by Aaron M. Renn
Chronicling life riding the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)
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The CTA is conducting a radio station-like promotion in an attempt to boost ridership. The contest is based on a set of winning transit card serial numbers. The Grand Prize is a trip for two to St. Thomas Virgin Islands. [ Source: Chicago Sun-Times 14 July 1999 ]
A Tribune article this week describes the growing "L-wrap" advertising business the CTA is doing. This began with the Illnois Lottery trains a couple years ago. The CTA has taken in about $1.5 million in advertising for these trains so far and is looking to expand the program. United Airlines is sponsoring a fully wrapped eight car train on the Blue Line and other train car wraps are coming. [ Source: Chicago Tribune 15 July 1999 ]
Chicago's Congressional delegation is now saying that it is higly unlikely that the CTA will get more than a few million dollars for its proposed major projects on the Douglas and Ravenswood L. [ Source: Chicago Tribune 16 July 1999 ]
The CTA settled a five year old wrongful death suit for $3 million this week. Brigette Schonauer, a 24 year old chiropractor, was killed when she was hit by a CTA bus while biking at Diversey and Seminary. [ Source: Chicago Tribune 15 July 1999 ]
Jonothan's discussion of overtime policies at one CTA garage last week proved very well timed. He has an update this week:
"This week I would like to share with you a story about the incredible stupidity that was rampant at the CTA this week. Our story begins on Thursday, when a memo came from the desk of Mr. Richard Winston, the vice president of CTA operations. The memo went to each of CTA's eight bus garages and in it, Mr. Winston instructed management to not authorize any overtime to any bus operator for any reason. So, guess what the result was? Each garage, because they are short staffed, was forced to hold buses in the garage. It was really bad on Friday, which is normally a very difficult day for CTA schedulers because Fridays are when we are short the most people. For example, at Forest Glen Garage, which operates such routes as 81 Lawrence, 56 Milwaukee, and 77 Belmont, 48 runs were held in the garage. The same was true for all the other garages. I heard horror stories from operators and passengers about wait times of upwards of 30-45 minutes for buses. The same held true today, Saturday, when again, overtime was not allowed and more runs were held in the garage.
"As you may recall, I mentioned a while back that all the CTA garages, except for one, were authorizing overtime in order to get all the buses that were scheduled out on the street. This one garage used to be run by Mr. Winston before he was promoted to a different position. Now that Mr. Winston is a big cheese downtown, he is determined to end overtime system-wide. You and your readers should understand something about Mr. Winston. He doesn't care about the service that CTA provides - all he cares about is saving money. Mr. Winston always held in runs when he was GM of the said garage, rather than authorize overtime to get the buses out on the street. I have heard stories about him instructing bus operators with full buses to only go part of the way on a route, and then pull in to the garage, thus having to force people to get off the bus and wait for the next one. And the really sad part about this is that at the end of the year, he always collected a nice fat bonus check for keeping his costs down. He sacrificed service so that he could profit from it.
"It is a constant sorce of amazement to me how the CTA concots all this propoganda about on-time, clean service and how they are service orientated, and yet they turn around and sacrifice that service to save a few bucks. They spend $100,000 to design a new website, several hundred thousand to hire an outside firm to determine which service to cut, and an unknown amount of money to stage a contest with fancy prizes. They spend gobs of money making fancy system maps and brochures, conducting studies concerning changing bus route numbers (which Mayor Daley pulled the plug on, thank God) and other wasteful expenditures. And yet, they turn around and do stupid things like holding buses in the garages to save money, while the whole time crying about how they have no money. Well, CTA has money. CTA management just doesn't want to spend it on the most important product that this company sells - service.
"CTA has a new slogan 'CTA - Take it'. I have one that is more appropriate, 'CTA - Take it if it comes'
"Jonothan (who is ashamed to say that he works for CTA)"
Speaking of Jonothan, here is a followup question to his description of the mechanics of bus bunching from John F. Kuczaj (nospam-jfkuczaj@hotmail.com)
"I read Jonothan's explanation about bus bunching, and while I understand the principles of how it occurs, I still have some questions. The one thing I can never figure out is why the drivers on my route (152 Addison) usually keep the bunch together.
"Could you ask Jonathon if there's a reason:
-Why some drivers don't dare pass the bus in front of them...even when no one on their bus is getting off at the next stop, but the front bus is?
-Why some drivers choose to run interference, blocking the cars behind so the front bus gets into traffic easier (this happens during rush hours) rather than passing the front bus.
-Why most drivers don't leap-frog stops when they're bunched. (Example: 2 buses in a row...bus 1 stops at the next stop so bus 2 drives past and hits the stop after that...bus 2 passes and hits the stop after...etc) This scenario would play out perfectly inbound during the AM Rush where few people are getting off the buses until the L Stop.
-Why do some drivers insist on stopping at each stop to attempt to jam on passengers when the bus is packed all the way to the front doors (and the passengers DO fill the bus all the way to the back). Why not go express until people want to get off?
"The only thing I figure is that the drivers may be penalized for being early on their schedule, so they decide slower is better. I'm not being sarcastic here, it just seems like some common sense things aren't being done and maybe silly CTA regulations are preventing them."
The Weekly Breakdown is a small Internet journal devoted to the trials and tribulations of being a regular rider of the Chicago Transit Authority. I would be happy to hear about and include your experiences. Just send mail to breakdown@urbanophile.com.
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