CTA Tattler

I've been doing my own unofficial metrics on the 22 clark bus.

Like I said, it's unofficial and entirely scientific but according to displays on the buses themselves;

ontime: 2

1-2 min late: 3

3-5 min: 2

5-10: 5

10-15: 7

15-20: 12

For the most part these are non-rush hour runs. Make your own conclusions.

KevinB

Rome wasn't built in a day.

Hey, today there's a new bunch of buses to track! They must be working hard on it; last night, buses were randomly disappearing and reappearing on the Western route displays.

Kevin B,

I'm wondering how you're measuring whether a bus is "late." How do you know the bus you're getting on at 12:22 is the bus that was due at 12:05 or the bus that was due at 12:15? I'm not aware of anything that would allow me on the spot to correlate a particular bus with its schedule.

I'm using the CTA in-bus tracking system. Next time you are in a bus take a look at the overhead display. Just about mid-screen it gives you the status of the route including the run number, stop and other information including if its late, early or on time.

KevinB

I waited for a NB Clark at Devon for 40 minutes Sunday starting about noon.
40 fucking minutes & then three come.
At Lunt, a woman stands in the doorway about to board talking on her cell. She wants the driver to wait till she finishes her call. She says she could have driven instead, he told, why didn't you? She keeps going on & on complaining about him, saying to anyone who could hear that he'll pass her by the next time he sees her waiting, all the way to Jarvis where she gets off.
I heard the driver say that only blacks act like that, to another passenger.
Best part, the driver, woman on cell & the passenger the driver was talking to were all black.

Which LED display are you talking about? The main one alternates the name of the next stop, then the words "Stop Requested," and then the run number, date, and current time. Where does it list whether the bus is on-time?

I think KevinB is talking about the route monitor that is over the driver's head. The poor little 22 gets no love. Last night I overheard two bus operators who had just finished their shifts and were headed back to North Park Garage discussing the next round of route picks. They were both adament that they hated driving the 22 and hoped they wouldn't get it. They mentioned the traffic, the fact that they often get old equipement, but mostly that the passengers tell them the bus is late when the operators know the bus is late and there's nothing they can do about it. "It ain't like it's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was my favorite comment.

That makes sense. I've seen that display before, but have never been close enough to read it.

I can't wait until the #22 Clark is listed on bus tracker. Everything anyone says about that bus being slow and/or never coming is true. Everything. I've waited more than a half-hour for that bus all times of the day and night 7 days a week. It simply never comes, and when it does, you'll spend another half-hour or more riding it to travel two miles. Ugh. I'm sure it's the popularity of the route mixed with the fact that it's (mostly) one lane each way from downtown to the city limits, but a 30/45 minute wait in the middle of the day and bus bunching on the weekends is ridiculous. That's the kind of thing you should expect from the 55th Street bus at 2:00am, not a 24-hour street like Clark.

OMG. Please stop agreeing with me. I know I'm right, I really don't need anyone else saying that they experience the same thing I do and agreeing with me ;)

KevinB

Well, to be fair, I do agree with you that having to ride the Clark bus is a pretty miserable experience, but I would probably disagree with you that the CTA is either too incompetent or completely unwilling to do anything about it. Between the popularity of the route, its traffic patterns, its sheer length, Wrigley Field, and the fact that so much of it is only one lane in each direction, the CTA could probably send a bus down Clark every two minutes for an hour and all you'd get is 30 bunched buses and an hour's wait for someone at Clark and Foster. Maybe the drivers that Martha overheard were right. Maybe there just isn't anything that can be done, short of major construction or else removing Clark's on-street parking, which would hurt a lot of businesses and parking is already hard enough in some neighborhoods. Who's to say that the CTA hasn't tried different things, and all of them failed? Clark Street in it's current configuration may simply be a hopeless case as far as reliable bus routes go.

I still don't understand whey they don't have a shorter route...like a 22N and a 22S starting/ending downtown. I also don't like how they short change the 22s during cubs games...its a feeder to the stadium, you should have more buses running, not less, during that time....

I also think a 22 Express would be a GREAT idea.

Kevin

While Cub games are a problem, there's a lot more going on.
There are the yuppies scum moms that block one lane of Clark while picking up their precious darlings with their SUVs at both Latin School at North Ave. & at Parker School at Belden.
Make the brats take a bus to & from school.
Then there are all the beer trucks blocking a lane - arrest them, seize the truck & donate the beer to whoever comes by.
And give all the buses on Clark signal priority controls to turn the lights green.

KevinB, how do you propose to run an express route on a street that's one way in each direction? Since there are no terminals along Clark and the side streets get narrower and more congested as you move south, how do you propose to break the route up into north and south routes? Until a solution can be found, I agree with Unindicted Co-conspirator about seizing the beer except that I think the kegs should be installed and tapped for service on the 22 to dull the pain.

Judging by the bus tracker's performance today, I wouldn't count on it for reliable info. Right now on the 9 Ashland, it's showing two southbound buses (at 2540 S Ashland and 32nd St.) and not a single northbound bus. (Maybe they should skip adding more routes in June if it can't handle what it already has.)

re: split 22 Clark.

22N
Howard to Belmont (South on Clark, R on Belmont, R on Sheffield, L back on Clark).

22
Belmont to Polk (North on Clark, L on Roscoe, L on Sheffield, L on Belmont)

Night Owl buses run the full route.

