by Aaron M. Renn
Chronicling life riding the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)
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This is the 100th issue of the Weekly Breakdown
Jude Crouch wrote in with a few words:
I had a chance to ride the Santa Express on the Blue Line Saturday. It really was quite fun. The cars are decorated with Italian lights and there is an extra car in the middle of the train where a real Santa, a really friendly Santa, is in his sleigh in the open air. The train looks great from the expressway, too. Nice job CTA.Something's going on on the Blue Line. About 40% of my trips from Oak Park (Austin) which arrive in the Loop about 8:50am have been six-car instead of eight cars. Of course, the train is packed tighter than a can of sardines and there are subsequent stops where people are left standing on the platform because there is no more room (Cicero, Pulaski, Western). This doesn't exactly encourage people to take the CTA. And, of course, the trains tend to get behind schedule because people have to get out of the car to let people out, then the car has to be repacked before the doors can close. Restoring eight-car trains will become even more important as the temperature goes down and the flakes begin to fly and the snow birds add another 25% to the ridership. (Thanks to everyone who did not sneeze.)
So what's the story? Why doesn't the CTA have enough cars?
The reduction in weekend service to the Douglas branch of the Blue Line still bugs me. People on the West Side really need this service restored.
It is really curious, tho, the CTA apparently has not reduced the number of trips, they have just diverted them to the Forest Park branch. Since the closed stations still have personal to secure the stations, the CTA apparently is saving no money with the closing.
Here are a couple more comments from Mike Pietrusinski. Please note that these are a couple weeks old. I'm running behind on getting some things in:
What was up on the Blue Line this week? Twice this week on the way home ~6ish the trains were runnin really slow...Thursday night I was waiting at Cumberland around 5:50pm...few minutes later a train comes whizzing by honkin its horn and passes us straight up...luckily there was another one behind it...but it was running slow....Friday night a train came bout 5:45 but ran really slow....finally at Logan Square the annoucment comes on that the train was turning into an Express and would stop next at Division....At Division the next stop would be at Clark/Lake....now why wouldn't they just run the express from Logan Square to the Thompson Center??? And also there was another inbound train runnin bout 3-4 minutes behind us cuz up until we got to bout Damen I could see it behind us....(I usually get in the last car because I have easy in and out when I get off downtown).....
The Wolfman, a former CTA bus driver, wrote in with a few comments about the manager of the North Park Garage who has been holding in runs to save money to increase her bonus.
The sad part about GM Bledsoe, is that once upon a time, she was a DRIVER! (not a very good one, but unlike a lot of the North Park Braintrust, she actually drove a bus).Hats off to the union reps at North Park. They prove that there are still a few good bus drivers left in the system that care about the passengers (serious, I've known these guys from WAYYYYY back...Howard Monroe, and David Washington). North Park USED to be a great location to work. We had the best buses in the system, and the morale was high. In 1989/90 things started to change for the worse. That was when they (CTA mismanagement) appointed a new General Manager.....
....Richard N. Winston.
See a pattern?
As promised, here is more from Jonothan, our resident CTA bus driver:
I would like to report this week on wasteful expenditures at CTA. Recently, the new Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum opened up at Cannon and Fullerton Drives in Lincoln Park. In response to this, the CTA board decided to extend the #77 Belmont buses to the new museum, which even built a bus turnaround right near its front doors. However, CTA won't make the changes to the Belmont bus until December 12, which is when the new CTA pick starts. So, in order to provide service to the museum, CTA set up a shuttle bus that runs from the Belmont L Station to the museum. I believe they use 2 buses or it could be 3, I'm not exactly sure, but the service runs every 15 minutes during museum hours. Every time I see these buses, they are empty. I never see anyone going to or from the museum. Now, all CTA had to was extend the regular Belmont buses temporarily until the new schedules took effect on Dec. 12. But no, they had to run an entirely seperate bus line. Now, this is the real killing part - keep in mind that CTA is short on bus drivers, so they are still holding runs in every day. In order to run this shuttle bus, they had to pull bus drivers off normal runs and use them to fill the shuttle bus. So, that means buses were held in on other busy routes (such as 91-Austin, 56-Milwaukee, and even the regular Belmont route) so that they could run the shuttle bus to the Nature Museum. This, folks, is a clear example of the type of mismanagement and careless spending that occurs at CTA. It also shows that their priorities are all screwed up. Why on Earth would you create a bus route that runs empty most of the day, while sacrificing service on other routes that people are riding? That doesn't make sense.Speaking of the #77 Belmont bus, there will be noticeable changes come December 12th to that route. Besides being extended to the Nature Museum, all eastbound trips will serve the museum during the hours the museum is open. Previously, only every other bus used to serve the lakeshore/Diversey area, while the others would terminate at Halsted and Belmont. Not any more. So, people heading further east than Halsted will see increased service until the museum closes for the day. And then, every other bus will serve the lakeshore at the current terminal. Also, improvements coming to the #92 Foster bus. This line has been the subject of numerous complaints and problems, and after looking at the new schedule, it looks as if CTA finally fixed this street so that the service would run better.
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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