CTA Tattler

Huberman seems to be listening. Bravo!

A few weeks back I flew into O'Hare and took the Blue Line into town. The slow zones were atrocious, and this was without any additional mishaps. As a Chicago resident who has chosen to live carless for the last 10 years, and a daily commuter on the Red Line, I was embarrased for my city.

In the past few weeks I've noticed bolder signage regarding track work, now lets see if his words can translate to action. I'm not applauding quite yet but, Mr. Huberman, myself and others are watching intently.

Well, as for the blue line -- I would really love it if the slow zones were finally gone! I grew so incredibly frustrated with using the blue line -- that was unreliable, slow, and broke down multiple times with me on it (and sometimes simply never showed up at all, which was also fun) -- that I wound up redesigning my commute to take a different route, which takes much longer than the blue line /should/, but which actually, like, shows up, and gets me to work on some sort of reasonably reliable schedule. But if I could go back to the blue line and have a half-hour commute instead of an hour commute... yeah!

Didn't the previous guy say that it would take five years to repair all the slow zones?

Hallelujah! Not that my commute includes the Blue Line anymore--I no longer work downtown. But since my last terrible trip on it & the creepy Clark & Lake stop (in the middle of the day, no less), I have gone to great lengths to avoid taking it anymore--buses all the way, even when going from Lincoln Park to Resurrection Hospital on the far NW side, or from my house to the UIC medical campus (by going all the way east to Ashland & then south).
Mind, I'm not holding my breath--I think CTA riders have been burned too often to simply believe words any more. They're going to have to build our trust again by delivering on these promises. But it is encouraging--and a sign that they have finally started to listen to us at the very least.

At the risk of sounding cynical, with regard to repaired slow zones, I will believe it when I arrive at Lake and find myself thinking, "Holy st, didn't I just board at Argyle?"

"St" was supposed to be "s--t", except Movable Type trimmed out my em dash.

I agree that it will take more than a few press releases and news conferences to convince me, bu I will give Huberman the benefit of the doubt -- for now.

Hopefully the CTA will get more of the slow zones under control, despite this new information conflicting with previous reports that it would take years to fix.

But it could take less time because the CTA did not include red line north branch tracks north of Diversey - which has been one large slow zone for years.

My sympathies to all who commute north of Addison on the red line. It seems like that segment will continue to be the neglected step child for some time to come.

Well it will be nice to speed things up in the State St. subway since almost all of it has been slow zoned for a while. This is probably the easiest to accomplish since the Red line can be redirected over the loop in one direction pretty easily at off peak times.

The slow zones on the Howard branch from Fullerton to Howard are going to take a lot more time and money to fix given the poor condition of most of the trackage and structures.

This can't happen soon enough. My commute from Belmont to Cumberland has become incredibly frustrating. The slow zones have expanded so much that the train doesn't get up to full speed at any point outside of the belmont tunnel.

Around Montrose the tracks are so bad the car will jerk and stop 5 or 6 times before resuming the blinding 15 mph speed.

Considering the Blue Line is the entrance for many tourists into our city, this is long, long overdue.

As the other commenter noted, it was only in March when Kreusi told us it would take 3 yrs and 100 million dollars to fix all the blue line slow zones. Now we find out it can be done in 6 months for 15 million?

Was he really that bad? If Huberman were running things earlier, would it have been possible to rebuild CTA stations in less than a year?

I'm starting to like this guy more and more.

First I see him a few weeks ago riding the purple/red line taking notes. Then on the night of the fireworks melt down I see him briefly running around Jackson under the tracks actually doing something with the track engineers. Now this? At this point I'm starting to trust his words. Looks like we actually might be heading somewhere..

Thank god for our sake that he's heading CTA and not the police department as he was in line to do. Then again, there are days they could use him over there...!

This is great news. While it's true that even after this, there will still be lots of slow zones, it is starting where the most impact is to be had. More people travel the Dearborn and State St. Subways than the Red Line North of Addison. It's a good start.

What frustrates me is that Huberman has found it quite easy to shuffle money around from other projects to fix critical day-to-day issues. Why couldn't Kruesi do this all along? Stealing money from the Airport Express train to fix slow zones? I couldn't have written it better myself!!

