CTA Tattler

You mean that breath of fresh air who takes a cab to work because she can't stand the filth on the CTA?

http://drivelesslivemore.com/

This website seem to be a true waste of time and money now.

uummm, the other day my train smelled like salami. Of all the possible smells to endure on a 18 minute train ride, that might be preferred over others. But, I don't think I've ever taken a breath of fresh air on the train unless the doors open and I get a nice breeze blowing my way.

Oh yeah, in other news, it's good to see the courts are making the CTA take responsibility of some of their actions or lack of action.

The message to the CTA could not be any clearer. It is repeated over and over and over again in the comments: the plan is UNACCEPTABLE.

If the CTA does not tweak their plan, we need to do something more than just ride the Metra. We need to make them feel our pain! In a tangible way.

Go to the next Board meeting if you can:

The Chicago Transit Board meets monthly in the CTA main offices. The meetings are held on the second floor at 567 W. Lake Street, Boardroom, Chicago, Illinois. These board meetings are open to the public. Board meetings usually take place at 10:00 a.m. and are usually preceded by committee meetings.

The separate committees include Human Resources, Strategic Planning, Capital Construction Oversight, and the Finance, Audit & Budget Committee. For an exact schedule of committee meetings call 312-664-7200 x15026, or click on Board Meeting Notices and Agendas.

Board meetings are to be held on the second Wednesday of each month unless otherwise noted.
-----------------------------------
The board meetings for the year 2007 are scheduled at
10:00 a.m. on the following dates (unless otherwise as noted):

Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007

My comments, reposted from Carole's blog:

How about this:
Stop Brown Line trains at Southport. Create a Brown Line Express bus running non-stop between Southport and Chicago/LaSalle via Ashland. Have stops at Chicago/LaSalle, Grand/LaSalle, and LaSalle/Lake. Brown Line commuters that want to transfer to Red can do so by walking to Belmont from Southport. Make this a free transfer like State/Lake downtown.

Or, have Brown/Purple Line trains express from Fullerton to Merchandise Mart, skipping Armitage, Sedgewick, and Chicago. Customers at Armitage can walk 4 blocks to North/Clybourn or take the Armitage bus to the #156. Customers at Sedgewick have easy access to the #11 Lincoln/Sedgewick as well as the #156. Customers at Chicago have plenty of options. Commuters needing to de-board at Chicago can transfer to the Red line at Fullerton.

How about we stop with all the suggestions and tell the CTA brass this "Here are your expected numbers for 2007 and you have XX percentage variance. If you don't meet your numbers within that variance you're gone. You sink or swim by your decisions." Lets not give them any more excuses for their actions....

Somebody posting here, help me out, please.

To your knowledge, has anyone ever taken the D.O.T., IDOT, or any of the other authorities that authorize and oversee the construction and maintenance of our highways, to court because of the inevitable congestion and delays on the roads?

Taking the CTA to court over the inevitable disruptions entailed in rebuilding the ancient rail system, is the most irrational response U can think of, outside of demanding that CTA buy the property for new rights-of-way, so they can build new lines from scratch to replace old ones. Just price the property on either side of the Red or the Brown, and also consider just how many irreplaceable buildings and private homes there are located very close to the right-of-way, and then figure what this would cost in just dollar terms. We couldn't afford to do this and we all know it, and the funding authorities would never give CTA the dough to do it anyway, so it's off the table.

When the CTA renovated the Green Line, they shut the line down entirely to speed the job up, it being much easier to work quickly without having to worry about moving trains and thousands of passengers. As a result, ridership had dwindled to almost nothing by the time the line reopened.While some of you will drive, I have no decent alternative to the Red Line. Would you rather have the Red shut down altogether? Would this be preferable to three years of delays?

The other alternative is reduce the number of hours work is done, which will result in the job taking much longer, extending it by one or two years and prolonging our misery. Additionally, an extended timeframe would elevate the costs steeply. Would this be better?

Now, we could also just 'insist' that the CTA eliminate the slow zones no matter what the condition of the track may be, and no matter how many workers are endangered thereby. I guess many of you figure that the lives of the workers on the tracks couldn't possibly be as valuable as the time belonging to the various white-collar professionals who are screaming their heads off over the delays. So, if we just eliminate the slow zones and run the trains faster no matter what, that will help with the delays, even if it means many more workers being killed than already are. Dig up the stats on how many CTA workers are killed on the rail system every year, often because of violating 'slow zone' rules, to get an idea of the true cost of speeding this job up.

You can find a way to make up for the lost half hour, but you can't replace human lives, and speeding this job up will result in not only more dead workers, but could result in safety compromises that kill us passengers as well.

