CTA Tattler

This really is fantastic news.

I just moved to Chicago (i.e., Rogers Park) from Dallas in December. I've had to deal with all the transit issues that affect those of us living so far north - the slow zones, construction, etc.

But I have to say, I think things are moving along pretty well. I've noticed a lot of improvement in the slow zone department, especially north through the State Street subway and both directions between Wilson and Sheridan (on the Red Line).

On the whole, it's apparent that the CTA had fallen dreadfully behind the times, but it seems to this new resident's eyes that the agency is making good strides. Of course, almost every Red Line stop from Sheridan north needs to be completely rebuilt, but at least the ride's getting noticeably quicker.

The cynic in me has to wonder where all this "extra" money came from. Don't get me wrong, I want this 3 track crap to be over as soon as possible, but with Ron pleading "poverty" it sorta makes you wonder, especially when other alternatives would have made the regular schedule palatable (i.e. using the NB red line side for morning rush hours).

KevinB

There's capital money left over from other projects that can only be used for very specific things. That may be where it came from or maybe RonH has been applying for credit cards in KevinB's name. I'm sorry to hear it was in the works for a while. When I first heard the announcement yesterday I wanted to think is was a make-up gift for the Blue Line BS.

If I could get 1.6 million in credit cards, I'd be in a non-extradition country on a beach by now.

I'd think that there would be much more deserving projects that the money could be used for when the solution to the SB 3 track delays is just a couple switches and a few signs away...

KevinB

More importantly, now get the slow zones from Howard to Belmont eliminated. There's one between Loyola & Granville that's unbelievably awful!
At least the descent down the incline at the subway portal isn't done at 10MPH anymore. Back in the 60s, the trains went down there at 60MPH!

As to how they can afford it, maybe this line appeared only in the web page as displayed on *my* computer, but didn't he say "it will reduce our operating costs since we are currently providing supplemental bus service and have additional staff deployed to the corridor to support three-track operation"?

I'm encouraged that there appears to be an increased use of logic at the CTA in deciding what to do and when to do it.

But that also gets back to my original thought....if you can afford to have those people "assigned to the corridor to support three track operation", then just what in the heck were they doing for work before? Were they hired just to support the 3 track operation and an additional expense? Not a very smart way to spend money...they could have just bought cardboard cutouts of the additional people and had the same effect IMHO, ala Mel Brooks "Blazing Saddles"

KevinB

So here's what I want know: if KevinB gets the 1.6 mil on credit cards and runs off to the beach, what will he have to complain about since there probably won't be transit? Too much sand? Sun rising in the east and setting in the west? Pina coladas not arriving at the prescribed time?

I'd probably have nothing to complain about. I'd leave all of you to the gentle, compassionate, sterling touch of RonH.

Or, perhaps I might start complaining about global warming or polar bears or landmines or Darfur.

Of course, I'd probably only be complaining about the length of time it took my many servants to refresh my drink with the unbrella in it...

KevinB

What were those people doing? I think you're underestimating how big the CTA is as an organization. The CTA isn't the kind of organization you want running on "bare bones" staffing, you'll regret it when something goes wrong.

For example, due to construction on the subway, construction on the east side of the loop, and a midnight fire near the tracks on Van Buren, the redline was unable to travel north or south of downtown. And though I was stuck on the el for about an hour waiting to get to merchandise mart, when I got there, there were 4 buses already running shuttles between all the redline stops. Thats the sort of situation when you need extra people ready to be deployed.

So Kevin B. Please indulge us with what you think would be more productive for the cta to spend the extra cash on..

Also, I have a feeling the staff put on at the 3 tracking is extra. Meaning people that need or can work more hours. You take them away and you have some extra cash. Its pretty simple.

I waited on the Loyola platform this morning at 6 am. They finally made an anouncement at 6:15, and 5 minutes later, a northbound picked us all up, took us to Howard so we could get on the southbound, which ran on the outer track till the disabled train was moved. Half an hour late to work, but the boss understood. I have to say I was pretty pleased that what could have turned into a nightmare was solved with a little patience. Good Job, CTA!!!!

Did they accelerate three-track and drop the work on the Red Line? For a week, they have been posting alerts in the stations and on their website that the Redline was going to reroute on the Brown Line/elevated tracks from Fullerton to Cermak. So after I left Loyola library tonight (and after checking the CTA web site again), I walked from Chicago Red to Chicago Brown to catch the Red Line. Except after I got on the platform and waited for a while, I found out that the Red Line WAS running in the subway - even though the web site said it was running on the "EL" tracks. Even now, halfway down on the Red Line Alert, it says:

>>>>>

Did someone forget to tell the train drivers which route to take?

I'm interested to see they think they'll pay for it partly by $1 million in additional fares from riders brought back by faster, less crowded service. That's an additional about 6,500 rides/day (counting Sat./Sun. as equal to one weekday, which isn't quite accurate, but good enough for non-government work.)

I also want to use this post to ask about the performance metrics. I'm disappointed to see bus-bunching as a metric instead of bus-lagging. Bunching is a symptom, but the problem is the service gap in front of the bunched buses. If you use "buses within 1 minute of each other" as your performance metric, if you've got a big gap and then two bunched buses, the manager can evade accountability by slowing the second bus down, which does NOTHING to help the people who are waiting for and then crammed into the first bus.

Running within 1 minute of each other is a godsend in this setting -- the follower passes the leader and then picks up some of the load, and both can finish at least close to the time the follower was supposed to finish. If you slow the follower down, cascading disaster ensues, as the leader gets slower and slower. Soon, you'll have 4 bunched buses, but all will be driving just slowly enough to never get within 1 minute of the one in front of it, and the performance metrics will look GREAT!!!

