CTA Tattler

Bizarre overheard conversations

Good overheard cellers from my friend Lee:

Brown line around Irving Park:
Guy on a cell phone: "Is that what you want me to do? Is THAT what you want me to do?? You want me to drive a Mercedes to the Immigration office??"

Bus, Belmont near Ashland:
Guy on a cell phone: "You know what I'm going to do, I'm going to rent a tow truck and I'm going to come by tomorrow and get that car. I don't care if you can't pay, I don't care if you're in debt, I'm going to rent a truck and take the car back." Click off cell phone. Cell phone chimes. Guy answers. He says, "Yeah, I just talked to Mom. I'm taking the car back. Yeah, I know she's in debt. You wanna know why she's in debt? Cuz she's having to bail your ass out of jail every week."

News and notes on another CTA weekend

Here's what's happening in the wonderful world of the CTA.

Southbound Red goes "over the top": "Due to planned construction work to connect the Red and Blue Line tunnels for the new transit station at Block 37, Southbound Red Line trains that normally operate through the subway will reroute to the elevated tracks" this weekend from 11 pm Friday till 1 am Monday.

Diversey station closing June 25. Yes, Diversey is next up for closure in the Brown Line reconstruction project. "The adjacent stations – Wellington and Fullerton – will remain open during the temporary closure of the Diversey station so customers may continue to use them to access Brown Line service."

CTA Tattler featured on Outside the Loop Radio. The good folks at Outside the Loop Radio interviewed yours truly on the occasion of our third birthday. You can hear the show Friday night at 6 pm on WLUW 88. 7-FM, or download the podcast here after it airs. It's Episode #38.

A glimmer of hope on funding front

Lord Blago summoned the two top CTA honchos to Springfield for a pow-wow on the $100-plus funding gap.

So CTA Board Chair Carole Brown and President Ron Huberman had to cancel their appearance at the final public hearing at 9 am Wednesday and hit Interstate 55 for a meeting with Rod and the legislative leadership team.

At least Rod is saying all the right things -- finally -- about getting more funding for the CTA, but he doesn't want it to come from increased sales or income taxes.

I frankly don't care where it comes from.

Just get it done.

Huberman: Changing corporate culture; building a "world class" system

Today, I continue with excerpts from my interview with CTA President Ron Huberman.

Q: What measures are you going to implement in order to change the corporate culture of the CTA, and foster an environment where employees must realize that customer service is priority #1?

"We need to inspire our work force to deliver the best product possible," said Huberman. "There must be clear guidelines and expectations. And the people who get the promotions are the people who deliver results."

Q: What steps does the CTA need to take in order to be considered a "world class" transit system, since it has been criticized by many as second class or worse? -- Question posted by Frank

"I don't disagree that we are not a 'world class' transit system," said Huberman. "But still I do think we do a very good job with a 100-year-old system."

He said the CTA has to figure out how to modernize the system in a way that makes sense. "Take a look at everything. Do we have the right rail cars? What does it cost per mile of track to upgrade? We have to balance all of this and find real value for our customer."

OK, that's sounds great, but how do you square that thinking with the fact that you're suggesting transferring $56.9 million in capital improvement funds to operations?

"Frankly, we're out of options," said Huberman. "I'm legally obligated to present a balanced budget and that's what we did. We took all capital projects that were not under contract already and converted those dollars to operating funds. This thing (the "contingency plan" submitted to the RTA) worries me terribly. But we're hopeful (that the Legislature will provide more funding). At the end of the day, people can't get from Point A to Point B."

Best laid plans gone awry by the six-suitcase woman

A Tattler tale from Susan:

It's crucial that I make my bus connection at Sheridan and Irving.

So last week, I got to the bus stop one day and there was a filthy woman, covered with layers of clothing in the 85-degree heat, with six suitcases. One large canvas bag had what appeared to be bundles of pantyhose.

She was standing in the middle of the road, racially ranting about "white Mother F***ckers on the North Side. You won't never catch me on the Jewel on the North Side. Don't wanna see anyone who's doesn't look like them. Don't want to hear anyone who don't look like them. And another thing, you won't never catch me in no park on the North Side."

It was an horrendous racial rant. It was awful. It was incessant.

Finally the bus came, but when I saw she was getting on that bus, I just let it go, thinking that I had saved myself an unpleasant 30-minute commute.

I thought it would be worth it, but I had to wait almost 20 minutes for the next bus.

And then when I finally got to my destination at the Six Corners, late for work, there she was, sitting on the bench, with her luggage, still ranting about the various injustices that she had experienced on the North Side.

Huberman's chief of staff to implement CTA's "mystery shopper" program

CTA President Ron Huberman has charged his new chief of staff Lydia Murray with developing his "mystery shopper" program to test customer-facing employees, Crain's Chicago Business reports in an interview with the Lakeview resident.

She also will implement Huberman's new performance management system, which he discussed in an interview with CTA Tattler.

