CTA Tattler

I said: "I apologize that MK tends to lose his temper very easily!"

and MK said: "So your comparisent is unbelievably stupid."

I rest my case.

C'mon, MK, take a deep breath, relax, make yourself some coffee or tea, count to ten, and calm down. It isn't worth it. Keep it civil, okay, and agree to disagree. Jake wants what's best for Chicago transit riders, just like you do.

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Rusty's Purple Line proposal would also be cheap, and I think it's worth exploring. But it would benefit far fewer people - monthly ridership on the Gray Line route is around 1.4 million, on the Purple Line around 220,000.
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If we're going to compare apples to apples, the Purple Line is around 220,000, and the Gray Line is exactly at zero.

Either that, or let's talk oranges to oranges. Let's talk about how many riders are on the Purple Line Express, plus the Red Line's Howard branch, plus the Brown Line south of Belmont, plus the Metra Line, plus all the express buses running parallel to the north side main line, plus the 151, 156, 36, and 22. Now compare that number (aka, the ridership in the corridor) to the number of riders in your corridor.

It's a blow-out, but not in the direction that you said when you were comparing apples to oranges.

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But comparatively low ridership on the West and South Sides has more to do with the economic and social catastrophe that befell those areas over the last 50 years than it does with redundant rail infrastructure.
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And yet despite that over-built rail infrastructure, these areas met that fate. So how would building more infrastructure help?

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But if Chicago does win the Olympics, the Gray Line conversion would likely be done out of funds that would otherwise not be available.
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More likely, what would be built would be built from funds diverted from the rest of the system.

And what would be built would be a stub of your Gray Line. There would be no need to build it to anywhere south of the last major venue. And certainly not if it was coming from this new source of capital funding that you're banking on.

A stub of the Gray Line would be worse than the whole thing. Once the games concluded, you'd have essentially a rail line to nowhere.

But again, the bottom line is there's no need for three parallel rail lines to the south. If you can work on getting the Green Line removed, after that I'd be willing to sign onto your pipe dream. But as long as the Green Line is there, the Gray Line is a boondoggle.

"I'm not convinced that the Yellow Line extension would take more cars off the road than the Gray Line would, if only because of the massive difference in density."

Density of what? I surely hope you are not only counting residents in your measurement of this. Come to think of it, when we analyze all of your posts, it actually seems as if you believe that the only (or at least the predominant) thing that matters in choosing where to expand trasit is the people that live there. You seem to be forgetting that people who use transit are going somewhere. The loop(i.e. the area bound by Wacker, Jackson, Michigan, and Canal, that's my definition of the loop) has an extreamly low denstity in terms of residences. It has increased lately, but it is still very small compared to most areas of the city and even most suburbs in Cook County. Yet, I would bet there are more people who use transit in the loop per square foot than anywhere in the country outside of New York City. Why do you think that is? The answer, of course, is that there is huge density of people WORKING in the area. Where people live is not everything. The Skokie area is one of the most dense in the whole area when you count both the residents and employees (and visitors, such as shoppers). If you have ever been there, you would notice not only the shopping center but also many corporate headquarters and other employers, as well as hotels. Most of these are very near Old Orchard. The amount of jobs that exist within a few blocks of the Skokie yellow line station is actually rather sparse. If this were expanding to Old Orchard, it will provide a huge jump in the convenience for the people who work near this place. And there are also a pretty high amount of residences in that area as well. So you will have some benefit on that side as well from people who might be tempted to jump on the edens (which is right there). I have, at least until recently, got the impression that your ultimate goal was to get cars off the road. There is absolutely no doubt that a yellow line extention will get MUCH more cars off the road than simply making the Metra Electic slighty more convenient in the off-peak hours. And guess what? There are many people on the south side in the area you say would get so much from the grey line who would benefit substantually from a yellow line extention. Yes, I said the south side. That is because many people who live on the south side actually work in Skokie. You do know that not everyone on the south side works downtown, right? The suburbs is where, by far, the most growth in jobs has been for decades. And this will continue to be the case. That is why most of the new transit infrastructure should be built there. I think that is what you don't get. You seem, for whatever reason, to be pushing only (or primarally) for transit extentions in the city. I don't know if there is a rational reason for this or not. Maybe you want to encourage everyone to move to the city from the suburbs. Of course, that thinking is flawed because many of the people who move to the city will still want to work outside of it. If you expand transit to the suburbs, you actually will encourage more people to live in the city. Those who live in Chicago are pretty much covered. We have an excellent transit system where jus about everyone is within a three minute walk to a bus or train route that will pretty efficiantly get them anywhere in the city. Improve routes that only serve the city with have limited benefits. That is also why having the purple line express operate all the time will also be a very good idea.

". I simply can't understand why some people on this board are so dismissive of the expressed interests of South Side residents."