So let's get real and stop acting like typical spoiled American cry-babies, and let the job get done without any more obstruction and delay, and without running up more bills in court costs that the public will ultimately have to pay.

Laura,

The CTA cannot be held accountable for delays resulting directly from construction, but what they can and should be held accountable for are the years and years that have gone by without the maintenance needed to prevent ridiculous delays. They have done minimal, if any, and should be held accountable for the sudden on-rush of problems.

Not to mention these renovations are for the brown line, which should in theory effect the red line stations rarely if at all, but we know thats not true. So now all the red line people suffer because of the "need" to add two cars to each brown line train.

I AM getting real and I'm not acting like an American cry-baby.

Why is it "spoiled" of me to ask that a publicly funded institution like the CTA should have some vestige of accountability for the shoddy service that they are providing, despite an increase in funding year after year?

If the general populace just submits and allows all of this to slide by without a word said, do you really think (given the CTA's recent track-record) that the job will "get done without any more obstruction and delay"? Come on.

I don't understand why the only two options in your methodology, Laura, are support the deaths of transit workers or suffer ridiculous delays. A bit fatalistic, don't you think?

Looked over Carole's blog for a week. Apparently Carole hasn't, since there has been no response from her to about 140 comments. Of course, someone used her blog to post, and then someone else to rebut, the Tattler post "Motorman has great ideas on how to speed service" instead of dealing with it here. The whole use of the Internet as a persuader has become totally nonfunctional (sort of like the L).

All this talk of impending doom, coupled with the current dismal performance of the CTA, makes me finally want to break down and buy a car. I'm curious, is anyone in Edgewater, Andersonville, or Uptown, working downtown or near north,M-F, 9-5, interested in carpooling?

This whole problem of deteriorating infrastructure is connected with broader problems of our political culture -- tax-phobia, prioritizing private enrichment over public good, etc.

So, for example, a line that caters to some pretty upscale neighborhoods is expanded (probably to help "promote development" further -- obviously the two cars aren't needed now, but they're hoping the Brown Line area will grow), and so the main artery for the south side, Rogers Park, Uptown, etc., is cut by a quarter during rush hours. Or an insanely stupid "super-station" is built three blocks from Clark and Lake, which seems like a "super-station" to me already, in order to serve some hypothetical rich people who don't want to sit next to ordinary Chicago people -- instead of, say, extending the Red Line to 130th.

That said, the current plan w/r/t 3-track operation is pretty dumb -- it's obvious that they should use two tracks for the rush direction. People would figure it out.

The delays that the CTA says will commence in April will not be because of the Brown Line work that is nearly complete.

These delays will be because the messiest and most disruptive stages of the work being done at Belmont and Fullerton, not to mention Howard, will begin, because of the massive alterations being made to the track, which is being widened to accomodate the necessary wider platforms.

I'll put up with a few years of delays to get the tragically decrepit and inadequate Belmont station rebuilt. This is the worst station on the line, especially given that it serves 3 lines.

CTA's poor maintainance over the years and its presumed waste are due to the fact that every major repair- that is, anything involving bringing in outside contractors, or spending a substantial amount of money, must go through the most byzantine bureacracy you can imagine, in order to satisfy the thousands of rules of a multitude of funding sources (RTA, the Federal, State, and local governments), as well as a multitude of other regulatory agencies, such as the EEOC and the EPA. The EPA is the worst- the disposition of every railroad tie and used oil drum must be exhaustively documented.

A job such as the rehab work on the bridge at Morse, for example, must first go through many stages to get approval, before it is bid out. The approval process takes months and requires thousands of pages of documentation. Then, the bidding is another massive process, with hundreds of rules, and more reams of documentation. The CTA cannot sidestep these requirements, and they add tens of millions of dollars to the cost of maintenance and operation by virtue of the sheer labor and hours involved in generating the documentation and dealing with so many agencies and authorities.

Figure how long a small business would last if it had to do things this way, and ask any small business owner how much of his costs are due to dealing with city bureacracy and obstruction.

The agency's lack of a long-term financial plan owes to the sparodic nature of their funding, in that they have very few sources of funding that they can count on year to year and must instead troll for grants for this and for that project or emergency needs. Too much funding is done in response to emergencies rather than in anticipation of long term needs. In other words, the manner in which they are funded skewers any attempts at long-range planning, which takes place in the interstices- "if we can get the funding we wiil do this, but if not we will have to settle for that, unless something happens we cannot foresee",

The delay in the long-planned rehab of the Howard Station is a case in point. This project has been planned by the CTA for nearly twenty years. However, funding for this massive project was dependent upon funding from elsewhere for the redevelopment of the area of Clark and Howard, which was of course being handled by other agencies. The Howard project was put on hold until the Gateway plans were made, and the funds for it were lost, and had to be reapplied for in conjunction with the Howard Paulina TIF.

