CTA Tattler

Chicago ranks third in public transit "friendliness"

A change of pace.

I can't be the only one around here who is a little tired of posts about where Huberman is working now and who's the boss at the CTA.

Don't get me wrong, Of course it's important But for one day, I figure we can talk about how others outside Chicago perceive the CTA. 

So, when Travel and Leisure magazine last year looked at America's Favorite Cities, Chicago ranked third in "public transportation and pedestrian friendliness." Portland is No. 1, followed by DC. Portland, I get it. But I wonder if folks who attended the inauguration think that Chicago ranks behind DC.

I think it's always good to get an outside perspective. Have a good weekend.

And Go Steelers!

--Kevin <-- Pittsburgh native

CTA board to name current EVP Carter as acting president on Friday

Dorval Carter, the CTA's executive vice president for operations support, will be appointed acting president at a special board meeting set for this Friday, according to the agenda posted Wednesday on the CTA Web site. (Hat tip to my brother Dan.)

Carter returned to the CTA in 2000 as the executive vice president for management and performance, after serving as one of the top lawyers at the Federal Transit Administration. So it's a good bet he can be expected to continue Huberman's performance management programs. Carter previously had worked as an attorney for the CTA.

Meanwhile, Greg Hinz reported on his Crain's blog Tuesday that Dennis Anosike, the CTA's chief financial officer, has resigned. No word yet whether he'll be moving to CPS, but my limited research shows he was NOT hired by Huberman. (As an aside, the first hit for "Dennis Anosike" at Google is a page at Huffington Post's Fundrace site that show a person name Dennis Anosike donated $500 to the "presidential elections 2008." I love the Internet.)

There certainly are quite a few people whom Huberman hired, some of whom no doubt will follow him. I just hope the brain drain isn't too severe and Carter can keep things going. A good manager needs a good CFO, for instance.

Help wanted: Job "dimensions" for CTA president position

So I heard there's a job opening at the CTA. The top job in fact. CTA President Ron Huberman has been tapped by Mayor Daley to run the Chicago Public Schools in the wake of the DC departure for former Supt. Arne Duncan.

All in all, I think Huberman served us -- his customers -- fairly well. Certainly there were some missteps, such as poor communications with passengers that led to a self-evacuation of the Blue Line. But there were many successes as well, such as slow zone repairs, expanded Bus Tracker and new Web site.

Based on how Daley uses his top lieutenants as chess pieces, moving them from one top job to another, chances are good that he'll pick someone from his most trusted inner circle to replace Huberman. As Fran Spielman notes in her take on the Huberman schools appointment: "The mayor has long believed that "good managers can manage anything" -- even if they don't have a clue about the agencies under their command."

But that doesn't mean we can't create our own job "dimensions" -- key characteristics, experience, abilities and skills -- that the new president should have. Here's my shot. I know you'll feel free to chime in.

• Solid education and experience in managing large budgets, a huge unionized (for the most part) workforce and large capital assets. At minimum, MBA required, preferably in Finance or Management.
• Seasoned executive who can think strategically and translate top-level business requirements into measureable goals and objectives.
• Keen ability to make the best decisions under pressure. 
• Must be a motivator and collaborator. Needs top-notch customer service know-how, including the ability to use innovative techniques to improve the customer experience.

That's a start. What say you?

Done deal: Huberman to replace Duncan at CPS

(This is Saturday's and Sunday's updated post bumped to today with the latest info and a new head. This way we keep the thoughtful comments in one place.)

So now Crain's, the Sun-Times and the Tribune are all reporting: It's a done deal. Daley has found his schools superintendent in Huberman -- the same guy he's turned to before to take other tough jobs in monolithic city organizations.

Over the last three-plus days since this post first went up, you folks have made some thoughtful comments on this subject, so there's not much more new for me to say. Let me just recap some of your salient points.

• Ron was getting some good stuff done in the 21 months he led the CTA. I don't like that he can't stay and complete the job. It causes problems when you don't have continuity. It would have been good to see him finish big his initiatives, such as improvements in rider communications and performance management.
• Starting over again at the CTA after only two years is a step backward for Chicago.
• Ron once described the CTA as the most difficult job he'd had to date, even harder than working as Daley's Chief of Staff. Wait til he sees the mess that is CPS.
• That sucks. It really shows how Daley prioritizes the CTA. A holding pen for rising stars like Huberman, or a dumping ground for falling ones, like Kruesi.

The Sun-Times story notes that there will be a huge power vacuum at the top of CTA management with Huberman's departure, and CTA Board President Carole Brown's attempts to get a job in Barack's administration.

Good God, y'all.

From Saturday (Jan. 24) and Sunday (Jan. 25) posts:

UPDATE: Daley himself confirms that he has talked about the superintentent job with Huberman.

Mayor Daley is considering naming CTA President Ron Huberman as the new Chicago Public Schools superintendent, according to Chicago Tribune sources. Ron has no comment.

