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.