CTA Tattler

Dazzling white paint job at Grand on Blue Line

Ian shares this cool photo of a dazzling white paint job at the Grand Blue Line station.

 

Interestingly, a few days before Ian sent me the above photo, Carl sent me this post from his Life in the Great Midwest blog.

He was writing about terrible service on the Blue Line, and noted the precarious positioning of this ladder near the third rail during the paint job.

The conscientious commentator

A 50-ish woman sits on the Red Line wearing a baseball cap with huge headphones over top of it. She sports oversized pink glasses. She wears a gray jacket with a bunch of novelty pins and charms dangling and jingling from it.

And she's very loud and opinionated.

First, someone fell forward on the crowded rush hour train and she exclaimed loudly: "ARE YOU OK?"

Then she congratulated someone who gave up his seat for a young lady, in a harsh and loud monotone: "THAT WAS VERY CONSIDERATE OF YOU!"

Finally, seemingly out of nowhere, she exclaims: "YOU REALLY NEED TO BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU'RE WEARING A BACKPACK!"

We'll tell you about airport departures, but not train departures

Big announcement!

The CTA is teaming up with the Chicago Dept. of Transportation  to install a kiosk with flight departure information at the Clark and Lake station in the Loop. Information about Midway will be in the lobby of the Thompson Center, while information about O'Hare will be on the subway platform where riders catch the Blue Line.

Excellent.

Now, how about telling us how late we'll be to O'Hare if we actually decide to take the Blue Line. Or should we call it the "Blues" line?

Dirty trains and buses? Nooooo!

I like CTA Board Chair Carole Brown.

That may seem like an unpopular statement, but I really do think she takes the side of the average rider over management.

Case in point: This week's CTA board meeting.

The Sun-Times reports:

"Long a gripe of seasoned riders, the cleanliness of CTA vehicles came up at Wednesday's board meeting during a staff presentation on system performance.

"Brown and other board members took issue with CTA figures on the number of complaints made by riders about dirty trains and buses, saying they were too low for a transit system that provides more than 1 million rides a day."

Other board Yes-women would side with management. But she sided with us.

"Brown quipped that she fields more complaints than that on her blog. She said she's also had people stop her on the street to share their horror stories. "Easy things, like cleaning a train or cleaning a bus, are things that we should be doing as a matter of course," Brown said after requesting the audit."

Yes, Brown demanded an audit: "Brown plans to have the CTA's Office of Inspector General do an audit to see if buses and trains are cleaned as often and thoroughly as they should be."

Thank you, Carole.

Safety last

A 30-ish father is having something of a rough time corraling his 5-year-old daughter on the Red Line north during rush hour.

She won't sit where he tells her. She wants to stand on the seat. She wants to kneel on the seat. She wants to stand in the aisle.

Finally, getting exasperated, he threatens her with a timeout and lectures her: "Remember, safety first." She slams back into the seat and taunts him:

"No! Safety last!"

Transit ideas to steal from Toronto conference

"A Quiet Car and an Improve Your English car in subway trains. A lapel button to indicate you're feeling gregarious and want to talk. When 100 Toronto transit lovers assembled recently for Transit Camp, they had visions aplenty for the system."

So goes the account in the Toronto Star about Transit Camp, sponsored by the Toronto Transit Commission earlier this year to get ideas on improving the ride. And yes, transit officials were there, taking notes.

How about this refreshing message from Toronto's Frank Kruesi equivalent:

"Gary Webster, 55, interim general manager of the TTC, took notes. "Several years ago this is not a group I would likely spend time with on a Sunday," said Webster. "But if we don't show up we send them a message we don't care ... we have to think of it more from their point of view than we usually do."

Are you listening Frank? Nah, didn't think so.

Here's a cool Web site recapping some of the ideas.

The choice: An arrest, or ass-whoopin'?

Cmama recently shared this fascinating bus story. Since I don't ride the bus so much, I miss these great stories. Thanks for sharing, Cmama:

Last night, some lady spit on the bus driver and he called the police. The woman got on the Green Line and was waiting for the train when the police showed up to arrest her.

Everybody on the bus agreed she's lucky she ONLY got arrested, because as one passenger said, "if she's bold enough to spit on a person, then she should be able to take an ass whooping."

Only problem is now the bus in a half hour late leaving the train station (along with traffic way backed up since they can't go around the bus on the street) and we had to wait for the next bus. Very entertaining, but I was looking forward to catching the earlier bus and getting home 15 minutes earlier.

Carole gets blogging idea at a bar

CTA Chairwoman Carole Brown sat in a bar early in 2005, reading how someone had called her the "angel of death" in an online forum.

So she decided to fight fire with fire on the Internet by starting her own blog, Ask Carole.

That's what Stephen Baker reported on Blogspotting.

Here's another report on Brown's blogging decision.

So now instead of people dissing Carole in online forums, they can do it directly on her blog.

Meanwhile, don't forget that the first of four community hearings on the CTA's three-track operations begins tonight.

The later-evening El crowd

The passengers on the trains in the later evening are a mixed breed -- quite different from the 9-to-5 work/school commuters. Here are three from the other night:

** The scruffy guy. Rough around the edges. Dirty long hair peeks out below the black tossle cap. A bottle of Seagram's Seven juts out from the inside pocket of his jeans jacket. He smacks a box of Marlboro's expectantly against the heel of his hand.

** The Yuppie student. Usually traveling in knots of 3-6. They sport that successful look and discuss which criminal law prof grades the hardest. They're wearing top-notch business casual clothing. Think Claiborne and Ellis.

** The poor schmoe underemployed. They look tired. Been working 10-12 hours in a menial job not even earning a living wage. Their clothes are off the rack at Kohl's or Wal-Mart. They keep our economy running by serving us our sandwiches and coffee and selling Lotto tickets. God bless 'em.

View of the CTA from Boston blogger

A Boston MBTA blogger visited Chicago last month and made some very insightful comments on his blog, Charlie on the MBTA.

Any of these sound familiar:

"Wednesday morning I had a dreadful commute into the Loop as a trip that should have taken close to 30 minutes wound up being over an hour."

Read Kevin Vahey's review of the CTA here.

Kevin is a former Chicago resident who says the CTA Tattler blog was the inspiration for his Boston transit blog. I find it rather ironic that two Irishmen in their 50s named Kevin write popular transit blogs in two large U.S. cities.