Four weeks ago, CTA communications staff told me the agency would adopt a suggestion of mine to make it easier for riders to find weekend service diversion information. I celebrated that decision on this blog. Trouble is, a month later CTA hasn’t bothered to actually make the change.
Recently, I suggested a way for the CTA to improve the way it tells riders about weekend service diversions on its website. And to my surprise, the agency agreed with me.
Okay, that’s helpful, thanks. A scientist working on the Chicago Tribune’s dime was quoted today in the Trib regarding a Red Eye report on dirty CTA handrails and grab bars, saying, ‘It would be hard for the CTA to do anything about this. It’s best to keep your hands off these surfaces.’
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…
Last year the CTA amassed $20,000 in fines for buses running red lights. So Chicago’s Revenue Department billed the agency–by sending tickets to the wrong address. For a year.
Today, the Chicago Sun-Times Letters page published my response to the CTA’s use of a grade-school contest to determine an appropriate name for the impending new route for the Cermak Branch of the Blue Line–a folly that countermanded the educated judgment of the CTA’s own, well-paid planners and cartographers.
Although thousands of Brown Line riders are Latinos who speak little English, the CTA’s Brown Line Capacity Expansion Project website includes no Spanish content whatsoever–even though the agency’s own Inspector General warned that many Latino residents along the route were unaware of the impending project and station closures.
Finally, the CTA posts a night-owl transit service brochure on the web–right after I blogged to complain about the omission.
This month, the CTA finally released a new Night Owl Service brochure, detailing Chicago’s overnight L and bus services. Trouble is, the brochure is nowhere to be found on the agency’s website. And where was it for the past three years, anyhow?