CTA Tattler

I guess it's obligatory for me to make the first snarky comment....

Well, with the temperature the way it is, I'm just wondering if Hell is close to freezing over...as I thought the two events were likely to be statistically likely.

I also heard that in honor of those two routes which are infamous for bus bunching, they are are going to be adding sound to the bus tracker....now you can hear the screech of the near collisions as they get so close together...or that they are going to rewrite Bus Tracker so that if more than two buses are within 300 feet of each other, it morphs into a bigger bus on the display.

I for one, hail the CTA for solving the mysterious "algorithm problem and look forward to the article in the Journal of Mathematics and the inevitable Nobel prize that goes along with this prize.

You too may win a prize if you tell me how many snarky comments I've made in 2008...it's like counting the jellybeans in a jar :)

Cheers,

KevinB

Part of me says it's about time! but the CTA has endured enough crap, so I'll just say YAY!!!

Epic win.

This blows my theory that the 22 and 36 wouldn't appear on Bus Tracker until the Cubs win a World Series. I wonder how long it will take to get the Grand, Chicago, Division, North and Armitage routes on tracker. I'm not a regular rider of these routes, but have used them frequently enough or walked along parts of their routes often enough to know they have serious gaping/bunching problems.

FYI: the main Western routes have been on tracker since the initial rollout last April, much to my delight. The new addition is the 49B, which travels north from the Western Brown Line station to Howard St.

It's interesting that, even tho there's been so much frustration on this list about the Clark and Broadway buses not being included that it became an inside joke, the combined ridership of the King Dr and Cottage Grove buses is actually quite a bit higher than that of Clark and Broadway. I think this is worth keeping in mind on those rare occasions when South Side transit improvements are raised and very often dismissed here.

The #22 is the line I've been waiting to see in the Bus Tracker since the service started. I can finally sit at home and leave at the exact time so as not to freeze my ass on the street waiting forever for it.

I'd like to see the #72 bus on the tracker, stat.

The other posted mentioned a lot of east-west routes (Armitage, North, Division, Grand) that need to be added to the bus tracker, but they left out #74 FULLERTON! A lot of people from Logan Square/etc use this route to get over to the red line or to Lincoln Park, and I think it should definitely get priority over Armitage at least.

It was after waiting 45 minutes for a 22 bus one night in frigid weather that I first wrote to CTA about getting a "next bus" type of system in place. Too bad it took three years, but good to see nonetheless.

Hey I'm a south looper! I take the 1(Indiana-HydePark, 3(King Drive), and 4(Cottage Grove) very often. They all run right past my building. I'm very grateful for the additions.

I utilize the 22 and 36 often. I actually think they are two of the more predictible routes. For the most part, even at odd hours" they are there. Yes I have had to wait a long time on occasion, but for the most part they come consistently.

jake: While it's possible that the #3 King Dr. Has a very high ridership, I don't think the #4 Cottage Grove does.
The #4 is a totally screwed up route though. I have on occasion waited almost an hour for one & have seen 8 of them traveling in a pack at one time. Not even 22 or 36 ever did that. Six is the record for Broadway for me in Nov. 2007.

Now the bus I would like to see added to bus tracker is the #155 Devon.
Due to the out of control double parking, cross walk parking, jaywalking & bus stop parking on Devon from Leavitt to Sacramento, this route is a disaster.
This is the only place in Chicago where I would enforce the jaywalking laws. People jaywalk 30 feet not just from a cross walk, but 30 feet from a traffic light.
Once on a Sunday afternoon in February, all five buses assigned to the route were running as a pack, meaning 45 minute - 75 minute waits for the damn bus! I was lucky, I had the 45 minute wait, but I was at Devon/Kedzie.

Jake,

You bring up a great point about South Side transit, however it seems that South Siders are not as common as North Siders on this site for reasons unknown.

Garrett,

Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine many people from Logan Square traveling to Lincoln Park. The types of people that live in each area are worlds apart, but perhaps I'm wrong...

