John Bracken

Tomorrow is the long-anticipated D-Day for Chicago public transit riders. From the Tribune:

[F]or the duration of the $530 million Brown Line reconstruction project—which runs through late 2009—Red Line service will be reduced to 39 northbound trains during the evening rush, instead of 44, said Jack Hruby, chief of CTA rail operations. …CTA personnel and Chicago police will be deployed at rail stations to assist commuters but also to block people from entering stations if platforms become too crowded, officials said.

CTA Chair Carole Brown puts the honus on, well, us, blogging that “none” of the CTA’s plans

will matter if our customers don’t change their commuting patterns — especially between 7:30am and 8:30am, and between 4:45 and 6:00 pm. Kevin at CTA Tattler, who was at the meeting, said “Hell commences Monday,” and I can’t say I disagree. But the sooner we start, the sooner this project will be over, and I want it done.

Tomorrow we Chicagoans are liable to be a grouse a lot, it will take a lot to reach the frustrations that citizens of Santiago, Chile are having with their TranSantiago. Global Voices has details on the crisis and last week’s protests– which will apparently resume on Wednesday. Writing for OhMyNews, so does Alan Mota:

The program upgraded the bus structure, with new and more modern buses and a system of magnetic cards that was supposed to speed the process of paying for it. But a mistake in planning ended up with delays in the upgrading of the buses without keeping the old ones in the streets, which led transportation in Santiago to a halt.

The subway stations became so crowded that sometimes they are forced to close to avoid overloading, which doesn’t help in the transportation problem. And with the union of public transport drivers threatening to strike, the situation might get even worse. The crisis — and the protests — began Feb. 10.

Ninion has photos of the chaos– and invective for the protesters; Jukioo points to protest propaganda, including one piece that incorporates Ecuadorean techno-folklorico phenom El Delfin (background on El Delfin):

As a result, according to the BBC, “Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has sacked four ministers.”

The last few months have seen protests in the capital, Santiago, over the introduction of a new transport system. In a national TV address, Ms Bachelet said her government owed an apology to Santiago’s residents, especially the poor, for the chaos they have faced.

In Chicago, no cabinet shuffling or apologies, yet. (To the contrary, we re-elected our mayor with more than 70% of the vote. )

Last fall I pointed to the blog maintained by Carole Brown, the chairwoman of the Chicago Transit Authority. Today, after arriving late to work due to CTA delays, I noticed (thanks to Steve Rhodes) this blurb in the Tribune:

[CTA Chairwoman] Brown complained that she saw four CTA buses broken down on the street, with passengers inside, while she was driving home from work on Tuesday.”

[Update: Steve Rhodes points to a comment by Carole Brown on her blog where she implies that the Tribune misquoted her: "I did not drive to or from work on Tuesday. As I have said many times, I take the bus to and from work several times a week, depending on my travel schedule." As of Sunday afternoon, the Tribune article contains no correction.]

For the record, both Brown’s employer, Lehman Brothers, and the CTA offices (reportedly equipped with nearly $6 million in furniture) are located in downtown Chicago, near lots of public transport options. (I’m guessing that Frank Kruesi does not use the CTA for his commutes, either.)

Brown’s latest post is an attempt to mitigate the CTA’s crisis by comparing it to New York’s problems. “I thought it was useful to point out that CTA is not alone in wrestling with the challenges of underfunding.” Indeed. Of course, in New York, the Mayor rides the subway to work. Anyone seen Mayor Daley on the bus lately?

Also, for those who may have missed it: last week Zafer Liles died under a Red Line train last week; the week before a man fell onto the Blue Line’s tracks; and of course last summer a child fell apparently fell through the platform onto the street at Chicago and Franklin. Perhaps none of these incidents are the fault of the CTA, but, coupled with the occassional train running off the rails and ongoing delays, the accidents do not paint a picture of a healthy system.

As much as I would like to blam someone I can see, the CTA’s employees always seem to be doing their best to make increasingly difficult commutes as safe and efficient as possible.

(Other CTA-related posts.)

A friend from New York, who’s doing a stint in Chicago this winter, has been calling the our local transit system “third world.” I don’t know what he’s complaining about, he’s only been stuck on an underground train with no electricity for 25 minutes and had to wait a few times for an express bus not packed to the gills. So, it was with a chuckle that I saw that Alderman Joe Moore agreed with him on Thursday. The CTA Tattler has the text of Moore’s proposal for “City Council hearings on the general CTA nonsense.”

From the Sun Times:

“It’s unconscionable that a city as great as Chicago has a third-world transit system. That’s really what the CTA has become,” Moore said

From CTA Chair Carole Brown’s Thursday post announcing the good news:

CTA is also planning extensive community and customer outreach efforts to educate people about alternative service. I welcome your comments and ideas.