The schools top job opened up when President Barack Obama named Arne Duncan his Education Secretary. While Duncan once was criticized for not having a rich enough schools background (since he was never a teacher), he certainly had more school experience than Huberman does.

Duncan's educational background (per MK's request, from Wikipedia):

Duncan has extensive experience in educational policy and management, but has not been a teacher. In 1992, Duncan became director of the Ariel Education Initiative, a program to enhance educational opportunities for children on Chicago's South Side that was started by John W. Rogers, Jr., and in 1998 he joined the Chicago Public Schools. He became Deputy Chief of Staff for former Schools CEO Paul Vallas in 1999. In 1996, along with Rogers, he was part of a network that funded and supported Ariel Community Academy.

Ron has no educational experience.

While I don't necessarily think the CTA president must have transit experience like some around here do, I do believe schools management experience is crucial for a schools superintendent.

Daley reportedly has considered 150 folks for the job. We'll just have to see who gets the nod -- reportedly to come next week.

Google Maps adds transit layer; get something fixed - report it!

Earlier this month, Google added a public transportation layer to 59 big city maps, including Chicago.

Charles, my CTA Tattler tipster on this, writes: "My favorite use is to find my destination in Google Maps, then look for the nearest train station or bus stop. I have the benefit of living downtown, so I'm just two blocks from every train line in the city – makes it easier to use Google Maps than Tripsweb."

Charles is right, if you know the CTA system fairly well. Of course the CTA has had its partnership with Google Maps since April of 2008 to provide transit trip information. The link to Google Maps is on CTA's home page, but when you click through to the map the transit layer is not enabled. You have to click "More" in the map and then click "Transit."

Suggestion to CTA Web site gurus: Enable the Transit layer on your Google Map as the default.

If you see something, say something -- and get it fixed! In the past two weeks I have emailed CTA's Customer Service department twice about things that needed fixing on the Morse Red Line platform. And both times they were fixed -- once by the next day and once within three days. The CTA fixed one broken heat lamp and removed graffiti from a sign.

Since "Percent of Customer Complaints Not Closed Out Within 14 Days" is one of the Performance Metrics tracked, I suspect the customer service boss keeps close tabs on open complaints.

I like emailing rather than calling (1-888-968-7282) because then I have a record in my outbox. So send your email and get stuff fixed.

Is the CTA "shovel-ready?" Brown sets her sight on stimulus dollars for CTA

CTA Board Chairwoman Carole Brown on Thursday testified before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, hoping to get her hands on some of Barack's economic stimulus dollars.

President Obama is looking for so-called "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects to create jobs and stimulate a moribund economy. Brown told ABC7 News that some of those projects "include purchasing 58 new buses, updating rails, new signal work, and station improvements." 

"And what I want to reiterate is as long as the process is streamlined, as long as they look at is as kind of an emergency to help stimulate the economy and invest in the economy, hence to streamline the process of getting the money to us, that we've got plenty of projects ready to go," said Brown.

Speaking of signal work, the CTA gets back at it on the Loop elevated this weekend, closing down stations Sunday on the Wells-Van Buren stretch. Details here.

Now you'll know when your Clark bus is not coming. Don't forget -- the #22 Clark and #36 Broadway (and 9 other buses) go live on Bus Tracker Monday. I don't ride them, so y'all must let me know how reliable Tracker is on these routes. Details here.

"Passengers, make your adjustments"; making a CTA getaway

Chicago newcomer Jake yesterday wondered about what happened to the "Tattler" part of CTA Tattler. Other longer-term readers correctly chimed in that I originally started writing this blog about things "seen and heard on the Chicago Transit Authority."

There's no question the focus of CTA Tattler has drifted more toward CTA news and analysis, plus a riders forum. But that doesn't mean I don't treasure harvesting some good old-fashioned "Tattler Tales." Take the other night, for instance.

"Passengers, make your adjustments"

Thus spoke the loquacious motorman on the Red Line north at Fullerton and at Belmont, urging passengers to quickly change trains.

But it just made me think of old women hiking up their garters and men adjusting their "package." And I was trying hard to get both thoughts out of my head.

The guy who "shut down" the Blue Line

And it could have been you on that icy platform. A rider tells his story about how he ran for the train door on the icy California Blue Line paltform, and ended up flat on his back. Concerned passengers on the train pulled doors open -- even a door on the side of the train away from the platform. That caused some major delays. Read his tale of woe at Doors Open on the Left, the LiveJournal community. (Hat tip to Bob.)

The slow getaway via CTA bus

Finally, did you see the Tribune story about the bank robber in Lincoln Square who made his getaway on a CTA bus? He didn't get very far.

Nope, that was not a joke. Cheers!

I don't play games; I report and analyze facts

I don't ordinarily give up an entire post to debating a single commenter. But I feel Rusty's comments to my post yesterday deserve a reply, because he may represent a small, but horribly misinformed number of CTA riders.