Devon in general is a disaster. I can't imagine taking a bus on that street. When I ride my bike down that street, I feel fairly certain someone is going to hit me.

Whenever I wait for the 11 at Fullerton/Sheffield, most of the other riders are waiting for the 74. Who knows how far they're going, but I do know I've heard lots of comments about bunching/gaping issues on the route. I've never had the pleasure of taking the 74. I'll have to hop on sometime to see what's what. Ditto about Devon, chris. All normal rules of traffic flow are willingly suspended.

I look forward to the folks obsessed with the 22 and 36 finally spending enough time on the tracker to see that those routes really aren't as bad as some.

(I crack myself up.)

When I lived in Logan Square, I went to Lincoln Park frequently, and I can testify that the Fullerton bus is a huge pain in the ass. I've heard similar stories about the other east-west buses in that area -- apparently it doesn't start to get reliable until Addison.

The Hyde Park Express would be a nice one to have on there, so I could know whether to let a 6 pass.

"While it's possible that the #3 King Dr. Has a very high ridership, I don't think the #4 Cottage Grove does."

Actually Cottage Grove has higher numbers than King Dr.

These are the CTA's numbers as of September (avg weekday, followed by year-to-date):

3 King Drive 23,331 / 5,170,563
X3 King Drive Express 3,404 / 547,540
4 Cottage Grove 24,406 / 5,586,866
X4 Cottage Grove Express 3,167 / 588,731

For comparison:
22 Clark 24,468 / 5,934,075
36 Broadway 17,029 / 4,367,892

The 72 North would be nice given how ridiculously inconsistent it is in the morning going east.

jake: The Broadway & Clark buses are pretty much the same route south of Diversey, never more than two streets apart south of Division.

chris: I never ride my bike on Devon during business hours.
I either use the alley just north of Devon if I'm going to a place on Devon, otherwise I use Glenlake WB & Rosemont EB.

No on on Devon seems to know how to drive!
Even Peterson is safer & the traffic is moving at much higher speeds than Devon.

Would like to see the 66 bus get added.

I nominate the 136! It is my alternate route to using the red/brown lines to go to work. I especially like to use it when the weather is very cold or rainy, however, if its snowing heavily forget it due to LSD traffic. There is a 136 stop nearly at my door at home and it drops me off nearly directly in front of work. Given the subzero forecast for this week, it would be GREAT if I could watch bus tracker for the 136 and go out to the stop just a few minutes before it arrives instead of freezing to death outside in the Sheridan Road wind tunnel. Anyone that lives along Sheridan Rd. in Edgewater will know exactly what I'm talking about, on windier days it can nearly knock you down!

jake: I forgot to add that the CTA doesn't reflect the supposedly higher ridership of the Cottage Grove bus with more service that the King Dr. bus.
When I wait for a SB #4 at Jackson/Michigan, there are always 2-4 #3 buses to every #4.

Both routes are way too long, I would break the #3 at 63rd & the #4 NB at 55th & SB at 63rd, with them overlapping for the 55th to 63rd segment.
Going to 95th St. is totally insane! That makes them among the longest routes that go to downtown with the #3 going north to Chicago Ave.

The only longer routes that enter downtown are the #6, #14 & #29 which also are erratic. I've only taken the #6 which is often a very long wait with 4-5 coming at once.
The #8, #9, #49, #50, #53, #54 are also as long or longer, but they don't have to fight the Michigan Ave. traffic.

Are there any bus routes in town that people think ARE very reliable?

I second your comment Ed. I take the 136 to work and back every day. It would be nice to have it on there.

Amen to the 66/Chicago. It travels through busy neighborhoods and then stops at the Blue line - would be very handy for the 20-40 people typically standing at the Milwaukee/Chicago Blue line stop to know when the next already jam-packed bus is going to come by....

Kiel: I've never had any problems whatsoever with the #16, #25, or #42 buses!

Although there is occasional bunching, the 49 Western) and x49 are frequent enough that I rarely have to wait very long.