There is, naturally, lots of frustration, and some helpful thoughts, in the comment section. Chicagocarless’ Mike Doyle:

In a major highway project, which you keep comparing this to, people are urged to take transit instead, due to the reduced roadway capacity.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the reverse happens when 25 percent of transit capacity gets taken away for two years: people get in their cars.

This is perhaps the worst misstep in CTA history under Frank Kruesi. Telling 17,000 riders to take Metra instead is not how to run a world-class transit agency. If this is the best he and his management team can do, they need to go.

As a CTA rider, I am tired, simply and deeply tired, from having to suffer on a daily basis due to the mistakes of Kruesi and his management team.

There needs to be a better alternative service plan than this. I cannot believe that the CTA Chair would go along with this without a word of criticism about the significant effect this wrong-headed plan will have on riders.

I just wrote the Sun-Times asking Mayor Daley for Kruesi’s dismissal. I suggest others do the same. He cannot be allowed to do further damage to the CTA or inflict further, needless pain on CTA riders.

Enough is really enough.

The Neighbors Project “is supporting a local campaign to improve the Chicago Transit Authority” that encourages and enables us to email, and SMS, our local officials.

(And in DC, they’re getting wi-fi on the Metro. Fare increases as well, if I recall correctly.)

Here’s the Red Eye’s attempt to use YouTube to generate some CTA commentary. It doesn’t quite work, yet– maybe because there’s not sense that anyone is listenting.

Monifa Thomas failed to include a link or title when she referenced it this morning, but CTA chair Carole Brown has a blog:

I created this blog to answer some of the questions people have been asking about the CTA’s funding situation. We on the board have asked many of these same questions, and we want to help get the word out. So please feel free to send comments or questions to CTAboard@transitchicago.com

The blog seems to have been created as part of a communications strategy to get more funds from Springfield, but she is responding to her readers’ concerns about the slow trains. Are we sure that this is a Chicago public official here?

I promise you that I am trying to get to the bottom of what is going on with the chronic slow zones and switching problems during rush. I wish I could tell you when it was going to improve, but I can’t. I can tell you, that I and the Board are committed to finding out how we can mitigate the problems surrounding the increased travel times on our rail. Sue Leonis, Vice Chair of the Board, and Chairman of the Construction Committee has called for a committee meeting. It is my intent at that meeting to suspend the 5 person limit [corrected from original] on public comment so that the entire Board can hear first hand our riders’ frustration and so that staff can respond immediately to your questions. I invite you to attend. Date and time will be posted shortly.

The CTA has become a mess . I’ve emailed by both my alderman and County Commissioner to no avail at this point. I agree with Crain’s call on the Mayor to fire Kruesi:

Chicago’s middle-class renaissance has come mainly in neighborhoods with access to Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) train and bus lines. Residents of these neighborhoods depend on the CTA to get them to work every day. But the CTA isn’t doing its job….No great city of Chicago’s size can thrive for long with such a sub-par transit system…[Kruesi]blows hundreds of millions on an ill-conceived “super station” at Block 37 and tries to sneak through secret pension sweeteners for himself and other top brass.

On the other had, the CTA mess has increased my reading time significantly. Last week, I read Joshua Green’s lengthy Atlantic Monthly feature on Hilary Clinton. The highlights:

Clinton’s answers to questions about the war can be fugue-like in their complexity, and often assume a processional quality: the laundry lady, pinning up every fact, every conversation, every tidbit of exculpatory evidence for public display, attempting to disappear behind a screen of detail…

On big issues like the war, Washington judges you not by whether you were right or wrong—at least not in the short term—but by how systematically and formidably you maintain your position. Get caught skating in circles (“I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it”), and you’re finished. Clinton’s position on the war may feel like justification after the fact for a decision that is coming to look much worse in hindsight. But over the last four years she has managed, with lawyerly precision and in politically acceptable gradations, to shift from a stance of Thatcherite fortitude before the war to one of betrayed dismay and anger at the Bush administration afterward without any jarring breach of consistency or abrupt shift in direction. When the judges are scoring you on form, that’s like landing a triple Lutz.

When Clinton prepares to answer a reporter’s question, there’s a split-second pause when you can almost see her imagining, in floating cartoon bubbles above her head, the worst-case headline that a candid answer could yield, and then pitching her reply in the least-objectionable terms…. I couldn’t find an instance where she had taken a politically unpopular stance or championed a big idea, like health-care reform, that might not yield immediate benefits but was the right thing to do. Interviews with colleagues and observers seemed to imply an unspoken disappointment that her talents promised a record of more height and substance than she had displayed…