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.
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Other posts you might like from Chicago Carless:
CTA President Ron Huberman calls new signage barring 'continuous riding' through 'L' terminals part of an overall 'sign upgrade' at stations. But what about the health and safety of homeless people ejected from the rail system into frigid Chicago winters?
'They should take those signs down and find a way to take care of people, not punish people. These are people who are cold, these are people who are poor, these are people who are suffering already. Why slap them in the face?'
Since 2001, many of the security tactics we've ended up with on our nation's transit systems in response to Homeland Security hype have been less than efficient. Now New York has implemented random bag searches at subway entrances. And how that stops terrorists from simply getting on at another station is anybody's guess.
