CTA Tattler

exactly my case, too, Bob!

Shopping on foot has an added benefit of saving money. I always have to factor in whether I really want to carry something home and that leads me to consider whether or not I really need it. Gone are the days of driving to Target to buy paper goods or cleaing supplies because they're supposed to be cheaper and then leaving with $50 of extraneous crap.

I should say, that was one one of my qualifications when I was looking for an apartment. I had to be within 4 city blocks (or 4 hundreds) of a large grocery store--Jewel, Dominick's, Butera for example--so I could walk.
(I also wanted to be close to a church, library, and at least one decent bus line that ran past 9pm and on weekends)

If you all prefer to do your shopping that way, knock yourself out. It's very easy to say what others should do, but be careful about assuming the collective right to dictate to them, when you don't really know their circumstances or priorities. Just remember, it was your choice based on factors that are important to you. Nobody made you do it. Do not seek to take away from others the same rights you expect for yourself, or one day you will wake up to find that the collective is now telling you how to live.

Well, part of the choice is made when you choose where to live. If you choose to live in Hoffman Estates, it doesn't matter if you like to walk to the grocery store every couple of days. It's probably not very practical. If you choose to live in the city, four blocks from a grocery store, but your nearest parking space is two blocks away, it's just plain silly to choose to shop the same way as you would if you lived in the suburbs.

But if the nearest grocery store is on the other side of a street so filled with commuters that they've trimmed the walk signal so only sprinters can get across the street, you've got a problem.

Combining the pedestrian unfriendly road conditions with the density of an urban neighborhood leads to trouble for the neighborhood. People who can afford to move will either move somewhere they can park their car more conviniently, and take-up the suburban lifestyle, or they'll move to a neighborhood where streets are vibrant parts of the community rather than barriers.

When the appeal of a neighborhood is only that it's a shorter drive downtown that neighborhood is on it's way to becoming a slum -- which, of course, leads to more vacant lots that can be converted to parking lots. But eventually, if there isn't something more to a neighborhood, people who can afford to leave will leave.

City streets need to be more than just a quick route through places to get out of the city. It doesn't matter if it's SOV's or BRT, if most of the traffic is going "through" instead of "to", it's bad for the neighborhood.

Heh. Coming from the woman who told me if I didn't like my bus being stuck in traffic on Lake Shore Drive, I could "get off the bus and walk." Let's watch your credibility plummet past zero, C C.

(And everyone who's discussed congestion pricing in this thread, especially all the NIMBYs in Edgewater, are doing nothing more or less than trying to tell others how to live.)

No, Bob S, I said I *could* give you a pat "solution" to your problem, but wasn't going to, because that's not my way. In other words, I recognize that the problem is real, and I agree the CTA should be expected to hold up their end of the bargain, rather than telling you to compensate in order to let them off the hook.

I think there's a big difference between expressing the opinion that people who drive when they could walk are "silly" (perhaps they are, many seem to think so) and trying to outlaw cars. I also think there's a big difference between trying to outlaw cars and congestion pricing for road use and parking, which, as I think I have already stated, is part of getting the prices people pay back to where they more or less reflect supply and demand. Then the market, operating through people's individual choices, will correct overuse, and you may find that many things you view as "silly" or "unnecessary" will in fact decrease because the rest of us are not made to subsidize them--either through taxes or by bearing undue disruption and danger in our neighborhoods. Yet the people who feel they really need them on occasion, can do so, if they're willing to pay their way.

CC:

It's not a matter of "dictating" to people that they can't drive their cars four blocks to the supermarket. The question is whether to build roads and parking systems that promote healthy, walkable neighborhoods or whether to build ones that promote driving everywhere, to the detriment of neighborhoods and the environment.

The rights talk is just out of place; there's no "right" to have any particular configuration of roads connecting your house to the supermarket. Roads have always been designed with some notion of the public good in mind. It's one thing to say that the public good is better served by having big roads and lots of cars in otherwise compact neighborhoods (an idea many on here would apparently disagree with), but the idea that someone's *rights* are violated by the absence of big roads or cheap parking or whatever is weird.

And on the collective "dictating" front, let's be real for a minute. The roads aren't part of some kind of free market; they're a taxpayer-financed public utility. Also, um... we're talking about traffic. The "collective" "dictates" all kinds of things to drivers -- speed limits, which side of the road you can drive on, when you can and can't proceed through an intersection, and whether and where you can park (and for how much). These things have never been decided by the "market" and it's fair to say it would be chaos if they were.