Martha:

The same way they run them now. I see buses passing each other all the time on Clark street when the bus pulls over to let people off. I've personally been on one of the buses when two 22 drivers were doing a low speed version of the Grand Prix trying to get the lead and see who could get the furthest first.

22's and 36's do it along the same route now. I just see an express bus stopping less so that you could keep to a schedule better and cut down on the crowding caused by late buses.

KevinB

The route is absolutely too long, especially for a route that, for the most part, parallels the red line. Only massocists would want to ride it from one end to the other.

Most of what's from Belmont south could be operated as extra (coordinated) service on the 36, with the short segment between Diversey and Belmont operated as a short-turn 36.

Another segment could go from Belmont to Foster, ending at the Berwyn El station.

Another segment could go from Irving Park/Sheridan, to Devon/Loyola.

And a final segment from Berwyn El via Bryn Mawr & Ridge) to Howard.

Each segment is short enough that even if a major event caused a problem on one, the others could still operate on-time, but there's enough overlapping that few people would need to take extra buses.

And the two segments ending at Berwyn could be joined during owl hours, with the southern part extended further south than Belmont to connect back to the 36 instead of running short-turn 36's.

Actually, it probably doesn't matter so much how you chop it up. Someone won't like any particular chop, but the chopping is necessary for schedule reliablity. So even if my plan -- or someone else's plan -- means you'll have to change your route, and/or ride two vehicles instead of one, my bet is that it will actually turn out better than having to deal with a 22 that can't stay on schedule.

Indeed, chopping the 22 bus in two won't help much -- then lots of people will just have to wait for a second bus, obliterating a large share of any time savings.

A better way to make the bus "on schedule" is to just put the thing on the bus tracker and thereby change our conception of what the "schedule" is. If I don't know when the bus is coming, I go to the stop and expect it to come within a reasonable period of time, and when it takes 20 minutes to arrive, I'm annoyed. If I know the bus is coming in 20 minutes, I'll go to the bus stop in 15 minutes and am much less likely to be annoyed because I'll only spend a few minutes standing around doing nothing.

Whoever said the 22 bus closely parallels the red line clearly has in mind something other than everything to the north of Belmont; it's a considerable hike from the 22 to the red line there.

No, it's not close enough to walk (for most people) to the Red Line. But the Red Line serves the long-haul people. No one is going from the Loop to Rogers Park by using the 22, for example.

Or at least they shouldn't be. And by breaking it up into smaller segments, each begining and ending at the Red Line, you get any remaining long-haul people off the bus, and the bus can serve the short-haul people better.

The most efficient way to run a mass transit system is to create trunk routes that other routes feed into. The rail lines are the most basic part of this trunk system, with certain bus routes filling in the holes.

Theoretically, BRT should be used in the filling in of those holes, but that's a whole 'nuther issue.

But you can't effectively run a trunk bus route on a street with the physcial chariteristics of most of Clark. And the proximity of the Red Line gives you a splendid alternative to divert long-haul traffic, and traffic bound for the various crosstown bus routes that intersect both the Red Line and Clark.

Clark should be used for local and short-haul trips. Any route traveling that long of a distance in those kinds of conditions is giong to have schedule adherence issues.

It's a shame that Broadway *is* within walking distance of the Red Line because it generally has good conditions for a trunk route. (On the other hand, it eventually ends up on Clark, but at least it's not that way over the whole route.)

So yes, if you chop the 22 up into smaller segments, you'll have more two-seat riders. But if it gets the remaining long-haul people off Clark, and keeps the remaining, overlapping, shorter routes on schedule, that should make up for the inconvinience.

As for the transit tracker helping, I think you're really over estamating how many passengers will use it like you plan to use it. You may not even use it as you plan to use it. Not everyone lives so close that they can count on conditions not changing in the time it takes them to shut down their computers, put on their coats, lock the door, and walk to the bus stop.

I feel like their definition of bus bunching is too strict. It should be maybe 2 minutes, not 1. Two buses two minutes apart (ie. down the block from each other) are no more useful than right behind each other. If they went to 3 minutes, there are actually some routes that run on almost 3 minute intervals, so that wouldn't work.

I took a look at New York's performance indicators for comparison. NYC Transit's on-time bus performance metric is based on the following:

"Bus Enroute On-Time Performance measures nighttime (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) service reliability. This indicator is the percentage of times buses leave designated stops along the route close enough to the scheduled departure times. "Close enough" is up to five minutes late or up to one minute early, compared to its schedule."

According to the stats, NYC Transit only hit this 69.6% in what they call First Half, 2007, down from 70.0% in First Half, 2006, but up from 67.8% in Second Half, 2006. Second Half, 2007 had buses on time 66.2%. I'll bet even the much-loathed 22 does better than that. The "close enough" designation would serve the 22 especially well if it were incorporated into CTA's metrics.

There was a long article in the NY Times today about how the escalators and elevators installed in New York's subways in response to ADA compliance mandates malfunction more often than not and occasionally hold people hostage or try to kill them. According the CTA's metrics, elevators and escalators are up and running 99.1% and 97.5% of the time respectively. Of course, New York's equipment is retrofitting whereas CTA's was built into station designs or redesigns. Still, it looks like maybe things aren't all that bad in the Second City.

Same people always complaining about the same things. This blog is almost unreadable now.