Crain's reports that she cut her teeth doing numbers crunching in New York City as a member of the team credited with reducing crime: "She acted as a liaison between the mayor and police department, which implemented a program that mapped crime data and patterns to influence its decisions in deploying officers. The program, among a number of other factors, has been credited with contributing to New York’s declining crime rate during the 1990s under Mr. Giuliani."

(Photo from Crain's)

Happy Birthday to CTA Tattler

I made my first post to CTA Tattler on June 10, 2004. Many of the posts that first day were strange tales from my wife's commute, and I owe a big debt to her for helping found this blog.

She and I brainstormed the idea behind CTA Tattler, and she came up with the name. Thanks, Susan. And it's strangely apropos that I just reached 1 million "hits" to the site this weekend too.

What started as a repository for things "Seen and heard on the Chicago Transit Authority" has evolved into a community that gives voice to the everyday rider. And so I thank you also, loyal readers, for sticking with me and pitching in with your stories, frustrations and sometimes even triumphs.

And a big shout-out to the CTA itself, whose employees have never backed away from a question or controversy. These folks are people too who ride the CTA and who spend their lives trying to make our experience better. So thanks to Noelle, Greg, Carole, Ron and all the rest.

And a final thanks to my brother Dan, who first inspired me to blog. He's an Internet consultant who founded CTA Alerts and designed this site.

Peace, and safe travels.

-- Kevin O'Neil 

Red Line subway reroutes, other miscellany

Work to connect the Red and Blue Line subway tunnels will cause upcoming reroutes of the southbound-only Red Line. It will "go over the top" instead of through the tunnel from 9 p.m. Thursday, June 14 until 5 a.m., Friday, June 15, and from 11 p.m. Friday, June 15 until 1 a.m. Monday June 18. (It also did that last night, but that's old news.)

More details here.

Also, this weekend -- starting at 11 pm Friday through 3 pm Sunday -- southbound Red Line trains will bypass Granville, Thorndale, Bryn Mawr, Berwyn, Argyle and Lawrence stations for track maintenance work. Details here. (It's odd that I couldn't find this notice on the CTA's Web site.)

In other news:

A story by the Tribune's Eric Zorn about a helpful CTA customer assistant who retrieved his Walkman from the tracks prompts questions and comments.

Also, Zorn suggests the CTA consider charging no fares, and points us to a Web site that chronicles seven smaller cities that successfully implemented a no-fare system.

Finally, Chicagoist posts the CTA's graphic comparing the current fare structure with the proposed contingency fare.

CTA public meeting no waltz in the park

More than 200 angry CTA riders visited Michelle's Ballroom Thursday night, but they didn't come to dance.

They came to vent.

But CTA President Ron Huberman was the perfect dance hall host, graciously greeting customers before the big dance, and then passionately explaining the CTA contingency plan -- a heinous mix of service cuts and fare raises. (See the plan here, in pdf.)

But as Ron noted, the plan is contingent on funding from Springfield. "The minute -- the very minute -- that we get funding from Springfield, this plan goes away," Ron said.

Huberman told the overflow crowd how his staff and him came up with the plan, and then got out of the way for CTA riders to give their opinions.

And those riders waltzed to the mike most of the evening, some with thoughtful ideas and comments, others with rants and raves. (One commenter strayed far from the CTA issue and asked: "What do we get from the $900 billion we spent on this war? DEAD ENEMIES!!!")

I had one big "ah-ha!" moment: when Huberman put up a slide on the percentage of public funding that various cities get for their transit systems. Here it is:

Given these figures, I'm amazed the CTA's deficit was just $110 million.

If you haven't yet, you MUST call or write your state legislators.   

Huberman holds CTA managers accountable in "War Room"

We had our first interview session with CTA President Ron Huberman last week, with another set for next week. We only got through a few of the questions you contributed. Check back over the next couple of weeks for the complete interview, which I'm debuting today with my own question:

Q: The front of my Chicago Card Plus says: On Time, Clean, Safe, Friendly. Many CTA riders scoff at that and say “I wish.” What is YOUR wish for the typical commuter’s CTA experience?

A: In answer to this question, Huberman escorted us to the "War Room" to show us how he believes in the CTA credo and how he's enforcing it.

The War Room is a converted conference room that holds about seven staffers and a blizzard of paper reports tacked to the walls. The reports track the key performance indicators that they are currently working on -- the "metrics" that really matter when it comes to performance. The metrics are essentially the same as the CTA credo: Clean, On Time, Courteous, Safety, and others.

The reports are aligned in rows that are headed by the names and titles of the people who are responsible for the metrics. For instance, one row has the name of the vice president in charge of bus operations, and the names of the heads of each garage appear beneath that. In holding managers accountable using measurable metrics, Huberman draws on his experience at the Police Department and the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, with their focus on hierarchy and reporting structures.

"If we look at one of these measures-- the number of days between a deep bus cleaning, for instance, and see that there is a problem, we bring that person in here and put them on the hot seat,” said Huberman. Also, by comparing stats across the system, managers can see where the successes are and compare methods. "We want to learn why some things worked well here and not there,” said Huberman.

Huberman said some of these metrics were in place when he started, "but they weren't aggregated."

(CTA photo by Noelle Gaffney)