What on earth does the south side have to do with this? This is not a north side-north suburbs-south side debate. Like I said, many people on the south side would benefit from a yellow line extention and improved purple line service. Why do you feel the need to make this a territorial issue? Is that why you support the grey line? Because you live on the south side? I am guessing you live on the south side because you keep mentioning it and I know I saw somewhere that you were a U of C student(which you are very much conforming to the stereotype of).

"C'mon, MK, take a deep breath, relax, make yourself some coffee or tea, count to ten, and calm down. It isn't worth it. Keep it civil, okay, and agree to disagree. Jake wants what's best for Chicago transit riders, just like you do. "

I just had tea. And calmness has nothing to do with whether someone argues forcefully or weakly. I believe in the former. Being candid causes people to question their assumptions (though it doesn't seem to be working with Jake) and think critically. Questioning assumptions and thinking critically is neccessary for people to decide the best choices that sociaty should make and is how we make progress.

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I simply can't understand why some people on this board are so dismissive...
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Numerous arguements against the proposal, critically picking it apart is hardly "dismissive".

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...of the expressed interests of South Side residents.
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One person who keeps harping on a single (dead) proposal for redundant service is hardly the "expressed interests" of "residents" (plural).

Jake, if you think we're not even considering your pipe dreams, you're wrong. And if you think you're some sort of spokesperson for South Side residents, then you're not just dreaming, you're delusional.

Just because people don't agree with you doesn't mean they're dismissing you. In case you haven't noticed, we've given your idea far more consideration than you've probably gotten elsewhere.

Kiel, you make many good points. But the fact remains that you're arguing against the Gray Line not on the merits, but because RTA is dysfunctional. CTA and Metra should be cooperating to provide world-class public transit, and the fact that they're not doing that is the reason why the Gray Line *and* a universal fare card are not moving forward.

"if the ME becomes more popular off-peak, then Metra can add trains to the line"

This is obviously a chicken-and-egg problem. The Metra Electric is not going to become popular off-peak until there is regular off-peak service. The fact that the area's aldermen and community groups support increased service and ridership is already very high is pretty strong indication that we should be seriously considering it.

Rusty and MK: the reason I said you were being dismissive of the interests of South Siders is not because I consider myself a representative of them, but because their elected representatives and active community groups all support increased service and cheap/easy transfers from the Metra Electric to the CTA. You, however, do not acknowledge these as real needs. As far as I can tell, the community support for the Gray Line is no less than that for the Red, Orange, and Yellow Line extensions. I'm not dismissing those transit improvements - I strongly support them. You are both, however, dismissing the concerns of those who live along the Metra Electric.

Rusty, I think you may not understand the Gray Line proposal. It would not involve building anything - it is nothing more than adding fare collection equipment, increasing service, and adding the Metra Electric to CTA maps as the Gray Line. This is why it would be so cheap, and why would not constitute redundant infrastructure.

"Kenwood, Hyde Park, Woodlawn, and South Shore are NOT gentrifying. Nor are they likely to in the next decade(s) or so. Further, Woodlawn and South Shore are not very densely populated"

Actually, South Shore is quite dense - see the map at http://alwaysintransit.typepad.com/hyde_park_urbanist/2008/07/more-maps-for-t.html

It's true that Kenwood and Hyde Park aren't really gentrifying - they're already fairly high income. But the area north of Kenwood and east of Drexel Blvd is definitely gentrifying, and efforts are under way to gentrify the Cottage Grove corridor. This map is old, but it does demonstrate that the process began in the '90s.
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/maps/incomechangecity8999.jpg

The area around Michael Reese Hospital, where the Olympic Village would be built, will also add significant population in the next decade (sooner if we don't get the Olympics, later if we do). And Woodlawn might gentrify sooner than you expect - the University of Chicago is actively expanding to the south, and new housing has been going up.

Gentrification is both a danger and an opportunity. If low-income housing can be integrated into the process, it can improve the lives of everyone instead of cleansing these neighborhoods of the most disadvantaged. Transit is important to everyone, and many of the professionals coming in would happily take a train, but drive if the only alternative is a bus. Making transit improvements now is not getting ahead of development, because the process has been going on for years.

Jake said: "But the fact remains that you're arguing against the Gray Line not on the merits, but because RTA is dysfunctional."

Yes I am arguing against it on its merits. The universal fare card obviates the Grey Line. Yes, there would need to be a media blitz or something to let people know their new options, but the Grey Line conversion still becomes moot, and ALL Metra lines get incorporated into our transit options (and our transit maps?).

And again: "This is obviously a chicken-and-egg problem. The Metra Electric is not going to become popular off-peak until there is regular off-peak service."

