Buh-Bye Now, Jeffrey Ladd
Perhaps we can be a public-transit region now. Yesterday, in response to a Chicago Tribune article that decried the sorry state of repair of Metra‘s Roosevelt Road station, I pointed the finger of blame squarely at Chicago-hating Metra Chair Jeffrey Ladd, who since 2003 has gone out of his way to try to run the suburban commuter rail system with no regard for the major city around which it revolves.
Yesterday, I hoped that the Metra Board would make good on its longtime threat of dumping dump Ladd in favor of new leadership friendly to all forms of Chicagoland transit, city and suburban. Today, Ladd did their dirtywork for them. As reported in today’s Trib, Ladd is resigning, effective at the end of this month.
According to Ladd, “This is the perfect time to get a new leader”, now that he’s helped get major suburban-only rail improvement projects off the ground. I suppose his resignation couldn’t also be because, in the process, he managed to alienate the Metra Board, suburban Cook County commissioners, and the Chicago Congressional delegation, to boot? Nah, couldn’t be.
Other posts you might like from Chicago Carless:
It's a Friday evening outbound rush on the Brown Line. As the train leaves Merchandise Mart, a petite, 20-something, bottle-blonde DePaulite, balancing on a window seat with her impossibly pink stilettos barely reaching the floor, pulls out her cell phone, sucks her teeth, and dials...
According to the recently released National Transportation Safety Board report on last year's rush-hour Blue Line derailment that injured more than 150 innocent transit riders, under Frank Kruesi's leadership the CTA falsified most Blue Line track inspections--or simply didn't bother to do them.
I've wondering whether the CTA had a backup plan in case disaster befell the current, summer-long weekend closure of half the Loop 'L'. The answer, judging from this weekend's seven-hour service meltdown caused by a cable fire, seems to be 'No.'
