CTA Tattler

I don't suppose the new site will offer HTML versions of bus schedules. I found out the hard way one day that they're only in PDF, unreadable on a small handheld-device screen.

LED Lights, well that explains why the lighting looks blue on some of the 126es that I board. I'm hoping that a new fleet of articulated buses will mean a smoother ride on the 147. one can always hope.

From the CTA webpage about the NB trains bypassing Wilson: "Customers will need to enter and exit the Wilson station from the Broadway Street entrance"

Sure it's nitpicking, but you would think that somebody there on Lake St. would know that there is no suffix added to "Broadway". That's the name of the street, which is a combination of Broad & Way. A descriptive name for for the original Broadway in NYC, which Broadway here was named after [P15 of "Streetwise Chicago"].

I don't think there are any Chicago streets that are "ways" anymore since South Park Way was changed to King Dr. & Silverton Way was eliminated when McCormick Place was expanded. Streets with "parkway" don't count.

Kevin -
I think you were given bad info. According to the CTA site, http://ctabrownline.com/irvingpark.html Irving Park is opening this weekend - not Damen as you indicated. (And as the blog you linked to surmised.)

yeah, that's pretty picky. apparently you couldn't find any other evil CTA doings in their latest efforts, huh?

Oh, there's plenty evil going on.
A good example is that the Purple trains will keep making all the Brown stops after it goes back to four tracks.
The original rationale was that the Brown Line capacity was insufficient with only six car trains. That's gone now & soon all four tracks will be back & running as before, so they should make them Purple express again, but keep Belmont as a stop.
Even the North Shore Line used to stop at Belmont, it even had its own platform on the west side of track one.

Huh? When did the Purple ever skip any stops southbound after Addison? I've lived here 10 years and it's always stopped at the Brown stops. As long as there is no real express track after Sheridan, what's the point of skipping stops? It would stop anyway due to the local Brown ahead of it. It sucks that we don't have real express trains, but there's not a whole lot to do about it now.

It would be nice if the purple could skip a few stops like Sedgwick and Armitage since presumably the brown line new capacity should be able to serve these stations just fine. I have no problem with it stopping at Fullerton and Belmont though. Maybe after getting the schedule back to what it was, they will continue to tweak it. They might want to see what the traffic looks like now that it is over.

No one's excited about the new website?!?! It looks pretty good for a company whose graphic design solution is "italicize everything."

Well, I like the look of it. It looks very clean and uncluttered. However, I can't comment on it since it is only a screenshot and not fully navigable.

I agree -- I've lived here 11 years and don't know any history before then, but I don't see the point of the Purple skipping stops when it's on the outer tracks and waiting for the Brown Line to proceed anyway. And why should people at Diversey, Armitage, Sedgwick, and Chicago and, eventually, Wellington (along with people from the north suburbs whose destinations include those stops) have to transfer when the Purple's on that track anyway?

So, purple line riders should get an express train to downtown just for themselves? If that were actually possible now, how many brown line riders do you think would just switch to the purple line at Belmont or Fullerton, so they could also ride a train that makes no stops until downtown? Of course, since the current track set-up wouldn't allow for an express train to bypass a local train, it doesn't really matter anyway..

Also -- Scott, the CTA's philosophy is to do away with schedules and just publish "intervals." Useless, customer-hostile, but "industry standard," said the CTA rep who answered my question about it here a while back. Your best bet's to use the trip planner, which still gives exact times. (Though I have little doubt they're trying to figure out how to make it say "Go to Addison Red Line station and wait from 7 to 15 minutes for a Red Line train.")

[you would think that somebody there on Lake St. would know that there is no suffix added to "Broadway". That's the name of the street, which is a combination of Broad & Way.]

Regardless of the origin of the name (and I have no doubt that you're right about that), it appears that the official name these days is actually 'Broadway Street.' At least, the Post Office and Google maps seem to think so. I'm pretty sure (not 100%, though) that the street signs add a "St" also.

At the very least, 'Broadway St' has clearly entered the realm of acceptable usage.

Oddly enough, on Google Maps, it flips between Broadway St and Broadway Ave. I never noticed that before.

Strannix is correct. The US Post Office is the ultimate arbiter of whether or not a strip of asphalt is a Rd., St., Blvd., Ave., etc. and according to their website, the particular strip that connects Diversey to Sheridan is indeed "Broadway Street." This is a legal requirement in case someone chooses to give a street a name that already exists somewhere else in the same city. Examples in Chicago: 54th St. and 54th Pl., California Ave. and California Ter.

