When ChicagoNow debuted in May 2009, Chicagoist called CTA Tattler one of the site’s most notable blogs. Predating ChicagoNow by several years, CTA Tattler came with a built-in reputation as the Windy City’s go-to online source for transit news. So why for the past several months has RedEye’s Going Public column been beating the Tattler at its own game?
I guess it must be something in the water. But as usual, another Illinois politician has decided that Chicagoans would rather have lower fares than useful transit service. Recently, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn brokered a deal to stop a 2010 CTA fare hike. My question is: who asked him to?
Local urban-affairs blogger Aaron Renn says there’s a very good reason Chicago doesn’t have a world-class transit system: it doesn’t want one. Recently on his The Urbanophile blog, Renn began a multi-part series examining why Chicago never seems to be able to get its act together to plan, build, and maintain innovative public-transit infrastructure the likes of which other world cities have enjoyed for years. Even though Chicagoans love to complain at length about the CTA, could it be we actually think the agency is doing a good-enough job?
This week, the Chicago Transit Authority is surveying riders on the front page of its website. As you might expect (especially in the still-turbulent wake of Ron Huberman’s exit), the agency is doing a rotten job of it.
As all of Boystown–and all of Chicago media, for that matter–already knows, former Chicago Transit Authority President Ron Huberman is a proud gay man. Today, however, for the first time, that fact was reported in citywide media.
A world city rises and falls on the strength of its public transit, no matter what Mayor Daley says. World city leaders know this through and through. So why doesn’t Daley?
This week, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley made his most uninformed, misguided decision in recent memory by deciding to pull Chicago Transit Authority President Ron Huberman out of the post and install him as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
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.