CTA Tattler

Did you compile the list of Ron's successes -- or did the CTA prepare it for you?

Will the list of his failures/problems be as complete? Will it ascribe responsibility to him for all the things that didn't happen or were failures or were natural occurrences or were unfulfilled promises during his tenure so far?

That kind of balanced accounting I could respect. Anything less is bad faith and biased.

Kevin, you forgot to include "We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for reading CTA Tattler."

I'm sorry people are getting so wound up about your one-year posts. It's your list of things that have happened in Huberman's first year and it's ludicrous to be whining about "he shouldn't be taking credit for it." (I'm working under the assumption that he didn't tell you what to say, of course!) As for "bias," puhleeze, this is your blog, not PIRG or Consumers Union or Carol Marin's old investigative team. Your bias is what we come here to read.

It's no secret I'm skeptical about Huberman but the conspiracy theories and other complaints have gotten over the top.

Incidentally, last week I forwarded to you an email I got from the CTA Bus Tracker team -- if you haven't spotted it, it might be in your spam folder, since I've never emailed you before. If you see an email from a Bob using an rcn.com email, that's me.

I'm glad to see both the Ashland and especially the Damen buses added. Judging by the number of Damen buses that have broken LED signs, I'm going to guess this will be a little spotty. Still, of the many buses I ride, it's by far the least reliable.

(I have to admit, I love the bus tracker so much I often have it open in a browser both at work and at home so I can watch the Western buses bunch up. It's like the Internet's most frustrating screen saver.) I know that technically the regular and express buses are, on paper, different routes, but I wish those "Route Display" windows showed both. If the next regular Western bus is 8 or 9 miles away and an express is coming that would make me walk a couple blocks extra but still save me half an hour, I'd like to know that and I think most riders would too.

"I'm sorry people are getting so wound up about your one-year posts. It's your list of things that have happened in Huberman's first year and it's ludicrous to be whining about "he shouldn't be taking credit for it." (I'm working under the assumption that he didn't tell you what to say, of course!)
Bob S. "

Bob -

See that's just the thing. Kevin didn't position it as a list of things that happened suring Ron's first year. He identified it as a list of accomplishments. Different animal completely. I agree these things happened. I don't agree that they are all Huberman's accomplishments.

And about telling Kevin what to say, I doubt it was that blatant. But since Kevin listed the same (mostly) accomplishments the Sun Times did, I wouldn't be surprised if Ron provided that list to several sources.

and, Bob S., I almost agree with your posts. Just not this time.

Correct -
almost ALWAYS agree with your posts.

One more thing to add to the problems is the contract that he signed with the trades. Huberman, with 5th Floor Consent, ok'd prevailing wage for the first time. Not that this will cause problems during his tenure, but will cost big bucks for the next CTA chief.

"I have to admit, I love the bus tracker so much I often have it open in a browser both at work and at home so I can watch the Western buses bunch up. It's like the Internet's most frustrating screen saver."

This just made me laugh really hard. I'll probably start doing that too.

I think Fox should have to pay for the lawsuits, since they started it.

"One-year anniversary" is redundant. Surely you meant to say "first anniversary."

I'm just curious to what happened to the north-side routes. I remember the CTA promising the north side routes would get bus tracker first to handle the increased bus traffic due to Red-line/Brown-line work. Guess that is another promise not fulfilled.

As I stated yesterday

GRRRR

The new Bus Tracker routes came out, Still no 8, no 22, CMON CTA you @$^#@'s

Seriously, do you think anyone on some of these nowhereville Southeast side routes even would think of using this?!?!

You have eight gazillion young professionals working on the north side, we might like to use it a little more, especially me, stupid grand and halsted buses

oh, yuppies... you're all so darn cute!

Yes, Nate, those knuckle dfraggers on the South and Southeast side couldn't even SPELL computer, much less use one.

And people sometimes wonder why "young urban professionals"are lumped together as shallow and self-centered.

Jacketpotato: While I'm sure we're all wowed by your command of insider lingo, if you want the majority of us to know what the hell you're talking about, you might want to say what they hell you're talking about. It sounds like you have an interesting point, but who the heck could tell for sure...

