CTA's 2011 ridership at 20-year high (Chicago, Berwyn: theater, to live in, shop)

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

My brown line ride to work is quite pleasurable every morn.

No argument there - but for the far larger crowd of people taking the RED LINE, it sucks!

And those trains are not 3 minutes apart. Nuh-uh, no way, no how.

"Last I checked Uptown, Edgewater and Rogers Park have a lot of Red Line stops."

They do, and the residents there get to know them intimately as they watch the (sprawl) suburbanites zip right by on a Purple Line "express."

You guys really don't see the big picture here, which is to improve options for everyone living closer to the City's core. Then everyone, including the communities hamstrung by lousy transit options for 150 years, can benefit without playing into the real speculator problem.

Labor costs at CTA due to staff manning trains as opposed to labor costs for the buses and the middle & executive management strikes me as minimal giving the skeleton crew you get on a train. It's just a conductor nowadays, correct? Negligible in the bigger picture.

[Chicago60614]

Well from 7:30am to 9:00am and 4:30pm to 6:00pm they're around 3 or 4 minutes apart. I get on at Belmont in morning and again at Merch Mart (change at Fullerton) at night going back and forth to Sheridan. There's always a brown line either coming or going. Never have to wait more than a song on my phone's wait for another. Of course the Brown is still normally packed to the gills coming and going.

The Purple Line is hardly "express". Between slow zones on that route, they're hardly zipping by anyone. It's just from Evanston for the most part, not sprawled out suburbanites. They already have 10 stops in Evanston, it makes sense it skips everything before it gets downtown. Cities were smart back in the day when they actually had enough money to afford express lines (NYC, Chicago...). I wish we had more Express areas like NYC does.

[chirack]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

Labor costs at CTA due to staff manning trains as opposed to labor costs for the buses and the middle & executive management strikes me as minimal giving the skeleton crew you get on a train. It's just a conductor nowadays, correct? Negligible in the bigger picture.

Ah it's more than that. There are customer service agents and janitors for the stations. There are people who maintian and fix the track and cars. Although the routing is mostly automated, there still are people who swicth the trains around the tracks and sometimes you need them at rush hour only to handle to volume of trains. There still is a lot of labor in the el.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

No argument there - but for the far larger crowd of people taking the RED LINE, it sucks!

And those trains are not 3 minutes apart. Nuh-uh, no way, no how.

"Last I checked Uptown, Edgewater and Rogers Park have a lot of Red Line stops."

They do, and the residents there get to know them intimately as they watch the (sprawl) suburbanites zip right by on a Purple Line "express."

You guys really don't see the big picture here, which is to improve options for everyone living closer to the City's core. Then everyone, including the communities hamstrung by lousy transit options for 150 years, can benefit without playing into the real speculator problem.

Labor costs at CTA due to staff manning trains as opposed to labor costs for the buses and the middle & executive management strikes me as minimal giving the skeleton crew you get on a train. It's just a conductor nowadays, correct? Negligible in the bigger picture.

I rode the red line from edgewater to downtown for ten years. I never had issues with infrequent trains.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

I rode the red line from edgewater to downtown for ten years. I never had issues with infrequent trains.

Actually 11 years. May 2000 until October 2011 to be exact. There are many more Red line trains running than Purple line.

Evanston is hardly sprawl.

What exactly are you even arguing? Other than being wrong on most of what you say, I'm not following.

[jdiddy]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

What exactly are you even arguing?

A valid question, once again.

[scarletneon]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

No argument there - but for the far larger crowd of people taking the RED LINE, it sucks!

And those trains are not 3 minutes apart. Nuh-uh, no way, no how.

"Last I checked Uptown, Edgewater and Rogers Park have a lot of Red Line stops."

They do, and the residents there get to know them intimately as they watch the (sprawl) suburbanites zip right by on a Purple Line "express."

You guys really don't see the big picture here, which is to improve options for everyone living closer to the City's core. Then everyone, including the communities hamstrung by lousy transit options for 150 years, can benefit without playing into the real speculator problem.

Labor costs at CTA due to staff manning trains as opposed to labor costs for the buses and the middle & executive management strikes me as minimal giving the skeleton crew you get on a train. It's just a conductor nowadays, correct? Negligible in the bigger picture.

as far as labor, are you referring to my comment?

first of all, thanks to wonderful union rules, an operator is probably going to make more and cost the agency more than someone in the front office that's non-union.

secondly, the previous poster made a good point about all the labor that is involved with rail alone. still, tacking extra cars on the end of a train will have the same effect on capacity (the trains will carry the same amount of customers per hour despite you having to wait a couple more minutes) but overall cost the agency less (ex: say 24 cars need four maintainers and cleaners. that is a sunk cost. but providing the same capacity with 3 8 car trains rather than 6 4 car ones takes THREE less operators).

also, seriously? i rode the red line every day for four years and never had a problem with frequency unless there was an emergency or a cubs game.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by scarletneon

also, seriously? i rode the red line every day for four years and never had a problem with frequency unless there was an emergency or a cubs game.

This.

I have a feeling this poster, who appears to live in Avondale, doesn't have a clue about the Red line.

[emathias]

Thought readers of this thread might appreciate this:

Loop Track Renewal Project starting this month

[prairiestate]

Hasn't anyone else noticed there are some appalling gaps in CTA service? One of the biggest oversights is a lack of bus service along Clybourn, one of the busiest retail corridors in the city. Yes, I know there are many routes intersecting Clybourn. However, go to Google Earth and measure the distance from the nearest stop to the front door of a shopping center. It will generally be a ¼ mile to a ½ mile. And yes, a ¼ mile usually isn't that far. However, what if you're disabled, or elderly, or have kids, or it's pouring rain, or the ground is covered in ice and snow, or you have lots of shopping bags? What if you're just tired and don't feel like walking an extra half mile (round trip) to go shopping? Also, some of the intersecting routes end service early in the evening, meaning you now have to walk a half mile or more to the nearest bus stop if you actually want to go shopping at night.

And what if you want to visit more then one destination along Clybourn? Let's see, I just need to walk 2 blocks back to North Ave., take the North Ave. bus to Ashland, the Ashland bus to Armitage, the Armitage bus back to Clybourn and walk two blocks north. I had better not be out late though, or I'll miss the last bus on Armitage and half to walk almost a mile back to the next closest stop. Maybe it's me, but I think it would be far more convenient to to be able to just take a bus along Clybourn Ave.