The 78 (Montrose) is like clockwork every morning. I've taken it westbound on weekday mornings for 2 years and it has only made me late for work two times.

The 81 (Lawrence) has got to be on the worst routes for speed (& annoyance), but I haven't really seen any reliability issues as far as bunching goes.

I used to take route 60 occasionally when I was near the west loop and never had too many problems with that, either.

Guess I'm just lucky.....

I'd like to see the 76 (Diversey) and 53 (Pulaski) buses added to the list.

They're not as heavily used as some of the other routes mentioned, but that very fact makes them unpredictable. They tend to show up five or more minutes early when the weather's not bad.

Chicago 66 please. It's one of the more popular routes and it's got bus bunching aplenty.

"Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine many people from Logan Square traveling to Lincoln Park. The types of people that live in each area are worlds apart, but perhaps I'm wrong..."

Chris, I live in Avondale, right near the border with Logan Square, and I go east to Lincoln Park to see friends and visit my doctor. Be careful not to use too broad a brush when painting your word pictures, please.

Some might be shocked to learn that people from Lincoln Square also go to Lincoln Park, Logan Square, Rogers Park, Wicker Park, etc.... It's easy to forget because there's so much congestion, but the distances involved within the city of Chicago really aren't that far, especially on the north side.

KevinB, darling, it's more akin to counting the grains of sand on a beach! Thanks for the chuckles.

"Chris, I live in Avondale, right near the border with Logan Square, and I go east to Lincoln Park to see friends and visit my doctor. Be careful not to use too broad a brush when painting your word pictures, please."

That's exactly why I left myself open and stated that I could be wrong... I still say I'd be surprised if this was a common trip. I didn't say NOBODY was traveling that route. But anyway, it's not really that important because just because I can't imagine it, doesn't mean it isn't happening.

definitely the #66 Chicago ave. this route suffers more from bunching and over-crowding than any other line I imagine.

the morning commute is so bad with crowding that i will sometimes walk several blocks in the opposite direction to catch a bus with some standing room left open. and none of this takes into account that 2 or 3 bunched buses will show up within 5 min of each other, and not another for 10-15 min.

The bus tracker's been really unreliable for me lately. This weekend I was on the 8 Halsted route a few times, and more than half of the buses weren't on the Arrivals page for my stop. (Which sucked in one instance because, seeing that the next bus was supposedly 23 minutes away, I ducked into a coffee shop for something warm, only to watch two buses zoom past that I would've been happy to take.) A lot of northbound evening 147 buses don't seem to show up on it either.

Then again, I guess posts like this are enabling the 22/36 howler crowd; once it turns out that those problems just aren't as bad as they've claimed, the story will be that the bus tracker is unreliable there too.

Interesting, I've never had any Bus Tracker issues with the 147.

Everybody should notice that, aside from two (or truthfully, 1½) routes [#20 & #X20], the Chicago Garage is completely off Bus Tracker! The Chicago Garage has the #54, #X54 (these are the two routes I would like to see added), #74, #53, #65, & #66 routes.
Now, why is this the instance? Perhaps a cynic would scrawl that Chicago Garage is where the CTA has its 17½-year-old buses [Flxible 5300 series], which the Authority has been stating _are going to be retired any day now_. Therefore, they don't have the Bus Tracker hardware installed on them. But perhaps, until all the New Flyer buses (up to #2029) are on the property, they just might be necessary to fill some rush hour runs this month. [But the Flxibles are contractually restricted from running on the #132 Goose Island Express.]
Since they don't have Bus Tracker hardware, they can't be put on a route which has Bus Tracker. Which currently means they won't appear on #20 & #X20.

Let's face it: Some of this isn't the CTA's fault. It's a huge traffic congestion mess that has an impact on the buses and how smoothly they operate.

Excellent! I live right next to a 22/36 bus stop (actually, above it), so now I can time my departure from home when the temperature drops into the single negative digits. Great news!

(I'll follow Tom Susala's lead and not say "It's about time.")