Seriously, if I see Lincoln Park slighted by this city one more time, I'm going to GROWL!

The South side gets this, the Southeast side gets that, meanwhile, my blackberry is getting rained on as I wait for the Halsted bus!!!!!

Lemme hazard a guess as to Jacketpotato's cryptic lingo:

5th floor consent = His Mayoral Majesty approved. His office is on the 5th floor of City Hall.
Trades = those employed in the construction industry
Prevailing wage = what the standard hourly rate is for workers in said trades

"But since Kevin listed the same (mostly) accomplishments the Sun Times did, I wouldn't be surprised if Ron provided that list to several sources."

It is not difficult to figure out where both Kevin and the Sun-Times got the list. It is obviously taken pretty much verbatum from the CTA's press releases: http://transitchicago.com/news/ctaandpress.wu

These are the things the CTA sends out and the press immedietely regurgates in the newspaper or on the news without ever bothering to ask questions or do any analysis(at least almost never).

In the interests of fact-checking, I just noticed that the real-time Java display of buses approaching a particular bus stop does show both the regular and the express 49. (That's also true of the text version for text readers and mobile devices.) Also, the temperature jumped two degrees while I was verifying that.

It even looks like the text version pages can be bookmarked, so while I wish the real-time display was available on cell phones, at least those of us who use the tracker can bookmark stops we frequently use.

The tracker project is behind schedule. I wonder if that's going to cause project bunching to go with the bus bunching.

So let's see... They started at Archer garage rather than North Park. A slight to the northsiders? A slick move because southsiders don't have as many computers? (roll eyes)

No... How about this: Archer is a smaller garage. And despite the fact that there was an alpha and beta test on the 20, rolling out the production model at a small garage first makes sense.

So why do 74th second? A slight to the northsiders? A slick move because southsiders don't have as many computers? (Conspiracy theories are so repetitive.)

I think a better reason would be to see what happens when one region on the map becomes saturated with buses. (I haven't looked at the tracker since week one, but it seems to me that they're going to have to start using smaller icons on the maps, and/or provide more levels of zoom. That's something that will become very evident when 74th comes online, but wouldn't have been as evident if North Park or Forest Glen would have been next.)

I'm actually impressed that they're ready to bring a second garage online so quickly. They're still waaaaay behind schedule, so despite the second garage being so soon after the first garage to go live, they still don't have as much to pat themselves on the back about as their press releases imply.

Perhaps the lateness of the tracker coming on line in the first place is a fitting story to mark time until someone can assemble a list of Ron's failures. (Too bad it's still worded as if it were an accomplishment.)

I'm guessing that it was easy to put up yesterday's list of questionable accomplishments because the CTA's Spin Department contributed a lot of help to the project. But a list of failures would have to be assembled without their help.

Hint: Just take a lot of the "accomplishments" in put them in a broader, less biased context. Or pretend you're talking about Frank, not the messiah... er... a.. Ron.

And perhaps one of those things could be that the Addison brown line station opened behind schedule (two days, to be exact) since the Montrose station opening "ahead of schelule" was included on the list(even though, like I said in the other thread, this is false). Of course, the CTA didn't mention that in its press release.

The "small garage" theory makes sense, to a point. But it happens to coincide pretty conveniently with a rider population that, for whatever reason, does not complain as much or as loudly when CTA stuff goes awry.

Let's face it, northsiders are crankier.

Just look at this blog, for example; complaints about the northern half of the red line, the brown line, the Lakeshore Drive express buses, etc. are legion. When's the last time someone on here posted a rant about the #55 bus not coming for 30 minutes? And believe me, that's not because the #55 bus is some paragon of reliability.

The CTA probably wanted to save itself a headache while they continue figuring out this cutting edge technology, which as we all know is brand new to Chicago and has never been implemented anywhere before.

All other things being equal, this seems at least as plausible as the small garage idea, which is also sheer speculation, so far as I can tell.

...or could it be that it makes more sense to try it on lesser-saturated lines first, rather than jump in the deep end with some of them more busier lines and get inundated with irate calls before all of the bugs can be worked out?...