Your assertion here is a non-sequitur. The pink and green lines have frequent off-peak service, yet people are not flocking to live, work, or play along them in great numbers and ride them off-peak, and both serve denser areas of the city than the Grey Line Lite proposal does/would. You can't have it both ways and assert that building train lines spur development and/or increase ridership and then conveniently blame something else (e.g. vagaries of history) when the development and ridership collapses despite the continued existence of the train line.

The fact of the matter is that you're talking idealism, and I'm talking reality. Yes, in an ideal world there would be L lines all over the city, with stations every few blocks in any direction. But the reality is that there aren't. The reality is we have to ride buses sometimes. The reality is that the RTA is dysfunctional. The reality is that CTA and Metra have to fight over customers because they fight for (under)funding from the same source. And all the reasons I listed earlier are realities, too. These realities won't change through indignation alone, and certainly not in any timely manner. Public funding and mass transit is politics, and politics is the art of the possible, and this proposal is not possible - not at this time, not in this place. It just can't be compromised into something that isn't a non-starter.

So, we agree that the south side needs more, faster transit. Of that there is no dispute. And yes, there's lots of community support for it. But what do you think's gonna happen to all that community support when people find out that both your Grey Line and my universal fare card will require Metra to lay off potentially hundreds of train conductors? :-/ *sigh*

Well, Kiel, you think it can't be done and the RTA won't change; I think it can be done and it's worth trying to change the RTA. We'll just have to leave it at that. But I did want to take issue with something you said:

"The pink and green lines have frequent off-peak service, yet people are not flocking to live, work, or play along them in great numbers and ride them off-peak, and both serve denser areas of the city than the Grey Line Lite proposal does/would."

First, the Gray Line would serve denser areas than the Green Line does - just check the map I linked to above and keep in mind that the low-density areas along the Gray Line route are all major destinations for business or recreation or, in the case of Michael Reese Hospital, will have significant population fairly soon.

The Pink Line is certainly an underperformer given the residential density it runs thru. But check the ridership numbers - ever since the increases in service on the line that accompanied the name change, ridership has been soaring. The increase was 8 percent in 2007 over 2006, and it was up 13.6 percent 2008 Jan-May over the same period in 2007. These were the highest increases in the whole system.
http://www.transitchicago.com/downloads/ridershipreports/200805.pdf
http://www.transitchicago.com/downloads/ridershipreports/2007rail.zip
So if we need a comparison, this is a good one - once poor off-peak service was increased, ridership shot up.

"Well, Kiel, you think it can't be done and the RTA won't change; I think it can be done and it's worth trying to change the RTA. We'll just have to leave it at that."

Fine. Be my guest. I still think a universal fare card is infinitely more likely to happen in the milieu in which we live than a complicated infrastructure reorganization. But good for you, jake, reach for the stars!

"the Gray Line would serve denser areas than the Green Line does"

Yes, it would, and the people who live along the ME are already riding it. If they didn't, Metra would've abandoned the south Chicago branch long ago. And it only costs $0.10 more than taking a bus to the red line.

And the city's going to raze Michael Reese Hospital after it closes. If Chicago doesn't get the olympics, the area around the ME tracks between McCormick Pl. and 47th St. will become even more sparse and empty than it is now.

"So if we need a comparison, this is a good one - once poor off-peak service was increased, ridership shot up."

No. Total 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc' fallacy. Ridership on the pink line has not risen because of the service frequency increases associated with the line's creation. Ridership has gone up on the pink line for the same reason that ridership on EVERY line has gone up in the past year - the rising price of gasoline (and everything else). And anyway, those are just percentage increases. Despite traversing some of the most densely-populated neighborhoods in the city, daily weekday pink line ridership hovers around 26,000 people, only about 4% of all L ridership in the whole system, and only about 1.5% of all daily CTA ridership.

Oh, and while you're changing the RTA, could you also clean up corruption at city hall and rewrite the Illinois constitution to make it free of big businesses' and lobbyists' interests. That'd be great. Thanks, jake, you're the best!

As long as I'm rewriting the constitution, I'm also going to equalize school funding, abolish the flat tax, and make redistricting nonpartisan. Sound good?

I still think the fact that Pink Line ridership has gone up faster than that of any other line has to be partly attributed to increased frequency. But I admit I'm a bit puzzled as to why it's still so low. I figure fewer people in those neighborhoods commute to the Loop every day, but beyond that I have no clue. Any ideas?

"As long as I'm rewriting the constitution, I'm also going to equalize school funding, abolish the flat tax, and make redistricting nonpartisan."

All good, and all things I'll gladly do some amateur lobbying for with you if we do vote in favor of a constitutional convention this fall :)

Yeah, the pink line puzzles me, too, but we can only speculate. Maybe it's partly that the green, blue, and pink lines are so close together, and partly because the demographics along the line don't work in the loop. The far west side is ripe and ready for the mid-city transit way - maybe all those people are trying to go north and south? *shrug* I dunno.