The most popular, and least reliable bus routes are always the ones I ride. And they have to deal with the worst street conditions in the whole city. Nothing is as bad as the bus routes I ride.

The best routes in the city are those I never ride. And they serve neighborhoods full of people nothing like me. They always get the best of everything in those parts of the city, but no one appreciates how good they have it.

And everyone in my neighborhood agrees with me. Anyone who doesn't agree just doesn't know, or they're lying.

You might note that I didn't mention any specific routes or neighborhoods. That's because it really doesn't matter what routes or neighborhoods I'm talking about. I'm just repeating the universal perspective. It's the gut reation of just about anyone who rides the bus. And I'm not surprised that we constantly keep coming right back to it here in this blog because it's rooted in perspective, not facts, and perspective has more value than facts in the blogsphere.

I am surprised that after someone asked if there were routes that people thought were reliable that there were actually some answers more substantial than "the ones I never ride." That was refreshing.

While Devon is a nightmare, certainly the #155 is a major route to a major red line stop (Loyola) and a glaring omission in the current bus-tracker list.

Maybe having better tracking could help provide some impetus for dealing with the Devon traffic situation. Thank Bernie Stone for removing the parking lot at Rockwell and Devon to foist the hideous and VERY unwelcome monstrosity at that location despite intense neighborhood resistance. And which, BTW, has now permanently closed the alley north of Devon at Rockwell.

Also thank Bernie for failing to obtain the requested additional diagonal parking along the first block of side-streets along Devon. And let's not forget the sale of the former city parking garage just south of Devon at Maplewood back 10 years ago. That Devon is a mess is in no small measure a tribute to the legacy of Bernie Stone.

I once waited seventeen hours for the 22. When it finally arrived, there were 238 other 22s bunched up behind it. Daley and Kruesi telephoned me personally to gloat about how they planned it specifically to inconvenience me.

Rusty, I can name one totally reliable route.
The 96 Lunt bus.
Of course it runs on streets that have no traffic, only runs every 20 minutes at most & it barely carries any passengers compared to 30 years ago. Actually it hardly carries any passengers, often, it's the smaller bus with only a front door assigned to it, I wouldn't be surprised if the CTA tried to discontinue it soon.
But 30 years ago it also ran on Touhy to the Howard L station & at the Morse L station, a couple of hundred people would line up in a very neat que every evening rush at the Lunt exit for the WB bus.
The ques were so neat & orderly, newspaper articles were written about it.

Rusty, thanks for the laugh. With bitterly cold weather coming, I needed that!

I'm SO GLAD to see that the #3 and the X3 and X4 are FINALLY getting added! Guess December 33 finally arrived.

Unindicted, I wouldn't split the #3 and #4. There are lots of individuals that take that bus to avoid the madness that is the Red Line. Besides, not everyone that wants to go to 95th gets on downtown.

Well, we'll see about that 96 Lunt bus when it finally gets up on Bustracker the end of this month. I'm sure they've been keeping it off of Bustracker because they knew we'd see just how bad it is. I have a friend who once waited 45 minutes for it, and then four of them showed up together.

I should add a disclaimer, and mention that he did drink a lot, so he might have been seeing double.

Especially with bus tracker the 84 Peterson bus has been very reliable for me. Of course I never ride it in rush hours, so I have no idea what happens to the route when all the morons from the North Shore suburbs clog Ridge. Also, 92 Foster has been pretty good to me.

With about 18 months of non-scientific data under my belt I'd say the 49 and X49 run very consistently. Of course weather's an issue and the six-way intersections at Elston and Milwaukee are a challenge, especially when you throw in the weirdness of the Logan Blvd/Kennedy ramp conglomeration. There are also three large high schools along the route, which can really slow a bus down as students board and leave. Unlike the 96, the Western buses have some of the highest ridership in the system and travel a long route with heavy traffic. The anti-bunching pilot CTA ran last fall was interesting mostly because it was only noticable when my buses were held up because they were judged to be ahead of schedule. It really sucked to be held up, even in service of the noble cause of reducing bunching.