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/
Good news! Adam Kerman, executive-director of the Transit Riders Authority, was found not guilty in his criminal tresspass trial last week. The judge ruled that Kerman was not given sufficient time to leave the station before being arrested. [ Source: Chicago Tribune 24 Feb 2000 ]
Metra is considering ordering some passenger coaches without restrooms in order to save money and free up more space for seats. Each restroom takes up eight seats' worth of space. [ Source: Chicago Sun-Times 24 February 2000 ]
Well, in a bit of major personal news, I finally broke down and bought a car. A friend of mine moved to Japan and needed to unload most of his belongings, so I took the car. Of course in addition to the purchase price, I also had to pay insurance, taxes, title and plate fees. And immediately had to sink a good chunk of money into replacing the tires and brakes. We'll see how this car ownership thing turns out.
One immediate dividend was that I was able to drive to see my latest Errol Morris flick at the Music Box. The only problem with driving is that I got there so early the doors still weren't open and I had to hang out on the street with a Reader until they opened.
First, a bit more on the CTA's automated announcement systems, courtesy of Andrew Morris:
Just got around to reading the WB for last week, and wanted to comment on the automatic announcements on the trains.CTA had been using them on the Blue Line about two or three months ago, but for some reason they aren't anymore (not during rush hour, anyway). Maybe it was a test installation, I don't know. I imagine they'll be coming back at some point, though.
I also got the chance to hear one other announcement from the thing: "[beep][beep][beep][beep] Attention passengers, we are experiencing a short delay...." Encouraging, isn't it, that they recorded that one?
And some more from Cheryl Powell on the station announcement system:
The signs and announcements have been fully operational at the Green Line 35th St. station for about 6 months. First there's a horn, then the announcement that a train either from or to the Loop will be arriving in the station in about one minute. The horn is very useful; it can be heard from half a block away, and depending on how close to the station one is, one can decide whether or not it is feasible to run to the station and up the steps. I wouldn't want to live near it though. The announcements are pre-recorded. When they began them at 35th and State, the announcer sounded like someone who would be on the intercom at K-Mart announcing the blue light special. Now the announcer is a woman who sounds like she could live in that neighborhood. She's a definite improvement.
Don Hosek wrote in to say:
So I'm going to the auto show with my girlfriend on Saturday. We figure we'll just take the L downtown, hop on the 127 and get right there. And it works beautifully, except of course, that the 127 can't follow it's published route thanks to Michigan Avenue construction (why this didn't appear in ANY of the publicity materials, I'll never know). But, all connections were made, the driver was courteous, we didn't have to pay for the bus (not sure if this is standard... as you'll see later).We look at cars, get jostled around quite a bit by crowds, wait in lines, all the stuff you do at an auto show (and frankly, it didn't really appeal to me at all, but you do what you gotta to keep the relationship happy).
We head out to go to dinner, hop on another 127. The driver collects fares: So which is it, a free bus or a pay bus? We don't know. We sit back and talk and ride when I notice that we've been sitting at a light for a LONG time and the driver is honking her horn and yelling out the window. Huh? She finally manages to get the attention of the traffic cop who's directing cars through the intersection and he comes over and they have a brief conversation, which I can barely hear, but it sounds like SHE'S ASKING DIRECTIONS. Can't be. We sit through three or four more green lights and finally get onto LSD. I look out the window because we turned in the opposite direction that I was expecting us to and notice that we're SOUTH OF MICHAEL REESE. Huh? Apparently we WERE lost.
We had managed to get from the loop to McCormick place in about 10-15 minutes. It took nearly an hour to get from McCormick place to Roosevelt and State. Screwed up the original plans for dinner something fierce. Real nice sales job for the assorted suburbanites who made up the bulk of the bus passengers. Especially the family ahead of us who were planning on taking the Geneva train out which on Saturday evening runs at 2 hour headways. They missed their train courtesy of this delay.
Here's a bit on the water main break a couple weeks ago that knocked out service on the west leg of the Loop L from David S. Cole:
With the water almost up to my 6th floor office window at 6:00 PM, I decided to head down to the site and check it out for myself.I grabbed the Brown Line at Chicago Avenue and got off at Clark/Lake. The sight of a guy on the platform getting paid $18 an hour to bark "Brown Line! Brown Line! Brown Line! Brown Line!" into a megaphone while wearing an orange vest certainly made me pause for a minute to reevaluate my own career goals before walking down to the scene.
Once there, I saw more Chicago police cars under an L since the filming of The Blues Brothers.
Most of the water appeared to have been cleared away, although the street was still more than a bit damp. I couldn't get very close to the sinkhole itself, but it appeared to be directly next to the stairs leading up to the east platform of the Quincy/Wells L stop.
I couldn't see any damage to the L structure itself, but I could swear the Sears Tower is now leaning a bit to the east.
I was hoping to ride a Brown Line train all the way down to Roosevelt (not very often that is possible), but it appeared as if the southbound Brown Line trains were being taken out of service at Wabash/Adams before running empty down to 14th and reversed. While waiting for my northbound Brown Line, I saw a 6-car train of 2400's with "Express" in the destination signs go southbound through Wabash/Adams without stopping. The train appeared to be empty. No idea what the story is behind that.
Back at Clark/Lake, the Mr. Orange Vest Guy was still barking "Brown Line! Brown Line! Brown Line! Brown Line!" Tough job, but somebody's gotta do it. Rest of the ride home was uneventful.
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.
To subscribe to the email edition, please send a message to breakdown-request@urbanophile.com with your request. Ditto for unsubscribes.
Just Say No to Frames, Ads, and Animated GIF's