CTA Tattler

What a kick in the nuts that was. After reading about Huberman's speech, I was actually optimistic about the CTA's future for a few hours.

Then reality came crashing down like a Kennedy's plane. This city, this state, and this country will not fund public transportation unless some serious changes are made. And those changes aren't coming anytime soon.

Why comment about those other things?

Its not like they are going to be addressed in other than a lip service manner.

My southbound redline morning rush hour service is horrible now and it's going to be even more horrible starting March 30...and the things that they could do (like using the NB track) to alleviate that problem won't even be considered or dismissed out of hand.

4 out of 5 days this week, between 8:20 and 9:50 trains were not running every 4 minutes, the trains that did get there were mostly full and couldn't handle any more passengers by the time they did get to Addison and to top it all off the phantom stops and slowdowns and the chatty train operators, etc etc etc.

Not to mention the newest twist this morning, stopping just North of the belmont stop to let a CTA worker off so he could go to the tower....during rush time no less. I get more and more annoyed at the lack of concern and attention to these type of things.

I'll bet if would be very instructive for Ron to be at the addison station with a watch and note how often the trains stop there and how many of them are full by the time they get there cause they can't keep in schedule.

How about it Ron?

Kevin

There is a silver lining that is looking more and more promising to jolt this country if it wants to or not into more money and consideration for mass transit....oil just went over $106 a barrel and will continue to climb as we head into summer. For those of you that think its going to go down, think again. Just do a quick Google search about exploding car ownership rates in China. Their demand for gas will soon become number one, not us. Like it or not, its the beginning of the end of focusing 99% of our money and attention on cars as the only viable mode of tranportation.

oops, that should have been 8:20 and 8:50 not 9:50.

Kevin B, I have been emailing the CTA multiple times for MONTHS about the Southbound Red Line interval problems between the times you mentioned and I have yet to get a response. Its been going on for a good 6 months now. I get on at Berwyn, so I'm lucky I can board a train. However, for the previous 3 years I could almost guarantee I could get a seat in the morning, but now its rare. The train is now full by Wilson and packed after Sheridan. I'd say 4 out of 5 mornings the interval between most Red line trains is about 7-8 minutes, not the 3-4 they advertise on the schedules. This is a big problem and it will become a HUGE problem once the morning Southbound 3-tracking goes into affect March 30th. The CTA even has data in the board meeting Powerpoint presentations showing how much more crowded the morning rush hour trains are compared to evening rush hour. Unless numbers lie, the Southbound 3-tracking is going to be a lot more painful than the Northbound one has been.

I was also on the train this morning that stopped at Clark Tower to let a worker out. That pissed me off too. How hard would it be for that worker to get off the train at Addison or Belmont and walk the 2 blocks to the tower? There is an entrance to it at street level! A minute here to let off a worker, extra 20-30 seconds stopped a a few stations to chat with a platform worker, it all adds up. This type of tardiness and delays can certainly cause trains to bunch up, especially on a line as long as the Red line.

Ron is supposedly targeting bus bunching, but how about also addressing the very real train bunching as well? There should be zero tolerance for unnecessary delays or operators that insist upon opening/closing doors 10 times at every single stop. The doors almost NEVER reopen in cities like Paris or London! If you miss the train, so sorry too bad, there are hundreds of people being delayed aboard not just that train but other ones behind it!! The operators need MAJOR retraining that it is completely unacceptable to reopen the doors for someone that just ran down the stairs to the platform. Some people have even come to expect it, yelling down the stairs to "HOLD THE TRAIN!!" Its always a pleasure to be on a train with an efficient operator, I swear it cuts my commute by at least 3-4 minutes, which does add up over the course of many rides.

Ed: Leave early, leave late, alternate.

"There should be zero tolerance for unnecessary delays or operators that insist upon opening/closing doors 10 times at every single stop."

Oh, Please! It is extraordinarally counterproductive to hugely exagerate something when you are complaining. It just makes you look increadibly foolish and gives the impression that you are someone who likes to complain just for the sake of compaining. I highly doubt that you have ever been on a train where the operator unneccessarally opened and closed the doors more than two times at a single stop, let alone "10 times at every single stop". I don't believe I have ever been on a train during rush hour where it was looked as if the operator opened the doors to let passengers on after they had already been closed. So my experience certainly is not the same as even one tenth of what you are describing. Perhaps you are confused because you are noticing the doors opening as a result of a PASSENGER in another car holding the doors. In case you cannnot figure out, when a door gets stuck, as a result of a passenger holding it or something else, all the doors must be opened again before it can close. I would assume you would know that if you are a regular rider. So I don't know why you would assume it is the operator's fault if the doors open after they are closed. The only way you would know that it is would be if you are off the train watching the whole platform, in which case you probably would not be complaining since it likely wouldn't affect you. And, of course, you are also exaggerating when you say that the intervals between red line trains at rush hour is usually seven to ten minutes. It does no good to exaggerate like that.

MK is a loser

MK and I don't always agree, but he's 100% right on this one.

The doors, for safety reasons, are not like guiliteens. If they meet resistance, like a passenger in the door (or holding the door), it stops closing. And in order for it to be closed again, it has to be reset (by opening it).

When there were conductors, the doors could be divided into two zones: Those in cars ahead of the conductor, and those in cars behind the conductor. But with a single TO at the front of the train, the only way the door can be reset is to open them all again.

Maybe on a future generation of cars, that can be fixed. But there's no easy way to change the way they work.

Perhaps instead of worrying about people who eat candy bars on the trains, we should be worried about people who hold the door in some misguided attempt at politeness.

I'd bet that 80%+ of the time, the person holding the door thinks they're doing someone a favor, and they just don't have the logic skills to figure out how that affects the rest of the people on the train, or the trains following. (Or they under-estimate the affect.) The rest are probably trying to prevent their party from being broken-up. I doubt that anyone is purposely sabotaging the train.

But you can't blame the TO for this. It's laughable to think that they'd even care about that one last straggler when they're trying to get to the next terminal as soon as they can. The faster they can get there, the nicer break they can have before heading back the other way.

He's also right about obvious exagerations decreasing your credibilty. If you want people to take A, B and C seriously, buy you are obviously exagerating D, people will assume that you did to A, B and C what you did to D.

A lot of you newer people have never lived here when the city has been really short of money - it's been starting to show lately, the economic slowdown, in how tidy and well the public transpo is running.

A week ago the Tribune "free paper" had comments by all these people who were outraged and disgusted by homeless people sleeping on the trains and other assorted things that only a yuppie who thought he was in Wheaton would complain about. It made me sick. These are not real Chicagoans, and I hope they leave soon. It makes me wonder how all of you are going to act when the rats come back to the Red Line. They are down on the far south part of the line, but have been gone in the Loop proper since Da Mayor decided to market the city to monied retirees and yups in the financial markets, pushing everyone else out. I'm sure Da Mayor is worried about departing dollars, and will do his best to keep those flowers blooming on Michigan Ave. But don't worry; if you can survive the lean times loop realtors will allow small vendors in cheaply to keep the tax dollars coming in. When the larger dollar investors come back, we just throw the small asset vendors out on their asses, just like the last cycle. The beast must be fed!