That being said, I really like the new website design! Fewer tiny, wordy links on a blank background. Def more user-friendly :)

Confused Purple-Line riding young'uns:

It's true.

A long time ago*, the Purple Line (Then better known simply as "The Evanston Express") only stopped at Belmont, Fullerton, Chicago (and I believe the Mart) before hitting all the Loop stops and heading back north.

Back then, you paid a special surcharge (and received a little ticket) to ride the Express. The conductor (or A conductor) came through and collected your tickets. (I always paid, I don't know what they did if you didn't. Probably made you cough up the .25 or .50 cents right there. And no, I'm too old to remember how much it was. It was a lotta money back then)

When they dropped the surcharge, they just started stopping a lot more. That was maybe even about the time they stopped running the Purple 24-hours a day, which they also used to do.

*Apparently, at least 11+ years ago. I've been here about 14 years myself.

Old Timer Jim, you have it wrong.
Originally, the Evanston Express ran express SB in the AM rush from Loyola to the Merchandise Mart. It also stopped at Morse. There was a 15¢ charge to ride expess south of Howard. It ran express NB in the AM from the Mart to Howard, also a 15¢ charge. There was also an extra 15¢ charge to ride north of Howard on both Evanston & Skokie. The NB Howard platform had a wall dividing it into two sections, with two fare collectors & turnstiles you passed through to ride Evanston or Skokie. Those are long gone.
NB it ran express in the PM rush from the Mart to Loyola, again also stopping at Morse. Those that boarded in Evanston or at Dempster received a paper the size of the old transfers that they gave to the conductor as he walked through the train.
A lot of people would board NB & if the train was extremely crowded, never had to pay the extra fare because the conductor couldn't get through the crowded cars.
There was even a month long experiment of free rides from South Blvd. north to Linden in the 70s.
Then they decided that having the Evanston trains move to the inner tracks from Loyola to Howard was causing interference with the Howard trains & the Evanston Express then ran exclusively on tracks one & four express from Howard to the Mart, but at that time the extra charge was gone.
When the now Brown Line reached capacity, due to six car trains, a stop was added at Belmont, then Fullerton, then Chicago & later on, all the Brown Line stops.
Turning the Purple into a local south of Belmont is absurd, it should just stop at Belmont, Fullerton & Chicago when four track goes back into effect in a few weeks.

The post office is not the final arbiter of street name or city names.
A long time ago, they tried to force Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to change its spelling to Pittsburg!
I believe the Pennsylvania congressional delegation put an end to that.

I dunno. The argument for the Purple not stopping seems to be "they used to do it that way and I liked it." Today isn't back then and service needs to meet today's needs.

[Turning the Purple into a local south of Belmont is absurd...]

I dunno. It *seems* absurd, I agree, but it also sure seems like the ridership to support such a plan is there.

[The post office is not the final arbiter of street name or city names.]

Who said anything about city names?

More news: A Green Line stop at Morgan.

http://tinyurl.com/greenline

UCC: Making the Purple line run express as you suggest would be great, but there is still the little matter of there only being 2 working tracks for both Brown Local and Purple Express to run on south of Armitage.

And since the new Sedgwick station was actually built onto where the extra 2 tracks used to be, I have a feeling our dream of a true Purple Express will not come true.

UC-C: First, nobody said anything about 'city' names.

And I didn't mean aribiter in the sense that the Post Office gets to name things, I meant in the sense that they are tasked with knowing what the name is i.e. if you don't know, they will. Sorry for the confusion.

And your story about Pittsburgh is false. The US Post Office had nothing to do with it. It was the United States Board on Geographic Names that tried to make Pittsburgh drop the 'h' in its name. Reference here: http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/apology1.html

Since you claim the Illinois Congressional delegation is the final arbiter, it appears there will not be an "official" name for it and any of the aforementioned street names will be acceptable. I have not heard of them bringing up any bills to define the name of the street.

From Chicago-l.org

http://www.chicago-l.org/operations/lines/route_ops/evanston.html

The year 1997 brought a quick barrage of changes to the Evanston Express service. On June 22nd, one person train operation (OPTO) began on the Purple Line. The job of the motorman and conductor were combined into an "operator", but because of the surcharge on the Express, a special "collector" was assigned to rush periods as necessary. On June 23rd, Purple Line Expresses began making additional stops at Wellington, Diversey, Armitage, and Sedgwick. Although many riders complained that the extra stops made the operations at lot less express, it was done to ease overcrowding on the Brown Line in the popular, gentrifying Lakeview, Lincoln Park, and Near North Side neighborhoods. At the same time, the express surcharge was eliminated and running time was increased due to both the additional stops and extra time required by OPTO. On October 6th, the destination signs on the trains were changed to show the terminals (Linden, Howard, Loop) rather than the route names (Linden-Howard, Evanston Express).

