CTA Tattler

New subway exit signs point the way to safety

Large white signs with bright red lettering now point the way to street-level safety in CTA subway tunnels.

The signs, made of reflective materials, were installed in the Blue and Red Line tunnels beginning in July. Installation is complete in the Blue Line tunnel, and is continuing on the Red Line.

The signs posted every 200 feet, point in each direction, stating the number of feet to the next streetside exit.

The signs are just one part of the response to scathing criticism from the National Transportation Safety Board in the wake of the July 2006 Blue Line derailment. Specifically, the CTA is partially addressing Safety Recommendation No. 12 from the NTSB report:

• Examine and improve as necessary your ability to communicate with passengers and perform emergency evacuations.

To that end, the CTA also conducted emergency evacuation drills in the Blue Line tunnel in August and September during service suspensions for slow-zone work.

Grand Avenue subway rehab set on Red Line

The long-awaited rehab of the Red Line's Grand Avenue subway station and platform is set to begin this month, according to a spokesman with the Chicago Dept. of Transportation.

The $67.2 million project "will rebuild the mezzanine and platform, expanding the mezzanine by about 2,000 square feet and nearly doubling the entering/exiting capacity by adding fare turnstyles," CDOT's Brain Steele said. "The design will follow the theme of recent Red Line station projects at Chicago-State and Lake-Randolph: granite floors and stairs, glazed wall tiles, new lighting and other amenities." CDOT provided this rendering of the new mezzanine.

The Tribune's Getting Around columnist Jon Hilkevitch also wrote about this project in July.

Chicago-L.org writes this about high-cost project:

"This is more than twice as much as city officials estimated for the project in 2005, making the Grand project the second costliest after Chicago/State ($33.8 million, 2001) and Jackson/Dearborn ($29.4 million, 2007).

"According to CDOT, what makes the Grand/State project more challenging, expensive and time-consuming is that the buildings on all four corners of the intersection leave no on-scene staging area for construction crews. This means that the contractor will have to bring equipment in and out each day and use small pickup trucks to shuttle in materials and remove debris.

"Although CDOT had estimated the work at $29 million in 2005, they decided that starting over by repackaging the project and seeking new bids would have caused further delays and pushed the final tab higher due to the escalating costs of materials. To help pay for the project, CDOT is borrowing money already earmarked for other transit projects, including $30 million in mostly federal funds set aside to renovate the Clark/Division Red Line station in 2010."

The project will take about two years to complete. The station will remain open during construction.

CTA waives fares for marathoners

After record heat forced organizers to cut the Chicago Marathon short, the CTA decided to waive fares on trains and buses for runners with their marathon ID.

Very nice gesture.

And as usual, the CTA provided cooling buses at staging areas for overheated runners.

Work crews keeping very busy; Brown Line Chicago entrance moved

Those CTA work crews are keeping very busy. Read all the details here about:

Blue Line slow zone single tracking. Northbound Red Line going over the top. Red Line reroute at Belmont. And other stuff.

Also, the CTA is opening a new temporary station Oct. 15 on the Chicago Avenue Brown Line Station at Superior Street.

And lots of CTA bus reroutes due to the Chicago marathon.

Personal prerogative: Good luck to Karen in the marathon -- and any other reader going 26.2 miles without the benefit of a CTA vehicle.

Boston transit review: Gotta love that "Customer Bill of Rights"

Here's a guest post from Bluebummer, aka Justin. Part 1 of 3. (Thanks Justin!)

Boston is a wonderful world class city with a world class mass transit system called the “T.” While visiting Boston in mid-September I was thrilled to have the opportunity to witness this system first hand. I rode it several times daily during many different times of the day, weekend and weekday, rush and non-rush. But no matter when you got on the system there was always a comfortable amount of room, whether standing or sitting, on each car we rode.

We arrived on Sunday morning when the Blue Line -- the line to the airport from downtown -- was closed for repairs. There were several MBTA officials at every stop along the way informing us that because of the closed line the system was free to ride until the line was back up and running later that afternoon.

They had a shuttle bus running to hit all of the stops on the Blue line. We arrived by bus at Government Center to transfer to our Green Line E train to head to our hostel, and that ride was also free! (Makes you wonder bout their funding formula!) This was a great start to a love affair between Boston mass transit and me.

