by Aaron M. Renn
Chronicling life riding the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)
Visit The Weekly Breakdown on the web at http://www.urbanophile.com/breakdown/
The CTA has some vintage PCC cars sitting in the Skokie shops that need a new home shortly. No museums can take them because they all seem to be full. If you have any suggestions on how to save them from the scrap heap, please email me. Someone was looking for help with this. Unfortunately that email is sitting on another machine right now, but if you email me, I'll see that it gets forward to the correct person.
Mike Harris (nospam-mharris@enteract.com) wrote in with this story. Note that this was two Tuesdays ago.
"Just an FYI. Red Line trains travelling northbound during rush hour Tuesday afternoon were delayed, at least according to the Loyola attendant, due to a subway car catching fire in the Loop. Evidently they had to turn off electricity in order to get it to stop smoking, and thus trains were substantially delayed at some points. I'm not sure as this is entirely accurate, as my train seemed especially slow between Fullerton and Wilson, which is apart from the Loop, but perhaps further ancedotes will shed light on this."
Those 2600 cars just keep on burnin'.
Our friend goof (nospam-goofy@bpf.promisc.org) had an interesting thing happen to him. I did not see this anywhere in the news, which is kind of surprising.
"Last night as I was on my way to work on the Rock Island 532 train that would arrive at LaSalle street station at 11:45PM, there was a crash with an automobile. It appears someone wanted to commit suicide by driving their train onto the tracks, and going onto a bridge. The train was going its regular speed so it could not stop in time and ran over the car, placing the automobile underneath the train car in front of the car we were in. The train came to a halt and all the conductors made us go to the last car of the train. A giant fire started underneath of the train causing it to catch on fire and the seats too. Fire department crews and Metra crews showed up quickly to put out the fire. The Rock Island superintendent himself showed up and informed us what was going to be going on, that a CTA bus would be coming and a Metra train going northbound would pick us up. Well, about 20 minutes later they said that the bus would be at LaSalle Street Station and would take people wherever needed. Ten more minutes, we found out that the CTA bus was not coming at all because the CTA claimed it did not have any buses available (bravo CTA). So Metra did all it could, provided drinks and let us board a train heading north and they said they would reimburse us for taxi fare home. We hit the car at about 11:30pm, and we left the accident site at around 1:40AM.
"Intresting that the CTA did not have any buses available at 1:40AM... must be our fantastic night service utilizing all the buses (ha)."
CTA bus driver Jonothon is back with a vengeance this week and has some information about bus schedules.
"Several years ago, before I was hired by CTA and I was a novice CTA passenger, I came across some graffiti scrawled on the wall of an "L" station. The graffiti read "CTA - Can't Time Anything". At the time, I didn't really get the meaning behind that message, but now that I have spent 4 years behind the wheel of their buses, the message is loud and clear. The CTA really "can't time anything". This is evident by the absurd schedules that they put out for their buses and trains.
"You may not believe this, but all CTA buses and trains have a schedule. They don't always run on schedule, but they do have a schedule. These schedules, called a "running time" or a "run paddle" by CTA, are antiquated, and do not reflect either the ridership or traffic present on any given route. Or, to put it simply, the CTA doesn't give us enough time to run our routes. Let me give you a classic example -- on the #135 LaSalle Wilson Express, the schedule gives 5 minutes to get from LaSalle and North Avenue to Belmont and LSD. Five minutes! In rush hour! You can't even travel that distance in a car in 5 minutes. Yet, that is the amount of time CTA says it takes. So, when we aren't given enough time to run our routes, we end up running late. Now, many bus operators know that we aren't given enough time on the schedule to run our routes. So, what many bus operators do is leave the terminal a few minutes earlier than they are scheduled to, so that they can try to run on time. But that creates problems because if the following bus doesn't leave a few minutes early too, the following bus will end up late because he is going to pick up more people. This is another major cause of bus bunching, and also explains why a lot of us drive like maniacs. Because if we don't drive like maniacs, we will fall behind schedule.
"There is a real problem with the CTA's bus schedules. There has been a problem for years. And it only gets worse every year as traffic gets heavier and rush hour lasts longer. Yet, the Authority will not revise its schedules. They won't give the bus operators more time to get down the street. What the Authority needs to do is first take a look at each bus route and make realistic changes to the schedules that reflect both traffic and ridership. Yet, I feel that CTA won't do this because they are afraid that if they do take a serious look at the bus schedules, they are going to discover that in order to maintain the current headways on the bus routes, they are going to have to add more buses to many routes. And then, of course, the Authority will cry that it doesn't have the money to add more buses. But isn't it odd that CTA has enough money to start up new express buses on Western and Cermak Avenues, and it has enough money to launch a million dollar advertising campaign? I don't understand how CTA can do all this, how they can advertise and promote the system and start up new services when the current service is so bad. And I mean bad. Last Friday, I saw four #56 Milwaukee buses bunched up southbound at California Ave. at 8pm. I saw four #22 Clark buses bunched up at Diversey and Clark last Saturday afternoon. And the examples go on and on. And this is the type of service that CTA is spending a million dollars to promote. It would be better if they spent that million dollars on improving the service first, and promoting it later when they are sure that they can deliver on-time, clean, safe, and friendly service.
"Now, here's something to think about. Did you know that CTA is biased? Biased towards its bus system. Here's an example of how. Several years back, the Authority decided to publicize the fact that its trains ran on-time 90-some percent of the time. So, they posted schedules in all the rapid transit stations and printed station specific schedules (try to say that three times fast) so that people could plan their trip down to the minute by knowing when their train would arrive and how long their trip would take. But with the bus system, it was a different story. The CTA has always been very reluctant to share its bus schedules with the public. For many years, the only way to know when a bus was going to arrive was to sit out and wait or call the 836-7000 travel info. number. Then, a few years back the Authority started printing bus schedules for its routes, but only for certain routes that had long headways. Eventually, the Authority printed bus schedules for all its bus routes, which you can obtain by calling travel information or going to CTA headquarters at the Mart. Then, the Authority announced it was going to conduct a pilot program by posting bus schedules along several bus routes (49B, 66, and 81 were three of the routes). The purpose of the pilot program, according to Mr. Winston (Vice Pres. of Operations) was to see whether people perferred knowing the exact time the bus was due or if they perferred just knowing how often the bus ran. Duh!! People want to know what time the bus is going to arrive. They don't care how often it runs. But apparently I am wrong, because recently, brand new schedule kiosks were installed at Jefferson Park terminal last week. Each kiosk has a map of the bus route and a schedule. But imagine my surprise when I took a closer look at those schedules, and noticed that instead of listing the times that the buses leave Jefferson Park, it instead only listed the headways. In some cases, the schedule didn't even list the time of the last bus. So what's the point of installing these fancy schedules if they tell the public nothing useful. How does knowing the bus runs every 20 minutes help me, the passenger, out? I, the passenger, want to know when the bus is scheduled to leave, especially if it is freezing cold outside.This is just a classic example of how CTA does not want to share its bus schedules with the public."
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. The views expressed by contributors are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the publisher.
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