Laura,

As the legal system decided the CTA is responsible for guess what, maintaining its lines, they are held responsible for any slowness that comes along with not maintaining it.

Also, you said:

"The delays that the CTA says will commence in April will not be because of the Brown Line work that is nearly complete."

Are you kidding me? The work at Belmont and Fullerton, as well as the other Brown Line stations in-between are all a part of the Brown Line Renovation. You cannot separate them, sorry, nice try though.

It hasn't been a lack of funding. It has been a lack of intelligence in using funding, not to mention taking the funds they have and using them for other purposes: building up legal issues to take away their funds. Such as not paying pensions, being sued, etc.

It is not that we don't understand the organization is not as well-funded as we would like, but it is how the CTA deals with people that is what everyone is upset about. They don't care, because they don't have to care. They are not reliant upon their consumers to stay alive so they do not take care of consumers. Points:

1. They have known about three tracking. Consumers have been asking about details for almost, if not quite, a year now. They suddenly arrive three months before with doomsday proportions.

2. They specifically painted over the "XX minutes to Loop" signs all over the place. No matter what they say about it being a long coming scheduled activity, they still have painted and taped over only the minute portions of glowing, lighted signs. As was done at the Forest Park Station.

3. Mis-leading the Chairperson of the Board repeatedly about track repairs and progress as evidenced with Carole's blog about the red line slow zones being completed this year.

Need me to go on Laura?

"It hasn't been a lack of funding. It has been a lack of intelligence in using funding, not to mention taking the funds they have and using them for other purposes: building up legal issues to take away their funds. Such as not paying pensions, being sued, etc."

I don't know how many attorneys and legal support staff the CTA usually budgets for, but there are currently FOUR attorney positions open for hiring in the CTA website's career area.

Maybe they are just filling positions that have been vacated. Still, if they are hiring four attorneys, I have to wonder how many they have overall and how it compares to other major transit systems. Not a big deal in the whole scheme of things, but something that made me curious nonetheless.

http://www.cta.apply2jobs.com/Index.cfm?FuseAction=ACTSearch

Adam, the Brown Line project has nothing to do with the "upscale" neighborhoods it serves. It's basic supply and demand. The 2 extra cars ARE needed now and have been since the late 1990's. If you knew anything about the situation at all, you would know the platforms are too short and the trains are crushloaded (safety issues), making the project necessary.

The problem is inadequate funding, the CTA once again mismanaging what little money it does have, and treating customers poorly. Asserting that this is somehow a Lincoln Park/Lakeview/Lincoln Square vs. Edgewater/Rogers Park/Uptown or a haves vs. have-nots thing is counterproductive and misses the point.

Does anyone else find it ironic that in implementing this rehab to accomodate the increase in ridership, ridership will decline significantly? Does anyone else remember when the CTA wanted to shut down the Brown Line twenty years ago ... and the people it served had to fight just to keep it running? Not the most forward-thinking organization, that CTA.

The Federal dollars came in and the CTA jumped at it, and they didn't do much else in the way of planning. Budgets were underestimated. Promises were broken. Permits weren't applied for. Now they're rendering the northside mainline useless and telling us to tough it out. What a jaoke.

Public transport is underfunded and any reovation will involve hassles and inconveniences, but I am completely disgusted with the CTA, my alderman and my mayor. They have done nothing - - zip - - in the way of planning for alternatives. "HOV lanes? That's crazy talk! More buses? We'll get back to you! Purple transfer at Sheridan? We'll look into it!" Pathetic. Nine days of comments and ideas have filled Carole's blog and she has yet to respond. Daley's only response was that the CTA is old and Kruesi's doing a helluva job.

People need to show up at the Feb. 14th Board meeting and scream like banshees at these jagoffs.

I live near the Western Brown line and use it all the time, at all different times of the day. The crowding is nothing compared to the average experience on the Red or Blue lines.

Actually, Laura is sort of correct abouyt Belmont or, at least, Fullerton: Fullerton would be getting reconstructed in this manner whether the Brown Line Capacity Expansion Project came about or not. Fullerton is one of several stations that were identified as "Key ADA Stations" in the 1990s that are required, by a legal agreement with the disabled community, among other, to be accessible by 2009. Howard is another. They are the last two Key Stations left to be made accessible. So this would all be happening at Fullerton right now one way or another. So stop with the Red Line versus Brown Line stuff. Fullerton is a station that is served by three lines. It is a "Brown Line station" only in so much as the capital dollars being used to renovate it are coming from something that happens to be called the "Brown Line Capacity Expansion Project". If you must know, Fullerton and Belmont are Red Line stations as far as CTA's administrative breakdown goes (i.e. who staffs them, etc.).

