CTA Tattler

More do's and don'ts for CTA riders

Here's some great advice for CTA riders from Cliff. Call it an addendum to my Ten Commandments for CTA riders:

So I'm riding the Red Line home last night during rush hour. I've got one of the single seats at the car end(faces inward). This blondish, Euro-trash wannabe Chad named Charlie who works for City Year (don't wear nametags on the CTA unless you work there!) boards the train, and winds up standing in front of me.

This effectively traps me in the crush until he gets off at Belmont. He reaches into his backpack (after swinging it around and clobbering a couple of other passengers with it) and pulls out Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. He leans against the door between cars and begins to read.

Now he could have actually been as cool as he looked. There definitely was an air of nonchalance about him. Unfortunately for him, he ruined it by scratching his crotch every 3 to 4 minutes. And I'm not talking a simple adjustment; this was under and back sort of scratching. Then for some odd reason he sniffs his fingers and puts them in his mouth! All of this is occuring within a foot or two of my face!

I'm not originally from Chicago, but I've lived here long enough and ridden the CTA long enough to create the following 5 rules:

#1: You're not alone. Don't act like it.

#2: CTA Buses and Trains are touched by hundreds of people everyday. So don't eat on the CTA unless you like the idea of hundreds of people potentially having touched your food. And wash your hands as soon as you can after leaving the CTA...

#3: It's public transit. It's a miniscule chance that you are as cool/hip/trendy as you think you are. And, yes, everyone else is laughing at you. They're just really good at keeping it inside.

#4: It's PUBLIC transit. If you wanted to have a private conversation on your cell phone, you should've stayed at home.

#5: If you wouldn't do it in front of your mother or a rabbi/priest, don't do it on the CTA!

CTA settles contract with labor union

The CTA Wednesday wringed some money out of the Amalgamated Transit Union in settling its labor contract, according to a Crain's Chicago Business report:

"Workers who now don’t have a payroll deduction for health care will be required to contribute 3% of their pay for health benefits, and contributions toward pensions will double to 6% of pay from 3%.  CTA pension contributions also will double, to 12% of payroll, but part of that money will be used to pay debt service on a proposed $1.5-billion bond issue that will be used to shore up an existing CTA pension plan that has been facing insolvency."

I also noticed that the CTA's deficit has now doubled to $200 million because of new contract liabilities.

In other CTA news . . .

Federal lawmakers rail against the CTA, from the Daily Herald.

Sedgwick closing affects #11 bus, from CTA site.

IIT design could save CTA millions, from Tribune's Getting Around column.

Deodorant girl

We're on the Red Line coming home from yet another White Sox loss. A 25-year old Trixie boards at Addison.

She proceeds to apply makeup during the entire ride. That's really not so unusual. I've seen many like her apply makeup before.

But never have I seen a woman pull out a stick of deodorant.

She pulls down her black short sleeve, shoves the stick in and applies liberally.

Nice.

Sights seen on the Red Line

A gorgeous young (early 20s) Asian couples quizzing each other on Spanish vocabulary flash cards. Perhaps a trip to Madrid is coming up?

Later, one guy warns another guy that he has shaving cream remnants on the side of his face near his left ear. The guy frantically starts rubbing his right ear until he's corrected. Then he exits the train feverishly rubbing his left ear.

An elderly woman sits fast asleep in the aisle. The young guy wearing earbuds sitting next to her by the window stands up to exit, waiting for her to move. But apparently he doesn't realize she is sleeping. He stands there awkwardly waiting about five seconds after the doors had already opened. She didn't budge from her sweet slumber. Finally he taps her knee, she jumps, and he runs for the now closing door. But he makes it.

Later in the ride, the same woman is reviewing her medical exam referral documents. One say: "Breast ultrasound -- urgent."

I hope she's OK.

Tribune's erroneous North Side-centric view of transit

I hope it's not because of the thousands of North Side RedEye readers. I hope it was just a plain mistake. But it was truly bizarre and questionable.

A week ago, the Tribune/RedEye published a graphic showing the "busiest of Chicago's transportation network." That included a list of the busiest bus lines. (See the graphic in the continuation of this post.)