UICC,

You're wrong about Purple/Evanston Express. In the mid-90's, the surcharge was indeed collected. This ended in 97, just after I moved there.

The best authority for this sort of thing is always chicago-l.org. Here's the relevant page:

http://www.chicago-l.org/operations/lines/route_ops/evanston.html

Well, as a private individual I don't have to call it "Broadway Street", any more than I can be forced to refer to Waveland golf course by the name of some political hack, or a stadium by the company that last paid to slap an awkward mouthful of words on it. I'm guessing UC's point is if we allow such entities to impose their Newspeak on roadways, they'll just keep going and who knows where it'll end.

Custom is a valuable check on awkwardness of usage, and it works if we remember that the first amendment allows us not to cooperate with naming deals if we're not a party to them.

I'd heard that the Evanston Express once ran through the tunnel or that it was planned to in the future; does anybody know if that's true?

I don't think the pink will switch, though, since it was part of the promise then they started the pink line a promise was made to make Clark-Lake the first stop into the loop.

[Custom is a valuable check on awkwardness of usage, and it works if we remember that the first amendment allows us not to cooperate with naming deals if we're not a party to them.]

I hate to interrupt your quest for First Amendment martyrdom here, but no one was saying that you have to call it 'Broadway St' if you don't want to, or that you're required to cooperate with whatever "deal" you've imagined to make it such in the first place.

Honestly.

Yeah, this has been blown way out of proportion. No one's forcing anyone to do anything. UC-C's original point was that whoever wrote the CTA press release had made a mistake by saying "Broadway Street" instead of just "Broadway." Then, Strannix (correctly) pointed out that yes, it is perfectly acceptable to call it "Broadway Street" and not be mistaken. That's all.

UCC originally said:

"A good example is that the Purple trains will keep making all the Brown stops after it goes back to four tracks."

This made it sound like (a) until a couple years ago the Purple Line skipped these stops (not true) and (b) that with 4 tracks returned to Fullerton and Belmont it was physically possible to run express trains that would skip Diversey, Wellington, Armitage and Sedgwick (also not true).

As I said, I'd love to see a real express, but it's not physically possible. Hell, I live at Thorndale. I'd love to see a Red Express but that would involve tearing down a billion dollars of private property through eminent domain and rebuilding the embankment the trains runa along. Pie in the sky. I'm sure the 70% of Brown Line riders who live at stops beyond Montrose would like to see an express too. It won't happen. If you want express trains in this lifetime, you'll unfortunately have to relocate to New York City.

Ahh, UCC, you're just an older old-timer than me.

My tale was simply the 90s version which, as you noted, had added on stops.

Thanks for that link, 444444u. That explained the "need" for the added stops better than I ever remember the CTA doing publicly.

The Evanston Express operation skipping all stops between Belmont/Mart was only feasible back when the Brown Line operated on much wider intervals. Once demand for Brown Line/Ravenswood service increased to the point it was operating every 3-4 minutes, an express operation becomes pretty pointless because there would be so little time savings from bypassing those stops given the absence of passing tracks, whereas before when Ravenswood trains were 6-8 minutes apart, the Express trains could conceivable make up that entire interval by running express. Now, the tradeoff is between saving at most 2 minutes, or benefiting the passengers south of Belmont by increasing their service (and options - to head to the inner loop). The latter is, at least, a plausible and defensible choice, though one could argue about whether to value Lakeview's convenience over Evanston's travel time and vice versa. The travel time argument held more weight when there was at least a significant time savings, but why bother now?

So my question is:

Will the purple line go back to 7-minute intervals like it was before the 3 tracking began, instead of the 15-minute intervals like it currently is?

Regarding the purple line skipping stops. When I ride the brown or purple, I notice that that the area where the trains ride has an extra width to it in certain spots south of Fullerton (where it snakes)that has track on it, or portions of track (some of it is ripped up) that presumably was used at one time. Can this be re-tracked to have trains run on it at some point, or is that not feasible?

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

I'd second the 7 minute purple line expresses :)

KevinB

Im glad about the Purple line going the other way around the loop. Now with that being done, wouldn't it make sense for the Pink Line to go the other way as well? That way if commuters want to go on the Lake/Wabash side they can take the green line, if they want to go the other they can take Pink...thoughts??

Chris, I know what you are talking about. I don't know the details, but those tracks were in service at some point. But, like I said, since the new platforms at Sedgwick were built on top of the structure where those outer tracks used to be, it would be essentially impossible to bring back those tracks now -- at least, not without tearing down buldings to make room for them. (Or tearing up Sedgwick and rebuilding it again).