Also, those "XX minutes to Loop" signs... Well, those were a joke from the day they went up in the 1970s. Some of them may have been painted over or taken down recently, but they were almost never true from jump street, except perhaps during A/B service with no delays, a fast motorman, no delays whatsoever, and the moon and stars properly coming into alignment. I remember laughing at those signs back in the 1980s (when everyone on this board seems to think everything was hunky-dory with the CTA... um, that was back when all the deferred maintenance that is now coming home to roost was going on, by the way). So they should have come down long ago. Don't try to construe that into some massive conspiracy by the CTA.

Not that it's even worth trying to argue here, since everyone's playing Chicken Little right now, I'll just make a list of points and probably not come back to see responses:

1) Service has become less good because of an aging system that needs better maintenance.

2) It is not an issue of neglect on CTA's behalf. They are not ignoring the state of the system. During the 1980s, things fell into disrepair because it wasn't being taken care of then. Today's CTA is a very different agency and it's doing what it can to recover from that past. The people in charge today are trying to fix the problems of their predecessors, and they're fairly successful at doing it. Unfortunately, the budget doesn't allow for the kind of improvements and work that need to be done, so they seem to have to work with what they have and try occasionally for extra, one-time funding packages for larger projects, like this one, to fill in the gaps when a big enough one arises. With proper funding, which does not exist for CTA, things would be substantially different. It's not an issue of mismanagement, it's an issue of a lack of resources and funding that cannot be solved except by people outside of CTA.

3) As Bill says above, Fullerton would, in fact, be going through this renovation anyway, and bottlenecks would be required.

4) Whoever says CTA's funding has increased is apparently unaware of reality. While the number goes up, it's not going up at a pace that keeps up with inflation. Each year, CTA is asked to do more or the same with less and less. We should be sending them flowers for having managed to avoid cuts or major fare increases over the last decade.

6) An added 15-20 minutes to get from Sheridan to downtown (and it really might not even be that bad) is not a huge sacrifice. When IDOT closes a lane on an inbound expressway they are decreasing capacity altogether by 25% to 30% for the entire rush, and there are traffic jams even off-peak. Right now I'm served by Green, Pink, and Blue--but I wouldn't think twice about moving off Brown/Purple/Red. It's going to be managable, even if difficult at first.

We've been complaining to the CTA long enough without any real changes. Where is the Mayor in this? Where is City Council? If enough of us complain to the right people, we might finally get a train and bus system that we’re proud to use.

The following website helps you to easily send a message to your city and state representatives for your neighborhood. Click the link to tell them this is their problem too.

http://www.neighborsproject.org/projects/cta/

The site sends the following message to your elected officials:

"Please make improving the CTA your priority.

"I am one of the millions of regular riders who has suffered from the noticeable deterioration of both train and bus service over the last year or so. More slow, unreliable, overcrowded and dirty trains and buses regularly make me late to work and keep me from my friends, family and other obligations.

"I fully support increased state and federal funding for the CTA. But money alone will not improve the system; the CTA needs strong mayoral and city council management oversight -- starting today. I ask you to make improving the CTA your priority. Chicago deserves a world class transit system."

cmamma is obviously a CTA lackey lurking on this site pretending to be a normal person.

Having had the pleasure of riding the CTA's various lines pretty regularly (and being a "whatever train gets to Belmont first" rider) I certainly agree that the northside lines are in the worst shape by far. The trackage and bridges north of the Clark intersection make me cross my fingers (having seen much of their states at ground level)when I go over them. Though looking at (and through in some cases...eek) the state of the stringers on Brown line down to the Mart makes me wonder how much longer before that segment of the line is going to require major work too.

I'm aware that there is a lot of work to be done on the northside main branch but three years of work is absurd. That's almost longer than it took them to build the entire line over 100 years ago. Surely technology has progressed to the point of improving that somewhat.

The C.T.A. can avert traffic nightmares during el construction by leasing ferry boats and double decker buses.

Doesn't anyone find it strange that the Chicago Tribune reported that Carole Brown drives to and from work??? If the city workers have a mandate to live in the city boundaries, I think the top management of the CTA should be mandated to take transit to and from work. Perhaps Carole will be more understanding of how transit works in Chicago!