Please redefine the performance metric to treat the GAP as the problem, not the bunch!!! "Buses more than 8 minutes later than the normal interval since the previous bus" is a good performance metric. Bunched buses is not.

Or maybe they've put bus bunching as the public metric, while privately using the gap as the real metric. If that's so, maybe someone could tell us.

And that's it. I'll never write about bus bunching again. I think part of the problem is that the public settled on a name for the concept -- bunching -- and so a PR-driven Daley administration responds to that definition of the problem, instead of the real problem. From here on out, I'm referring to Bus Lag.

About that $1 million in new fares, if the 6,500 people from buses switch to the Red line, isn't that equivalent to no new revenue? It would have to be 6,500 people(non-military, non-senior citizen) switching from Metra, taxis, cars, bicycles, and walking, to the Red line. Mind you, if gas is at $5/gallon or higher at Christmas, the additional revenues could be there, as well as the need for four tracks, and no slow zones. Should be interesting...

Also, when I read that "buses within 1 minute of each other" metric, I thought, "They Must mean within 1 minute of schedule or something else Other than how it reads". This metric makes no sense at all. I might agree with Ryan's assessment, IF the metric really means that, but this one is confusing and/or not what it means at face value.

well, I'd think there would be a list:

1. Put exit turnstiles at the sedgwick station to replace the flower bed grating.

2. Finish up the block 37 stuff as soon as possible and re-open the washington street red line station and connection with the blue line.

3. Any of the post-holocaust looking stations along the red line.

4. proper drainage on the red line underground stations. north/clybourn, clark/division, et al.

5. Improve communications.

I mean, good lord, do I really have to spell out a list of where you could spend money on concrete (pun intended) projects that you'd be spending on unnecessary labor costs otherwise. I mean, "we're saving money cause we aren't spending it on peoples salaries to stand around and look like they are doing something" doesn't sound like much of a rationale to me, but then, hey, I'm just the voice of fiscal responsibility for a guy who has been described in the press as "spending money like a drunken sailor".

KevinB

This is good news, but as someone who uses the red and brown lines daily, I am not sure that three-tracking is so bad that it's worth spending upwards of $1M to speed it up by six months. (And that $1M net figure seems to depend on increased ridership -- presumably from people who have gotten used to getting to work by some means other than the CTA, since the folks who would just be shifting back to trains from buses aren't going to be a revenue gain.)

Although I don't use the blue line much, I was on it the other day to get to O'Hare. DEAR GOD IT IS SLOW! It is embarrassing that the first experience many visitors will have upon landing in Chicago is a train ride that takes almost 25 minutes to travel four stops.

I know they're planning to eliminate the blue line slow zones by the end of the year, but still -- seems to me that that's the project that needed to be sped up. Three tracking isn't that bad.

They are working on the O'Hare branch, hence the almost weekly shutdown of segments of the line. I think the sheer amount of trackage that need to be rebuilt is the limiting factor and that it would cost substantially more to accelerate.

Ending 3-tracking on the Northside Main as soon as possible should be a priority and the cost is relatively minimal. Restoring the lost capacity at a time when fuel prices seem to know no limits and ridership is clearly on the rise is the prudent choice IMO.

I think there's a mis-understanding about where this $1.6 million is coming from. According to the Sun-Times article (I think is was the S-T, I may be mistaken, whatev), the money isn't going to come from increased ridership. It is money that already they have for the Brown Line reconstruction that they are going to save by finishing the project early: not having to pay as many labor costs and not having to run extra buses during those extra six months, etc.

Just checked again: I was wrong. In the article (it was the Tribune), Huberman says that about $800k will be saved by finishing early, not the whole $1.6 million. The article DOES say that they expect increased ridership. Strange. Now, I've heard that a sizeable number of people are taking the CTA more often, if not every day, thanks to the rising price of gasoline. Maybe the CTA's ridership projections expect that trend to continue and increase? We can only speculate - but anyway a matter of $1 million is sort of a drop in the bucket compared to the whole cost of the Brown Line project. If the increased ridership doesn't happen, I'm sure they'll just cut a corner and install less fancy trash cans and benches at all the new stations or something like that.

...or even smaller canopies. They could skip the canopies altogether and simply let people share a couple of umbrellas tethered to a post.

k makes a good point about capturing a new market of passengers fleeing fuel costs.

At 6,500 rides per day * $1.75 per ride, an additional 6,500 rides per day would generate $1,000,000 in fare collection in about 90 days. The article doesn't say over what period of time they expect the projected ridership gains to help recover $1,000,000, but I assume it's more than 90 days.

...Provided, of course, that that ridership increase materializes at all.

And technically, if those extra 6500 rides happen on the L, they would be $2.00 per ride, in which case the extra $1 million would be netted in slightly less than 77 days, provided, of course, that those extra 6500 rides take place on Saturdays and Sundays in addition to the regular work week. But that would be a really smarty-pants thing of me to say, wouldn't it? :D

Oh, KevinB, you’ve got me treading perilously close to defending RonH, which I said I’d never do again after he broke my heart on April 15. The $$ are from the feds and they don’t like it so much when money is used for purposes other than what was stated in the proposals to get the money. They tend to send people like Patrick Fitzgerald around to look into things and then people seem to go to jail after that and RonH is too pretty to go to jail. I think he would know better than to misappropriate funds to work on your preferred projects. As for that drunken sailor comment that Sneed “quoted,” RonH himself made that comment during the City Club presentation as he quoted his budget director, so I’m a little suspect of Sneed’s source “deep in City Hall” on that one.

Its capital money and you can get away with alot....and besides you can always re-allocate the money you were spending on your own on the project....the feds never quite pay for everything....and the sedgwick station is one of the "brown line reconstruction" projects...

KevinB