While starting out with a smaller garage makes sense, there isn't any doubt that the routes out of the North Park garage are far more screwed up schedule-wise than those of any other garage!
Too many NP routes use N. Michigan Ave: 136, 145, 146, 147, 151, 157.
22 & 36 both use Dearborn going north & it's a mess due to the Block 37 construction.
Add to that all the passengers that have abandoned the North Side L routes due to both the appalling number of slow zones on the Howard Line, but the three track mess at Belmont & Fullerton has caused even more to transfer to buses.

If North Park isn't the next garage to get bus tracking, then the CTA is definitely guilty of slighting North Siders!

Hint: Bus Tracker is not being installed on older buses scheduled for retirement this year. North Park won't be free of such older buses until the end of the year. Garages are generally only activated once every bus at the garage has the system installed.

Let's not forget that the primary purpose of the tracker is to give supervisors a better tool -- one that can be used to observe the overall route at one time, in order to make on-the-fly adjustments to, along with other things, mittigate the bus bunching problem.

Now you're handing a new tool, unlike any tool they've had until now. Are the supervisors going to know how to most effectively use it on day one? Do you think they'll be able to effectively use it after a little training?

Of course not!

Anyone here use Excel? Did you start by doing sums and averages, or were you doing pivot tables on the first day? Or first week? Or even the first year?

Rolling out the tracker at North Park first, and expecting the supervisors to use it to fix the mess of all the LSD routes would be like expecting office workers to use Excel to do pivot tables before even learning simple formulas.

The primary purpose of the tracker is not to let customers see how screwed-up things are. Providing that view to customers is a secondary purpose. The primary purpose is as a tool for the supervisory force. Therefore rolling it out at North Park too soon would be a big mistake.

So get over this inferiority complex that makes you think that not rolling it out first at North Park is some sort of personal insult to northsiders. It's not.

Rusty, you're simply wrong. The main benefit of bus tracker is the information it provides to customers. Most people will never notice or care about whatever marginal bus bunching improvements the CTA might achieve using the system. A good deal of bus bunching is simply going to continue to occur as long as buses share roads and intersections with cars. Aside from the dedicated lane systems that have been discussed on here recently, buses do not run like trains and simply can't. Yes, the CTA will probably reduce some of the most egregious bunching problems, but if you believe that there will be some dramatic improvement on that front, you're in fantasy land.

As for the older buses problem. Why the heck does the CTA have its oldest buses operating on the "most saturated" routes? That's crazy. Move the old clunkers to less used lines and then there should be no problem installing bus tracker earliest where it's needed most.

It's not like buses can't be driven from one garage to another.

>>>
The main benefit of bus tracker is the information it provides to customers.
>>
As for the older buses problem. Why the heck does the CTA have its oldest buses operating on the "most saturated" routes?
>>
Move the old clunkers to less used lines and then there should be no problem installing bus tracker earliest where it's needed most.
>>
Yes, the CTA will probably reduce some of the most egregious bunching problems, but if you believe that there will be some dramatic improvement on that front, you're in fantasy land.
<<<

Immediately? No. Of course not.

But if they spent that kind of money for just for some whiz-bang web-based display, then they, and every forward-thinking transit agency that's already done so has wasted their money.

Thinking that the tracker's main purpose is for customers to see real-time data is like thinking UPS tracks it's packages primarily so customers can see where in the world they are at any moment. UPS spent money on their package tracking to better manage the flow of packages, just like transit agencies spend money on bus trackers to better manage the flow of the buses.

This really is quite a simple concept. Is it so hard to understand that data about how the business works is more valuable to management than to customers? And is it so hard to believe that when the people managing a transit system know how their vehicles are moving can do a better job than those who are just guessing about what's happening out there?

The tracker's benefit to customers is marginal at best. If supervisors and managers aren't going to make better use of the data than a handful of customers, then there were plent of other ways the money could have been spent better.

Fantasy land is where customers are so full of themselves that they think the tracker main purpose is for them to play with.

>if they spent that kind of money for just for some whiz-bang web-based display,

But that's just it! They didn't! It isn't just a display! It's a display that provides riders with info! Ya know, us, Rusty. Well, maybe not you, because anyone who doesn't understand how the tracker can help probably isn't a rider, but the rest of us.

