CTA Tattler

I think we should have access to pretty much all the information and I'm surprised with Huberman that this information isn't being updated.

Anyone know why the CTA has posted two CTA workers (one on each side) up top at the Diversey stop, they do NOTHING but stand there and watch the trains, they dont talk, they dont smile, they just watch the trains and people, what is the point of this pointlessness?

The Chi Town Daily News filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the performance data and was denied. That doesn't look good no matter what the motivation for denying the request. It's especially important that CTA be as transparent as possible because there have been serious and substantiated charges of mismanagement in the past and there is now new leadership promising change and greater response to customer concerns. RonH needs to remember he's no longer the Chief Obfuscation Officer in the Office of Smoke and Mirrors at City Hall. I can understand waiting to make sure the finished product contains accurate and useful metrics, but this could also be interpreted as a stall tactic. A group of data that at least approximates what used to be available should be released sooner rather than later to keep the cynical from thinking the worst.

Nate,
Just hazarding a guess, might be wrong, but if there is ongoing construction next to a live railroad, a worker needs to be positioned to warn workers when a train is coming. Sorta like the dudes who just stand there on road construction projects with the reversible stop signs...it's an overpaid union job, but someone's gotta do it.

A few weeks ago there was a large sign on a sandwich board on the NB platform at Diversey that posed the question, "Why are so many CTA employees standing around?" Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to read the answer before the train pulled out of the station, but I would have loved to see the reasoning. I haven't seen the sign since that night. Maybe someone took it home as a souvenir.

The honeymoon is over.

It won't be long now until people won't be able to tell the difference between Ron and Frank. And everyone will be ready for some new guy who'll tell us what we want to hear, and deliver nothing more than a facade of competence again.

The information isn't available because it would do nothing but prove that someone with no transit experience, but plenty of political flack experience really can't run a transit system. (Whoa! What a big surprise there!)

And as politicians go, I think Frank would have done a better job on securing funding pre-Doomsday, too.

Am I saying Frank was the greatest? Far from it. But he knew how to do the job better than Ron.

So how will we be picking Ron's successor? Will pretty-boy looks, and a loyalty to Daley count more than experience? Will people ennamored by good looks once again make the arguement that there is no such thing as experience because no place else is like Chicago? Will people be pleading for others to give the pretty-boy a chance?

Or can we get someone who knows what he's doing in to the post fast enough?

Considering history, I'm expecting another pretty-boy will soon be waiting in the wings.

Yeah, the honeymoon's over, but what relationship continues at that torrid new love pace? Usually it deepens into something more realistic and meaningful. Let's give the current pretty boy another chance before we go find another. Not only is he pretty, but I would like to think his heart's in the right place. After all, he not only got an MBA at the U of C, he also went through the rigorous Social Service Admin program at the same time. Nobody does that just for kicks. Despite his obvious intelligence, he's in over his head. Who wouldn't be? The CTA verges on being unmanageable due to Daley's omnipotent overlord status and the agency's being at the mercy of the dysfunctional General Assembly.

Beginning today, performance reports for the previous month will be available on the CTA web site (www.transitchicago.com). Reports will measure CTA’s performance in its six core areas of service and across more than 25 categories, including:

* Ridership: rail and bus ridership – monthly, year-to-date and percentage change over prior year.
* On-Time: percentage of slow zones; percentage of bus bunching intervals; number of rail delays of 10-minutes or more.
* Efficient: miles between reported rail and bus vehicle defects; average daily percentage of bus unavailability.
* Safe: major and non-major security related incidents per 100,000 miles for bus and rail.
* Clean: average days between completed bus and rail detail-cleans; percentage of uptime for bus and rail washers.
* Courteous: percentage of elevator and escalator up-time; CTA customer service hotline average wait-time.

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It's almost 1:00pm, has anyone seen these reports that are "beginning today". I'll give them until midnight before calling this a customer mis-communication.

Oh good, here they are:

http://tinyurl.com/4pz46f

Also, the May 2008 Board Presentations are here:

http://tinyurl.com/5dgu35