Cable fire creates a Saturday night mess for Loop El trains
It was bad enough that four train lines had to share less than half the El tracks in the Loop this weekend due to Red line slow zone work and work on the east of the elevated structure.
But to make matters worse, service in the Loop was shut down for about seven hours overnight Saturday into Sunday morning due to a cable fire close to the El tracks.
Once again, passengers complained about the lack of communication from the CTA. I think the CTA dodged a bullet since this happened at just about the slowest time.
Read xica's account of the confusion over at LiveJournal.
Yikes. I'm glad I didn't try riding at night. It's worth noting that my attempt to ride earlier in the day was thwarted too. We boarded a brown line at Library on the wrong side, but we were prepared for that. What we weren't prepared for was stopping at La Salle and Van Buren and waiting and waiting and waiting. After about 15 minutes of waiting, we talked to the conductor who told us something about a drawbridge and a red line having to turn around. So we gave up and took the 36 bus to our north side destination. It took approximately forever.
Posted by: fj | May 11, 2008 at 07:32 PM
It's deja vu all over again. I like xica's account of kindly employees having no information and how the Red Line shuttle bus got lost. It pairs well with the photo of the lost Blue Line shuttle blocking Bryn Mawr. Are the Marx Brothers running the CTA?
Posted by: Martha | May 11, 2008 at 07:38 PM
Not the Marx brothers, the 3 stooges..
Now they are really in it though, according to the red eye, they've done something that is almost seemingly impossible, get both the cubs and fox fans to agree on something....that the CTA can't even do a good job getting either team to the ballpark.
For the life of me, I don't know why they haven't enlarged the platform so that purple lines could stop at the Addison Red Line station without using the red line tracks.
It would also be nice to have another option there during inbound rush hours.
KevinB
Posted by: KevinB | May 13, 2008 at 10:34 AM
err, I meant sox, not fox fans...
KevinB
Posted by: KevinB | May 13, 2008 at 10:57 AM
ya i was on the red line at about 1215a that night, stranded in the air over some street for a half hour. it sucked until ppl started breaking out the booze, cigs and weed. then it was a party!
Posted by: drugdog | May 13, 2008 at 01:50 PM