I don't care if you don't find it useful, but stop saying things that suggest we won't put it to good use. We've told you we will. It isn't just a display.

You sound like you have the inside scoop the rest of us don't, Rusty. The CTA rolled out the bus tracker feature to a wider range of routes after its success on the 20 Madison route.

Has bus bunching been solved on the 20 Madison route? (More to the point, had bus bunching been solved on that route when that decision was announcesd?) If not, what info was the CTA getting, and what solutions did they implement by that time as a result, that would allow them to declare the bus tracking system a success that deserved to be implemented across the system?

The fact that Rusty's post compares the bus tracker to the tracking system of a freight shipping company goes a long way towards explaining what's wrong with his post.

The CTA moves passengers, not freight.

Unlike freight, passengers have an unpleasant experience when the have to wait in the rain/cold/heat for a long time.

Rusty's dismissal of the the information the bus tracker provides to passengers as a a "whiz-bang" toy suggests that he does not recognize (or at least does not appreciate) at least a few things:

(1) There are uses to which passengers can put the information that will have a greater impact on their transit experience than anything supervisors' use of the information could ever accomplish. Suppose for the sake of argument that the bus tracker enables supervisors do eliminate bus bunching completely. It's not like that means there will be a bus approaching whenever you show up at the bus stop. Evenly spaced buses still require waiting a lot of the time.

Most people would prefer to spend as little time as possible waiting at the bus stop in the rain/cold/heat. Most people, given the choice between spending an extra 8 minutes finishing their coffee in the morning and an extra 8 minutes standing at the bus stop in the rain/heat/cold, will choose the former. Bus tracker gives you that choice. And let's not forget that there are buses that are scheduled to operate at 15-20 minute headways, so sometimes we're talking about a wait time that's pretty significant to most people. Additionally, even if bus bunching is abolished, buses will still sometimes break down or go out of service for whatever reason, and someone who is already at the bus stop who knows that the next #YY bus isn't coming for 20 minutes can use that information and decide to take the #YY bus instead even though that means a little more walking.

(2) Apart from whatever decision-making use passengers have for arrival predictions, the information has intrinsic value, too. First, studies have shown (and common sense suggests) that an unpleasant wait is made much worse when it's compounded by uncertainty. Is the bus coming? Should I give up and take a different bus instead? Should I call and say I'm going to be late or will the bus get here soon enough to save me that embarassment?

If you need any evidence that uncertainty matters, try to think way back to last month to those people sitting in a tunnel on the blue line. There may have been a few claustrophobic people, or a few people with bona fide medical problems, but for most people on those trains, there was no real danger in sitting on the train and waiting for things to get moving again. Unpleasant, absolutely, but dangerous no. Now, when you add to that situation the fact that the CTA didn't bother to give them any information about what was going on, how long they would be there, etc. -- well, you can see what the result of that uncertainty was. In short, people got upset and worried and eventually that escalated into a self-evacuation.

Now perhaps you think that people knowing "how screwed up things are" is just something silly and fluffy, but human nature is such that people appreciate knowing what's going on and will be happier (or at least less unhappy) when they are not in the dark. The uncertainty reduced by the bus tracker may not be as high-stakes as the uncertainty on the disabled subway train, but the point is the same.

In any event, all of this takes as granted that the bus tracker will have a big impact on bus bunching. Unless part of the bus tracker system is the elimination of: (1) traffic, (2) weather, and (3) humans, I say fat chance.

Errata:

-the first "#YY" should have been "#XX"

-re people being happier when they're not "in the dark": no pun intended - honest!

Rusty's POINT is correct. Is there a benefit to customers from the Bus Tracker? Absolutely. But did CTA go through all that investment simply to provide customers with web access to bus locations? Absolutely not. Anytime some new advancement or technology comes out, there's always "something in it for them" even if that something is simply lower labor costs (ie. ATM machines).

Assuming for the moment that Josh does have access to the inner thoughts of the CTA board and officials, I'm not sure why we should care about what the CTA's motivation for the bus tracker was. They might have implemented it because Mayor Daley thinks it will promote peace in the Middle East. That doesn't have anything to do with the actual benefits of the program, in which the information provided to passengers obviously predominates.