In Boston on every bus, train and train station we saw signs explaining this wonderful thing called a "Customer Bill of Rights." One of the first things on it reads “Your right to on-time service. If your commute is delayed by more than 30 minutes your ride is on us, we guarantee it.”

At another spot on this Bill of Rights, it reads: “Your right to be notified of significant service delays. If your bus, subway, or commuter rail train is more than 15 minutes late, updated service information will be made available at the following locations.” The sign then lists their Web site, the smart traveler phone number, their PA system and on all of their info boards on platforms.

-- To Be Continued --

Politely ignoring him

Two ladies board the northbound Red Line at Belmont. A 50-ish seated gentleman gets up to offer his seat. The first woman -- also around 50 -- politely declines. The second woman -- about 40 years old -  accepts the kind offer.

The first woman who declined is very nice, actually touching the man on his arm and noting the "not many men give up their seats for ladies anymore."

The guy then launches into a long soliloquy about housing opportunities in Uptown, and how he missed his chance at snatching up a house awhile back, and he could have made a lot of money by now, and there are very few opportunities like that around anymore, and he's getting older and he wouldn't be able to do it now anyway, and yackety yak yak yak.

And it is a soliloquy because the woman doesn't say a word. She just politely nods, looking down, looking away, and nodding some more, and still politely nods all along throughout the yackety yak without replying or engaging him.

It's obvious she is sending him non-verbal signals that she's uninterested in his life story. But she's just too polite to tell him so or put him off.

And besides, she knows Wilson isn't too far away.

At Wilson she gets off the train as soon as she could, waving him off: "Bye! This is my stop."

Red Line subway weeknight closures; smart-card passback update

In the continuing effort to eliminate slow zones between Grand and Clark-Division on the Red Line by year's end, the CTA has separate closures in the subway for southbound and northbound riders this week from 9 pm till 5 am.

Tuesday and Wednesday nights, southbound Red Line trains will travel "over the top" on elevated tracks around the Loop. On Thursday and Friday nights, northbound train go "over the top."

Read the CTA press release for details. And Motormen/women: Don't forget to announce the changes.

Clarification on Chicago Card Plus passback rules. Last week I wrote about "passback headaches" for Chicago Card Plus users. It turns out that everything I wrote is true, except if you use the Transit Benefit, you must voluntarily give the CTA your credit card number at signup to cover the passbacks so your card won't convert to pay-per-use upon passback.

If you use the Transit Benefit at work and have not singed up to have your card covered by a credit card, here's what you do, says the CTA:

"There is a section on the TB/CCP employee application -- "credit card backup - optional" -- where customers can provide the  required CC information and authorize CTA to deduct additional fares from that card.  The form is also available on the CCP website under "employee enrollment form."  Employees fill out the form, sign it, and submit it to their HR admin or TBA.  If CTA gets the info from the employer before the close of the update window (the 15th of the month), then the customer should not have a problem the next month.  The next update window (for November) is October 5-15."

So, if you have the Chicago Card Plus under the Transit Benefit for a 30-day pass, do the above to keep the pass in effect when you use the passback feature for friends and relatives. Cool. Thank you.

Still this doesn't explain the strange stuff that has been happening to Cheryl and her Chicago Card Plus.

October dawns as clutch month for CTA's funding future

I just barely mentioned the transit funding mess last week in a potpourri post on Tuesday. This week may prove to be different, as the calendar page turnes to October. The Illinois House meets on Monday and the Senate on Tuesday for the veto session.

In the House, Majority Leader Michael Madigan promised hearings on the Senate-passed capital funding bill that expands gambling across the state and calls for a land-casino in Chicago, and yet barely covers the CTA's needs.

Senate Leader Emil Jones said his chamber would take another look at the Senate Bill 572, which would impose a quarter-of-one-percent hike in the sales tax and higher Chicago real estate transfer taxes.

And it should. As a Tribune editorial writer put it: "The transit bill now on the table would raise $435 million in new funding each year, mostly through increased sales taxes. But it also would save millions through reforms. [Emphasis mine.] The CTA's unions would make higher pension contributions and accept lower benefits. The offer is contingent on increased funding for transit before Jan. 1. The CTA says failure to take the unions up on their offer is costing $11.9 million a month."