KevinB: Where have you been all day? is this really your first post of the day, or did I miscount? Busy at work or something? I'm disappointed!

tecki:

I've been reading most of the day

Sometimes I don't have anything to say. I usually only comment on something pertinent/important, not just to see my words in print like some other folks...

KevinB

chris: http://chicago-l.org/FAQ.html#3.2

also, from http://chicago-l.org/operations/lines/northmain-brown.html :

"Changes continued to affect the Ravenswood services on the North Side Main Line for several years. With the elimination of separate express and local services in 1949, compounded by the rerouting of a majority of trains into the State Street Subway since 1943, the four-track main line between Chicago and Armitage provided far more capacity than was actually needed for the servicing being run. To be sure, this section of track was still a busy place during rush hour when a busy combination of Ravenswoods and Evanston Expresses plied the same right-of-way as North Shore Line interurbans, but in the off-peak it was rather more calm. This began a period in which two of the four tracks on this two mile section were brought in and out of service. On January 2, 1951, tracks 2 and 3 (those used today for Brown Line service) was used for lay-ups midday just north of Chicago station, with Ravenswood and North Shore Line trains consigned to Tracks 1 and 4 on the outside. This was a short-lived practice, however, lasting only until February 13. With limited use of the two of the four tracks between Chicago and Armitage, the hours of manned operation for Chicago Tower, which controlled access where the two-track line fanned out to four tracks, was cut to weekday rush hours in April 1954."

Remember that North Shore Line doesn't exist anymore (i think it was an interurban thing)

KevinB: I hope you don't think I was saying you talk too much!

I know I called you a "whiny bitch" a few months ago -- Sorry about that. I was in a foul mood that day. I actually do enjoy your posts!

Merry Christmas!

The new CTA site seems to be pretty similar to Transport for London's (tfl.gov.uk), which is okay by me. Although Londoners might disagree I think the CTA should try to emulate that system as much as possible.

Now we just need a Metra site rehaul! Looks like 1997 over there...

Well, it would be cool if they could use those tracks again. I realize the platforms are narrower than that now, but this could give the purple line the ability to pass a brown line if they wanted to do so in between the stops.

I wonder if that is feasible?

>if we allow such entities to impose their Newspeak on roadways, they'll just keep going and who knows where it'll end.

I know. First, it's "Broadway Street" and pretty soon the abortion police are surveilling your cell phone calls to Africa, matching that against your red-light running, and handing the data over to JPMorgan so they can catch you scofflawing their cyber-parking meters, or committing terrorist acts, or even speaking ill of Rahm Emanuel, cause Obama is very tolerant of disagreement, but Rahm will cut the tip of your finger off.

That's why I always refer to it as Broad Way myself, stepping hard on the word Way with a cold Algrenesque clipped vowel sound; but with a skip in my step just knowing that in our city, one can still live free!

Or maybe it's just a street name.

To avoid any trouble couldn't we refer to it as the "Street that starts with B on which the buses always travel verrrrrrrryyyyy slooooooowwwwwly?"

Streets are named by whoever creates the official plat map for the county assessor. Depending on the year in question, and the jurisdictions involved, various others have the ability to chime in, sometimes in an advisory, sometimes more, capacity.

But ultimately the official street name is whatever gets recorded on the official plat map in the assessor's office.

The Post Office's job is to deliver mail. They have a vested interest in what a mailing address is, and they can, theoretically, insist on a different address than what's on a plat map. And since their job is to get the mail delivered, it's not unusual for the Post Office to recognise many different addresses in addition to what's in their GIS database. They want to get the mail delivered more than they want to be arrogant bastards.

Agencies responsible for emergency response, such as the fire department, police department, and the 911 dispatch center are interested in identifying streets quickly and difinitively. They're not going to, for example, refuse to sent the fire department to someplace that someone identifies as Broadway Street just because the official plat map says just Broadway.

Some public works departments are very anal about getting the street signs right. Go up to Milwaukee some time and just try to find some inconsistancy in street name signage. Then compare it to how consistant the signage in Chicago is. And then compare that to some of the smaller suburbs.

But if you *must* be anal about what a street's name officially is, I would suggest a visit to the county assessor's office to look at the relevant plat map(s).

God help you if a street crosses over multiple plat maps, and it's not named consistantly.

Better yet would be to fix the slow zones. There are no curves between Lawrence and Loyola, yet the train has slow down. How much time would be saved if the train zoomed at a constant 55mph through this section?