avoid uttering the F word -- fire!

And in a sense I can't blame them. But there have been a few occasions when fellow passengers told us here about seeing fire on the tracks that the CTA vehemently denied happening.

Where there's smoke, there's fire?

The photo above was taken by T Fish.

"Temporary" inconvenience; permanent improvement?

Your definition of "temporary" is tested when the CTA calls a 12-month shutdown of the Montrose and Addison Brown Line station "temporary." But it's the price of progress. The stations close for 12 months beginning Saturday.

More CTA news:

Five Brown Line Stations Temporarily Close for Construction This Weekend

Morse, Jarvis Stations Temporary NB Platform Closures Sunday

And as I write this Thursday night, there's lots of sleet on the North Side but not much snow. Still the CTA warns to allow extra travel time on Friday.

How was your commute? And have a great weekend.