The top three busiest bus lines in the graphic were the 151 Sheridan, the 147 Outer Drive Express, and the 152 Addison.

That list made me scratch my head when I read it. Particularly the Addison bus as No. 3 busiest.

And Michael Kmak over at the LiveJournal El Community thought the same thing, and posted about his letter to the Tribune editors.

Finally on Friday the Tribune corrected its piece. Though you can still find the erroneous graphic online. Here's the text of the correction:

*A graphic about CTA bus route information in Monday's Metro section incorrectly characterized the routes shown, including the 151 and 147 routes, as Top 10 average weekday boardings. In fact, the Top 10 are Route Numbers 79/79th; 20/Madison; 9/Ashland; 66/Chicago; 63/63rd; 77/Belmont; 3/King Drive; 53/Pulaski; 4/Cottage Grove; and 22/Clark."

So, bottom line: The Tribune got the Top Three totally wrong, and half of the Top Ten are on the South Side. The original graphic noted no South Side bus routes

Hmmmm....

Weekend transit update

Here's a wrapup of weekend events.

Single tracking on Blue Line. "A single track will be in effect on the Blue Line between Grand and Damen this weekend and through next week. Southbound customers boarding at Grand, Chicago and Division should board on the northbound side of the platform.

Transit Riders' Alliance Meeting Saturday. The Alliance is a campaign designed to give transit users a voice in Springfield.  "We will bring you up-to-date on the action (or inaction) in Springfield and give you some tools to push for better service." The meeting, sponsored by Save Chicgo Transit, starts at 10 am Saturday, June 23, DePaul University's Chaddick Institute, 243 S. Wabash Ave., 9th Floor.

Cops can view bus cameras. "Police in patrol cars will soon be able to peer inside nearby city buses by electronically tapping into onboard video cameras, the Chicago Transit Authority's technology vice-president said Wednesday." The Tribune reports here.

Handing him his lunch

I've ridden the CTA long enough to know that one cardinal rule is that you don't touch another person's stuff.

So I was somewhat surprised to see a woman in her late 20s beeline to the only available seat -- because a lunch was occupying the seat -- pick up the lunch, and uncerimoniously dump the lunch on the lap of her neighbor. And it woke him up.

I think he was too dazed to take much offense, even though he shouldn't.

He went back to sleep and she got her seat.

Don't jam up transit card machine with too many coins

After seeing this post, Erin wrote about her experience with small change and the transit card machines:

This morning, I brought a handful of nickles and dimes to my station to buy a $2 ticket (I'm between Chicago Card Plus cards for a few days), and after I got to about $1.60, the machine read, "NO MORE COINS."

WTF! "No more coins"?! Legal tender! The agent there explained that the machine can't take more than 15 coins at once. How stupid is this? Luckily, the kind agent had a few quarters he exchanged me for nickles, so all ended well enough, but...how stupid!

Huberman on distance-based pricing and universal card

The excellent blog Sick Transit Chicago recently reported on two hot CTA topics:

"Huberman reported that the CTA has investigated distanced-based pricing. Converting its system to such a pricing system would cost the CTA $280 million, so is not a near-term solution. He said that going forward the CTA will build into its infrastructure the flexibility to switch to distance-base pricing, which he thought is a "great" idea.

-"When asked about the every elusive universal fare card, which made a quick appearance this spring and then was consigned to oblivion once again, Reilly smiled knowingly and launched into a riff about how we will all be paying for tolls, transit, parking and hot dogs with a "private card" of some sort. Glad to see it soon will be easy to transfer from service run by one service board to service run by another! So much for Phil Pagano's promise not long ago that we would see the universal fare card in 30 days."

After the Alert: Why those bridges were stuck up

We got a CTA Alert Saturday afternoon about bridges being stuck in the up position affecting traffic on the Pink and Green lines:

"CTA has announced Lake St Bridge stuck in "up" pos. Pink and Green Line svc disrupted at River. City working to repair."

Gapers Block today notes that the 90-degree weather caused them to be "stuck up."

Read the Sun-Times story here.