Beans, I'm actually *not* arguing for more and more roads. I agree, nobody has a "right" to free parking or a road all to themselves, at everyone else's expense.

The reason routes like Lake Shore Drive are clogged at rush hour is because they're available "free" to users who will disproportionately benefit from them, while those of us who choose not to hog the road must pay to repair their wear and tear and by having our bus commute slowed to a crawl. Naturally they get overused (like too many sheep overgrazing the public green) to the point where they do nobody any good. In other words, there's a scarcity of a resource here and it has to be allocated in such a way that it's not ruined and yet is available to anyone.

Pricing does this in the marketplace, just as high gas prices make everyone think twice about whether they want to take the trip, and so conserve fuel. Yes, the public road system has to be somewhat of an exception to the competitive/free marketplace--and I say "somewhat" because while we can't have completely duplicative road systems, there's still usually more than one way to get from here to there, so people do have a choice.

What I'm arguing is that congestion pricing would utilize a market mechanism to accomplish fair allocation of resources in a way that leaves everyone a choice. Setting things up so that more costs are borne by those who receive the benefit of traveling highly valued, overused travel routes in a single-occupant vehicle would do this. A modest toll charge would cause people to consider whether they really need to drive LSD, which means that for some percentage of people--not everyone, but enough--that weekly cost will be the tipping point prompting them to pick another route or take public transportation to save money. Thus, traffic will be less clogged--yet the route will be available (for a price) to anyone who wants to use it that badly. Less chaos, more freedom!

Here's the rub:

>that weekly cost will be the tipping point prompting them to **pick another route** or take public transportation.

The problem is that it's difficult to price JUST ONE of the routes at a supposed market rate, while leaving the others alone, without promoting even worse distortions. Put a toll on LSD, and while you'll see fewer drivers and faster buses on the drive, you'll also see Clark St. and Halsted become war zones.

I'm not opposed to the idea entirely, but there is a devil you're not acknowleding. When the overwhelming destination is downtown, a parking tax downtown is probably a less distorting device to put the burden of cost on those who benefit.

". A modest toll charge would cause people to consider whether they really need to drive LSD, which means that for some percentage of people--not everyone, but enough--that weekly cost will be the tipping point prompting them to pick another route or take public transportation to save money."

Or, more likely, they'll decide that they'll just go somewhere else other than where they were going, which means that the area's economy will be put into a tailspin. You know, not everyone who takes Lake Shore Drive is going to and from someplace that is efficiant by public transportation. In fact, I think if you observe the drive you will see that the majority of people pass through the downtown area. They often go from point to point that is not easy to do via public transportation, such as between Lincoln Park and Hyde Park. In fact, that is the major thing that is wrong with this entire congestion relief thing. It seems to be based on the assumption that the people who don't use public transportation are not doing so because of issues of speed and cost. When this is applied to downtown Chicago (especially during peak hours which is what they seem to be focusing on) it is not only a flawed assumption, but really a silly one. The last I checked, the overwhelming majority of people who commute downtown during peak hours do not drive. It already is much more expensive to do so and usually takes longer. There are some exceptions. Some people commute from suburbs where public transportation is not at all convenient. Other people absolutely need their car at work for any number of reasons. They may need to use it for a business or other trip from their office or they may need to bring something that is too heavy to bring on public transportation. I think the overwhelming majority of people who commute by car downtown during peak hours fall withing these catagories. So a bus rapid transit system that focuses on downtown workers is not going to attract anybody who would have driven otherwise. It will only attract people from other busses or from trains (and maybe very occasionally from cabs, although this would be a very small number). Maybe it would work if they had so called rapid transit busses that went through congested outying areas that do not currently have good public transportation. But the press coverage of this seems to imply that they are targetting downtown (not that I trust the press, in fact their coverage of this has been as shallow as anything I've seen). And these kiosks being discussed just seem bizarre to me. I cannot for the life of me imagine how that is feasible. Are they going to lock you out of the kiosk until you pay and then once you do you will then be locked inside of it? Then when the bus comes the driver would know that everyone has paid. Or are they going to have a staff member making sure everyone has paid at every kiosk? That would seem like a waste of money to me (but heck, it's federal money so people don't care about that). It seems to me that the people with the kiosk idea came up with it in some ivory tower and do not observe how things work. With the Chicago Card, people can already board at pretty much the same speed as they would if they are not paying. If they are really serious about speed, they could require everyone to only use a Chicago Card and they could put a reader or two in the back (and more than one in the front). That would have exactly the same effect ast the kiosk. But the whole thing seems like it was thought up by some researchers who have no common sense or knowledge about why people choose to drive vs. take public transportation. It was a bizarre idea for New York (where it was originally intended) and it is not much better here. I think it is disgusting that money is being wasted on this when there are many very worthwhile public transportation projects that it could be used for instead.