As explained in another post above, the reduction in average wait time due to reduced bunching almost certainly could not exceed the reduced wait time enabled by providing passengers real-time arrival information. There's simply no comparison.

"Dude"

Sorry I annoyed you so much with my north side rhetoric, but I guarantee if they took a survey between my "self centered" northsiders and you "knuckle dragging" southsiders (way to stoke the flames Dude!) you'd probably get a higher percentage of people who would use it and more frequently then the southside, not a knock on you, just the facts.

But hey, I'll continue to be that self centered urban young professional you loathe so much. It'd be a nice change.

Okay, then let's go ahead and assume that this tool was created so passengers can reduce their waiting time by checking the tracker.

So the primary purpose of this tool is to shift the burden of reducing waiting time to the customer? They spend all this money so they wouldn't have to fix deployment problems because they could instead make it your job to adapt to them?

Let's get real here. The primary purpose of the tracker is not to provide you with a tool to modify your behavior. It's a tool to help them better manage their resources.

But we are seeing why PR professionals write press releases, and why MBA's and engineers don't. Emotional trumps logic in this world.

>>>
As explained in another post above, the reduction in average wait time due to reduced bunching almost certainly could not exceed the reduced wait time enabled by providing passengers real-time arrival information. There's simply no comparison.
<<<

There's no comparison if you don't have any idea of how the data is used beyond that fleeting moment that it's availble on-screen to people sitting at their home computers.

It's just laughable that any transit agency would spend that kind of money for a toy like the public interface of the tracker. That toy is provided because it's easy to add it on once you've created the real tool.

You've got to have a big ego, a very narrow perspective, and total lack of business sense to really believe that the bus tracker's main purpose is what you get to see at their website. But you're also just the audience that Huberman wants reading his press releases.

Actually, in the larger context, I kind of agree with you, Rusty, in that they aren't doing the bus tracker just as a public initiative. Still, they wouldn't have expanded it were the 20 Madison pilot not a success, and I'm curious about what you think that success was.

Well, you need to be sure that you're able to accurately collect the data you need. The hardware isn't some off-the-shelf stuff that every transit system with a tracker uses. Nor are the CTA buses just the same buses as other cities have, but with a different paint job.

After you get the hardware working, you have to be sure you can accurately get the data formatted in a way that can be used in your other MIS systems, and effectively import the data.

Once you've got the hardware and the software working together, you need to roll it out as a pilot to make sure that your theoretical demo works in the real world. That's what the pilot on the 20 was.

Using the information for effective supervision and management is not what the pilot was about. There may have been some playing around and experimentation, but until the pilot is done, and you start moving to full implimentation, there's no gaurantee that what you're doing will be usable long-term.

They weren't testing management hypothosis and theory. They were testing hardware and software. The hardware, software, and data can now be successfully integrated into their MIS systems. That's what the success was.

If they were testing how useful riders found the pilot tracker, I don't think that you could realistically spin it into a success because it just wasn't very useful.

Rusty, while you may think your argument-by-fiat should be accepted as conclusive, do you have any factual support for your assertions that you could share with those of us who rely on facts and evidence in forming our opinions?

You don't seem to dispute the details of what others are saying, but you still clearly vehemently disagree. Tossing around rhetoric like "let's get real" or referring to the project as a "toy" don't really explain what basis, if any, there is for your assertions.

I suspect everybody understands by now that you believe the primary benefit of the bus tracker is some big improvements in bus supervision that will be ushered in by the technology and that a transit agency would "never" spend the kind of money that it has spent to simply to provide real-time arrival information to customers. What you believe is quite clear. But can you provide any support for either of those assertions? For example, perhaps you have done the math differently on wait time improvements and that gives you a reason to think that reductions due to better supervision will actually exceed those due to better informing passengers? Or perhaps you know something about other transit agencies' experience with real-time arrival information and its effects on bus bunching and passenger behavior that you could share with us?

If, on the other hand, all you have to back up what you're saying is these kinds of "it's obvious!" declarations, fine... I guess that tells us what we need to know, too. :)

Thanks, Topiary. I thought Rusty's answer to my question really contradicted his answers to previous questions, but had no idea where to start and gave up.