Rusty wrote:

"The metrics shown are hand chosen." Yes, but the metrics chosen reflect the mission of the CTA: On-time, safe, clean, friendly (courteous), and efficient, plus ridership. That's what riders care about, and that's what the CTA measures.

"The raw data isn't going to be released on the website." What part of the following data is not raw (all are January 2008 figures)?

• Mean Miles Between Reported Rail Vehicle Defects: 2,659 
• Miles Between Reported Bus Service Disruptions Due to Equipment: 4,069
• Rail NTD Security-Related Incidents per 100,000 miles: 1.7
• Average Days Between Completed Rail Detail Cleans: 23
• % of Graffiti Work Orders Completed Within 7 Days: 98.4%

Rusty suggested four ways to approach this data, including: "Use the pre-parsed, pre-packaged data that Kevin is mistaking for raw data, and attempt to use them to come to valid conclusions." The data are the data. There is no mistake. See above. I'm not sure how you can pre-parse and pre-package mean miles between reported rail vehicle defects. If you don't believe the facts as presented, that's a different story. I do.

"But let's not pretend that the pre-parsed, pre-crunched numbers that have "changed format" since Ron's rise to power are actually raw data that can be used for independent review. That's just naive." How? See above.

"If you want to play games, then your rhetoric is nice. But if you seriously want a real examination of CTA's performance, the game being played here is bush league." I don't play games. I don't spout rhetoric. I report, interpret and analyze facts. And the Bush league left office yesterday. Good riddance. 

To be sure, the CTA is an imperfect transit agency, managed and operated by imperfect people, just as you and me are imperfect. But that doesn't mean we don't expect the very best from them every day. I do and I will continue to hold the CTA to high standards and demand accountability to the riding public.

Performance metrics tables - the meat behind the percentage increases and decreases

Over the last few days, our pal Rusty (and others) have questioned the worth of the Ron Huberman's President's Report, calling it a "self-written job review," "self-generated PR" and "spin." Rusty says, ". . . let's get the numbers parsed and crunched in a way that comes up with conclusions that have some real meaning beyond an annual self-review."

Fair enough. So have at it Rusty. The numbers come from the monthly Performance Metrics tables that the CTA has published since 2004. However, when Huberman came on board, he didn't like the format and wanted to make sure they were measuring the right things, so he changed results they were measuring and released a dashboard report, where you could see at a glance whether the CTA was hitting its target (Green), coming within 10% of the target (Yellow), or missing the target by 10% or more (Red). And the target/goal is clearly defined.

In retrospect, I realize I should have posted this yesterday. Hindsight is 20-20.The most recent table (pdf) on the site shows the latest November figures, while the board report has December numbers. But they are chock-full of informational nuggets, such as:

• In November 2008, there were 66 rail delays of 10 miutes or more.
• In January 2008, there were 132 such rail delays.
• The target is 78 such delays or fewer.

Below is my own edited, mash-up of the table to fit into this tight space.

But you should go ahead and download the PDF to get your head spinning from all those figures. A quick glance shows that the CTA never met its goal in 2008 of having less than "2% of weekday bus intervals (time between two buses at a bus stop) that are 60 seconds or less divided by the total number weekday bus intervals traveled during the month."

And Rusty, let us know what you find when you are done parsing and crunching.

PS: Congrats to Barack Obama on his inauguration. Go here to order the Obama Commemorative SmarTrip Card to use on DC's Metro. (Thanks to Martha and others for the tip.)

Eight rail stations in Phase 1 of digital sign rollout; ridership up 5.4% in 2008

After a little poking around on the CTA Web site, I found CTA President Ron Huberman's report to the board for January. So here are details from some of the news out of the meeting.

Eight more rail stations to get digital signs. I reported last week about the Red Line 47th Street station testing out the new digital signs displaying arrival train times and advertising. That pilot test is over and now we move into Phase 1 with sign being installed at these eight stations: 18th Street (Pink); 79th/Dan Ryan (Red – Southbound); 35th/IIT (Green – Southbound); Sox 35th/Dan Ryan (Red – Southbound); Roosevelt (Orange/Green); Addison (Red – Northbound); Davis (Purple); Howard (Red/Yellow/Purple). The signs will be installed within the next month.

Total ridership up 5.4%. The CTA system boasted 526.4 million rides in 2008, a 5.4% increase over 2007. Bus rides were up 6.1% (18.9 million rides) for a total of 328.2 million. Rail rides increased 4.1% (7.9 million) for a total of 198.2 million rides.

Top 10 bus routes for ridership gains. Here are the bus routes that showed the biggest gains in ridership in 2008.

 

Rail lines increase in ridership. Here are the rider increases the rail lines saw in 2008.

 

Last week when I reported the percentage increase/decrease in these performance metrics, many of you wanted to see the actual figures backing up the percentages. They are here in Ron's report. Such doubters you are! ;-)

I did the math on all the metrics and of course it matches what the CTA reports. More details on these later this week.

Two more words from this Pittsburgh native:

Go Steelers!