Getting Around
'The cattle car is being reintroduced on CTA trains...' That's how the Chicago Tribune's Jon Hilkevitch described the CTA's new plan to run seatless 'L' cars on some rush hour trains in Thursday's paper. I wholeheartedly agree.
Getting Around
The front-page story in today's Sun-Times chronicles a northwest side paralegal, Melissa Monroy, who has decided to dump her car to get to work. The way she is quoted in the article, you would think not having a car in Chicago--the city with the second largest train, bus, and commuter rail system in
Getting Around
I've wondering whether the CTA had a backup plan in case disaster befell the current, summer-long weekend closure of half the Loop 'L'. The answer, judging from this weekend's seven-hour service meltdown caused by a cable fire, seems to be 'No.'
Getting Around
The CTA's current 'L' and subway renovation projects are causing travel havoc in the Loop. It would help if the CTA's own customer service attendants knew enough to help detoured travelers navigate all the changes. But not all of them do.
Getting Around
It's really hard to try and prove a point about the worth of public transit when your local public-transit agency just keeps spitting in your face. Thanks to two badly staged 'L' renovation projects, There will be no CTA train service in the entire eastern half of downtown Chicago on most nights and
Getting Around
Kudos to the Chicago Transit Authority on a smartly redesigned website debuting today. It's a step in the right Web 2.0 direction.
Getting Around
Saturday morning, I was honored to be included in CTA Tattler's invitation-only meeting with CTA President Ron Huberman--and met a couple of local transit heroes, as well.
Getting Around
No one could be more thrilled than I am about the end to the CTA operating funding impasse. For transit users like me, the draconian cuts threatened in January would have essentially confined me to my neighborhood--and most likely have pushed me and many others out of Chicago.
Getting Around
You could fill 25 Soldier Fields with the number of people who use Chicago Transit Authority buses and trains on an average weekday. It would take 1.5 million people--half of Chicago's population--to do it. That still wouldn't take into account almost 300,000 additional daily riders of Metra and Pac
Getting Around
Now I've heard a lot of creative funding schemes before, but I've sure never heard of a state lending money to its cities' transit systems to keep them running, much less yanking the same money back later. Well, unless that state is run by Governor Rod Blagojevich.
Getting Around
According to the recently released National Transportation Safety Board report on last year's rush-hour Blue Line derailment that injured more than 150 innocent transit riders, under Frank Kruesi's leadership the CTA falsified most Blue Line track inspections--or simply didn't bother to do them.
Getting Around
So are we all supposed to get on our knees and thank Governor Blagojevich for riding in at the last minute and potentially saving us innocent Chicagoans from 'CTA Doomsday?' Especially since he helped create the Illinois public transit funding emergency in the first place?