I'm a former Chicagoan who visited Chicago recently. When I took the airport bus to my hotel, the expressway was badly congested from near O'Hare to where Edens comes in, so that we were only creeping. But we were moving faster than the Blue line trains, who were creeping even more slowly. For people coming into the city from O'Hare this creates an incredibly bad impression for Chicago. This is another reason for getting those slow zones on the outer part of the Blue line fixed PDQ.
If Chicago is serious about getting the Olympic games, it better build a first rate public transportation system as quickly as possible because other competing cities, like Paris have excellent public transporation systems.

RE Didn't the previous guy say that it would take five years to repair all the slow zones?

I'm pretty sure that's what he said, and at a cost of $100+ million. Wish I could find the exact numbers. Man, Kruesi was a flake.

RE Didn't the previous guy say that it would take five years to repair all the slow zones?

I'm pretty sure that's what he said, and at a cost of $100+ million. Wish I could find the exact numbers. Man, Kruesi was a flake.

I think the 5 year/100M figure was to fix all slow zones on the entire system. That would include addressing the Howard and Linden branches where a lot of remedial structure work would be required.

Of course, the current fix is only for the subway. The rest of the !@#!@ slow zone from O'Hare to Damon can't be done because they don't have the funds. So now the hipsters can be happy while the rest of us still have to deal with the 15 mph trains for 30 minutes

Jacques:

They stated they are going to fix all of the slow zones on the blue line. The slow zones they did not say would be fixed are on the red line north of Addison.

RE: Didn't the previous guy say that it would take five years to repair all the slow zones?

Yes, and the article can be found in the February 26 Metro section of the Chicago Tribune. (archived, but the figures are below).

"The CTA estimates it needs $100 million to eliminate Blue Line slow zones.

The shortfall is part of a total $500 million necessary to get rid of slow zones on the entire rail system, which more than doubled this year to about 185,000 feet of track, the CTA said. The agency's capital budget provides for $62.7 million through 2011 to address the problem."

I still count it as rather pathetic that we are getting so excited over having a guy running the system who is displaying nothing more than basic competence.

Of course, after a decade or whatever of incompetence, that's a huge improvement. But, I have yet to see anything to indicate that Huberman is anything more than just competent on the most basic of levels. He's just doing a few of the things that the riders have been asking for forever. He could have read this blog and come up with these ideas.

Chicago needs and deserves something far greater than just basic competence. In the meantime, I'll take basic competence, as Huberman can certainly get the job done in terms of getting the CTA repaired, but we need someone who has some ability to be a visionary in terms of modernizing the CTA, and making it into a world-class system.

Sao Paulo has a world class public transit system. Chicago does not. How does that look to the IOC?

Jerry101, I'm with you completely until the last paragraph. Chicago is competing against Rio, not Sao Paulo.

For the Blue Line Slow Zone Elimination Plan, look here:

http://transitchicago.com/news/motion/board/blueszep.pdf

Grand to Division, July-Sept 2007
Addision to O'Hare, Sept 2007-Dec 2008
Both to be repaired to 55+ MPH

Includes letter from Huberman, details on the next 4 weekend closures for subway repair, NW Blue line map, and Blue line shuttle bus map.

I remember someone on this blog stating that if closures would speed up improvements on the Brown line project, they would be understood as long as they were effectively communicated. Well, it looks like we'll find out how well that idea works on the 1st phase of Blus line repairs, with a total of 5 weekend closures.

Well, it looks like Grand to Division is repaired on the Blue line, but what is up with everything else?

The Blue line Addison to O'Hare went from bad to worse, and that may be O.K. since it's scheduled to get better from now through Dec 2008. (pretty long wait overall, but hopefully it will get progressively better)

The Red line(Dan Ryan only portion), was in very good shape just this Spring, but looks like it's slowing down quite a bit.

The rest of the Red line went from terrible to even worse.(with obvious CTA work that should also lead to inprovements) Purple getting worse(esp. structures). Brown seems to be holding it's own, with a couple of very slow spots.

On the good news side:
West side Blue, Pink, Orange, and Green are in great to perfect condition, with South Green getting a couple of slow zones creeping in, and one structural issue.

One would hope the entire North side gets repaired quickly, especially before the South side Red (Green too?) gets to be a slow zone mess.

The ray of hope is that it seems like track repair work is a priority, even though the slow zones comprise 22% of the system these days, and slow zone repair work(although much appreciated), seems, well, "slow".

Take a look at the September 18, 2007 slow zone map and previous slow zone maps here:

http://tinyurl.com/38xe4y

or here(place all following text on one line):

http://www.transitchicago.com/news/whatsnew2.wu?action=displaynewspostingdetail&articleid=107056