Come to think of it I do have an idea where a bus rapid transit system may work in the city. They could have a route that serves downtown and then Old Town, west Lakeview, and Ravenswood. After all, the brown line is at capacity so it might be a good idea to provide a good alternative mass transit option. In fact, that would be much cheaper than what the CTA might otherwise need to do, which would be to expand every brown line platform to accomadate longer trains and rebuild every station. Oh wait, the CTA just spent millions of federal dollers to do that. Never mind.

As expensive as the Brown Line upgrade is, I don't think that BRT would have been a better alternative.

The rehab work would still have needed to be done, so the cost of expansion is only the cost above that rehab work.

Compare that to clearing a second coridor for BRT. Whether you use eminent domain to build an off-street busway, or take-over existing parking or traffic lanes, you're cutting a new path through a number of neighborhoods. You're also creating a new trunk route with new connection points that would need a redundant set of feeder routes.

The (lack of) efficiency of having that second rapid transit route to the same neighborhoods is an ongoing cost.

I'll point to the building of rapid transit in the middle of the Ryan (now the Red Line), and what it did to the South Side Rapid Transit line (now the Green Line). In that case the new line has more capacity than the old line did. Building the Ryan killed the neighborhoods it bisected regardless of what transportation modes they stuck in that trench. But by putting a rail line in there, they caused even more changes to the dynamic of the south side neighborhoods.

The original rapid transit line was a barrier that over the years, and many cultural changes, the neighborhoods adapted to. The stations provided anchors for development. (The areas between the stations did, however, take a hit when it was originally built.) But when the new rapid transit line opened, bus service shifted, and comuter paterns shifted, and the areas around the old line's stations became less viable as neighborhood centers.

While a BRT paralleling the Brown Line wouldn't be able to top the attraction of the Brown Line, and it's right-of-way wouldn't be as devistating to the parallel corridor than the Ryan was, you would still see a number of inefficiencies, and it would have effects on the neighborhoods being bisected.

All in all, capacity expansion at the same time as a necessary rehab was a VERY cost effective and efficient way to address the situation. BRT parallel to the Brown Line would NOT have been a good economic move by any measure.

MK,

I think you should give the city a chance to elaborate the kiosk idea.

Your post makes it sound impossible. Given that the payment machine/boarding area style of BRT works in other cities (Mexico City is the one I'm familiar with), you're the one that is an ivory tower theorist, and they're the ones who at least seem to understand how transit works.

On the other hand, it's certainly possible that the city's plan will be different, and fail in some way. We need a lot more info on this.

How do you know it works in Mexico City? Have you been there to see it? If so, how does it work? Do they actually staff each kiosk? Are the kiosks used for just one bus route or several? Are they at rail stations where the equipment and any staff can serve multiple purposes? No, my opinion that a kiosk system would not be desirable in Chicago is not an "ivory tower theory". It simply comes from my observarions of the city's current transit system and my common sense thoughts of how fare kiosks would effect it. I just cannot imagine how this would make sense. It may make sense in other cities. But I just don't see how it does here.

Kevin will probably have this up soon anyway, but the new BRT routes have been announced.

Chicago Ave. from Fairbanks to California;
Halsted from Lake St. to North Ave.;
Jeffrey from 67th to 87th;
79th from Ashland to the Dan Ryan.

It'll be much easier to have an informed discussion now that we know where they're talking about.

One thing I'm curious about:

That's a long stretch of Chicago Ave. -- about 4 miles. The route only goes another 4 miles from California to Austin, unlike on Halsted, where they've included about 1.75 miles of a 10-mile-plus route, and similarly on the other routes chosen.

The 4 miles of Chicago they've included must take in more than two thirds of the trips on the route.

So my question -- will they be turning buses at California to take advantage of the greater density, greater demand for buses, and the bus lane itself? Or will they be sending every bus west?

Actually, I could see demand growing out there if the service was made more reliable by the signal preemption, and speedier by the whole BRT concept.

Will Oak Parkers be enticed to take the bus to stop on the Mag Mile? My cousin once took the Chicago bus from our house in O.P. while spending a 6-week shift working in the Northwestern Medical Center, and while it was quicker than going to the Lake St. el (it wasn't yet Green line), and then transferring downtown, it was not quick by any means. But a 4-mile bus lane should speed this route up immensely!