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.
The City of Chicago is surveying downtown residents about their traveling habits. Why? To spend tens of millions of dollars to build an exclusive bus transitway between…Union Station, Mag Mile, and Navy Pier. Hmm.
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?
It struck me today how I feel like a suburbanite transplanted into the city. In one way, anyway. Suburbanites who move into civilization always marvel at how well they can get around without their cars. Not that they all give them up; old habits die hard in the Midwest, after all.
Today was the groundbreaking ceremony for the long-awaited Block 37 development. So at least until 2007, farewell to a great poor-weather friend: the portion of Chicago’s sizeable underground pedestrian walkway between State and Dearborn Streets.
This heartening recent Sun-Times article proves that Yours Truly is not the only brave soul to call Chicago home without the added burden of owning a car.