I am considering a move...

[Drover]

Originally Posted by Pffister

In regards to the size of the bedrooms: you are totally right, the farther you live from the lake the bigger. The farther you go from the lake, the longest and nightmarish your daily commute will be.

Really? From where to where? See, I always thought one's commute was determined primarily by the distance between their home and workplace rather than their proximity to the lakeshore. What if my workplace is in Rosemont? What benefit is there to living on the lake in that case? Ask someone how long their commute took from Oak Park (10 miles from the lake) to downtown was today. Then ask someone from Edgwater (zero miles from the lake) how long their commute to downtown was. Then compare notes.

Let's face it: there are at least 5 more cities with better public transportation than Chicago's and if you compare Chicago's CTA to European systems or even some Latinamerican city's system, Chicago's L trains and stations look from the third world.

So you can name five cities (out of several DOZEN) with better public transportation. I fail to see how this sole premise logically leads to the conclusion that Chicago's public transportation sucks. Without a few other premises in between, the only conclusion it leads to is "there are 5 cities with better public transportation than Chicago." I was also unaware that public transportation's efficacy depended on the aesthetics of the stations or the trains. I don't care what the train or the station looks like as long as it gets me around in a reasonable amount of time.

Plenty of people live in this city without a car with little difficulty. Plenty more who own a car don't drive it for days or weeks at a time because they have no need. So while Chicago's public transportation system may not be the very very best in the world, it certainly seems adequate to serve over one million people per day.

[Pffister]

Okay Drove, I am not going to make this last longer, you have your opinion and your points, that's fine. I have mine, and I can tell you that it makes absolute nonsense to take almost an hour, using public transportation, to make a barely 3 mile commute... The problem with public transportation in Chicago is that people is adjusting to an old system and not complaining too much about it. A system that was maybe very efficient 40 years ago, but a system that nowadays lacks connections, leaves large areas of the city without train service and at the mercy of the buses. Yes, Chicago has a decent train system, and I am not talking about the buses becasuse tell me a city of more than 500 K people that doesn't have an at least decent bus system...The L needs to improve not only the way it looks (which by the way is embarrasing to the public image of such a first-class world city as is Chicago) the L also, and first of all, needs to dramatically improve its overall efficiency. It shouldn't be a question of how lucky you are with regards to the places where you live and work, it should be a question of having more lines, faster trains, more connections and newer and improved stations too.

[UnderTheLiveOaks]

They're working on it. That's why it's slow.

[tball6733]

Well you better not have New York on your list?

[dreamofmonterey]

Originally Posted by Drover

Midwest culture is generally a bit more relaxed and less coarse than East Coast culture, and it seems that also holds relevant for respective cities. New Yorkers who move or visit here frequently comment on how much more relaxed the atmosphere is here. I don't know how Boston compares to NYC in that regard, but my few trips to urban New England suggest that it's more like NYC than Chicago. But make no mistake, this isn't California or the Deep South, meaning we don't have an endless well of "understanding" or hospitality. We only suffer fools so much before we let 'em know what we think of 'em. Just be decent and don't be an abrasive loudmouth, and you'll get along plenty fine here.

lol- Chicago is a jewel in the middle of a dense dearth of lack of culture (I am dying right now in Tennessee)- NYC is tough- I lived and worked there BUT you have great art and theatre.....

I also went to grad school in Boston- Boston is more student oriented- and Chicago a seems to me a clean, pleasant NYC- then again I am tough

Anyone moving from say, Nashville to NYC may be in for a shock- but I love Chicago and may be moving there soon!


sunny

[viento78]

Yes, the CTA is pathetic. The cost is rediculous for what you get. Is it true the fares are going to be $4.00? Daley Sucks

[viento78]

1. people living on northwest side needing to go to let's say, Midway, have to go downtown first then go southwest. Wasted time. The whole system is based off of people who live downtown. Everyone else is not important. There should be a line from Ohare to Midway. Or one that goes straight down Western avenue from the far northside to the southside. Poor planning.

2. 2 dollars each ride if you don't buy a transit card. It will be going up to 4 dollars soon.

3. Why the hell are they stuffing so many lines into the loop "L"? The traffic in that loop is stupid. Another example of poor planning.

Originally Posted by Drover

Really? From where to where? See, I always thought one's commute was determined primarily by the distance between their home and workplace rather than their proximity to the lakeshore. What if my workplace is in Rosemont? What benefit is there to living on the lake in that case? Ask someone how long their commute took from Oak Park (10 miles from the lake) to downtown was today. Then ask someone from Edgwater (zero miles from the lake) how long their commute to downtown was. Then compare notes.


So you can name five cities (out of several DOZEN) with better public transportation. I fail to see how this sole premise logically leads to the conclusion that Chicago's public transportation sucks. Without a few other premises in between, the only conclusion it leads to is "there are 5 cities with better public transportation than Chicago." I was also unaware that public transportation's efficacy depended on the aesthetics of the stations or the trains. I don't care what the train or the station looks like as long as it gets me around in a reasonable amount of time.

Plenty of people live in this city without a car with little difficulty. Plenty more who own a car don't drive it for days or weeks at a time because they have no need. So while Chicago's public transportation system may not be the very very best in the world, it certainly seems adequate to serve over one million people per day.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by viento78

1. people living on northwest side needing to go to let's say, Midway, have to go downtown first then go southwest. Wasted time. The whole system is based off of people who live downtown. Everyone else is not important. There should be a line from Ohare to Midway. Or one that goes straight down Western avenue from the far northside to the southside. Poor planning.

No, it's not based on people living downtown. It's based on people working downtown. And there is still a huge concentration of people who work downtown. The packed trains at rush hour and growing ridership testify to that fact. As for your "poor planning" complaint, well, the system was constructed primarily when urban transportation was organized in a wheel-and-spoke system because that was the best known way to organize cities and transit at the time. This was before the car came along and made infinite combinations of departure and arrival points possible. So your complaint basically revolves around the city failing to predict the future ubiquitousness of the automobile a century ago.

And I fail to see why a line from O'Hare to Midway is supposedly such an intuitive solution. That may be great for people who want to get from O'Hare to Midway, but what about the people in Rogers Park? What about the people in Woodlawn? Why not build a line from the Howard stop to O'Hare, or from 63rd/Cottage Grove to Midway? If people from Rogers Park need to get to O'Hare, they still need to "waste their time," as you put it, going all the way downtown to pick up the Blue Line all the way back out to O'Hare. An outer north/south line really only makes sense if there are also outer east/west lines to connect to them -- hence the endless "Circle Line" proposals.

Originally Posted by viento78

2. 2 dollars each ride if you don't buy a transit card. It will be going up to 4 dollars soon.

Where on Earth do you get the idea that the fare is going up to $4? Even if it were, I can't help that on the one hand you complain about rising fare rates, and at the other hand you advocate the addition of an additional line, which is a capital cost of billions of dollars. You want a top-shelf system for a dime-store price. Not gonna work that way.

Originally Posted by viento78

3. Why the hell are they stuffing so many lines into the loop "L"? The traffic in that loop is stupid. Another example of poor planning.

At the risk of sounding axiomatic, there are so many trains on the Loop because that's where the infrastructure is, because the Loop area was by far the most common destination for commuters when the system was built. It still is for that matter; perhaps less so than before, but the loop is still a very high-demand destination.

Now that they've got the Brown and Purple Lines going in the same direction (silly IMO; they should have reversed the direction of the Orange Line instead), traffic actually flows pretty smoothly on the Loop, even during rush hour. Switching delays are minimal, and in that regard I honestly can't tell a difference between before and after the Pink Line was added.