CTA Tattler

Do they seem to be working on the same areas over and over, long after they've been fixed?

Random question: has anyone else noticed that we're back to going very slowly between Wilson and Sheridan on the Red Line again? I thought that was fixed...

Just incase anyone was wondering, this came out as a UIC Crime Alert. I cannot believe this happened during rush hour.

On February 5 at 5:40 p.m., a UIC student was beaten and robbed by five assailants
while riding a CTA Blue Line train in the downtown subway. The offenders took the
victim's iPod. The victim was treated and released from the UIC emergency room for
abrasions to the head and face.

The offenders were described as black males about 18 years of age, all wearing red
varsity-style coats.

Why are these announcements so cryptic? Why is so hard to write:

Beginning Friday, February 6 at 9 PM and ending Saturday, February 7 at 7 AM.

These announcements are really difficult to understand the way they're written.

Haven't seen this mentioned anywhere - about 2pm on Saturday we went down to board a NB red line train at State and Lake.

The station was full - indicator #1 something was wrong - and I noticed a bit of an acrid smell/haze in the air - but it didn't really seem that odd - and there were no announcements or anything.

After about 5 minutes, a NB red line pulls in, relatively full already - doors open, everyone piles in - operator says everyone get one - etc - kind of hurrying, rushing people more than normal.

Then he closes the doors, and gets on the PA, and says "riders - your attention, there's a fire on the track ahead of us, and we're going to have to wait until its out in a moment to get moving. I'm going to keep the doors shut - we're going to have to power down the train - the lights will go out - please don't panic - it'll just be a moment - getting off the train now will only cause further delays, etc."

Mind you - we're still in the station and have not moved from the original position he stopped the train at.

Anyway - the lights go out, the train goes silent, and people are OK with it - and then 5 minutes go by - then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes - and people start popping the manual release and opening doors and getting out. It was getting quite hot in the train by then and uncomfortable, and there were no updates beyond the initial driver PA.

We went up and took the Brown since it goes to the same place we were headed - not sure how long the delay ended up being - but there's no reason that train ever should have boarded - and no reason for the operator to try to lock people inside the train - while IN STATION.

Tread: Well, for one, you described in 15 words what the CTA alert did in 8. So in part, it's a need for brevity.

The alerts posted above, like your example, are also very straight-forward in that they are single, contiguous events (i.e. it starts at one time, end at another, end of story). Some events are more complicated, the hardest to explain being those that repeat daily and go overnight. That's a lot harder to explain in a narrative sentence (and I don't think CTA has quite hit the sweat spot on those, although the wording for those isn't too bad). The CTA used to describe the times/date for all these more narratively and it sometimes took up almost half the alert.