babbling blue

What the fuck is with this winter? I am cannot remember one that has been more miserable. It seems like we’ve had more snow, more rain and more bitterly cold days than any winter in a long time. I wouldn’t expect to get all three of those in the same winter, but somehow we have. It was 5 degrees during my commute home last night, and about 3 on my way to work this morning. I recall one day last week when I went to lunch and thought “Wow, it got warm!” When I got back to my desk I checked the temperature. It was 17. How fucking sad is that? It had been so damn cold that 17 felt warm to me.

So just go the fuck away already, winter. I’m so over you. I can’t wait to move on to spring.

P.S. Fuck you, CTA, for your delayed train this morning and your over-crowded, piece of shit* buses every damn day.

*I was on a relatively new bus yesterday, and the driver had to get off the bus several times to go push the back doors closed. This is only one example of many.

Well the transit funding measure passed yesterday, so Doomsday III has been averted.

“All’s well that ends well,” Blagojevich said. “I think the wait was well worth it because the result is very, I think, significant for the people in the Chicagoland area as well as for our senior citizens all across Illinois who are going to see an improvement in their quality of life.”

Oh, shut the fuck up, you horse’s ass! You are truly a first class shit head. It was not worth the wait. This should have been settled months ago.

Sen. Martin Sandoval (D-Chicago) compared Blagojevich to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and other “dictators.”

“Today democracy is dead in Illinois,” said Sandoval, who voted for the plan. “There is no give and take. There is no compromise.”

Ha! And this is a fellow Democrat. While I personally wouldn’t go so far as to call Blago a dictator, he is clearly an impediment to progress rather than a driver behind it. And the state legislators are far from being blameless in this whole fiasco.

So does this mean everything is now wonderful, and transit is going to improve drastically for us? Hardly.

Transit officials warned the job is only half done. RTA Chairman Jim Reilly said lawmakers now must turn their attention to finding money to repair the system’s crumbling tracks, aging buses and rusting equipment, needs that could tally as much as $10 billion.

The funding measure passed this week will simply keep the CTA, Metra and Pace systems up and running as they are now–poorly. But at least they will be running.

(Chicago Tribune article)

I have been a little busier than anticipated so I haven’t blogged about my vacation, or anything else that I intended to. I hope that stuff will be coming up once I get a chance to download my pictures from my camera. In the meantime, I think it’s time for another little CTA rant. But this one isn’t directed at the CTA.

So we in the Chicagoland area are staring down our third “Doomsday” in the past six months. This means that the CTA is threatening to massively slash bus services (eliminating 81 of 154 bus routes) and raise fares (train fares would go up by as much as $1.25, more than a 50% increase). In the previous two Doomsdays, the Governor has offered temporary solutions to bail out the local transit agencies (CTA, Metra, Pace). The first was a pay day loan (resulting in this Doomsday being worse than the last two) and the second was a grant of money that he apparently “appropriated” from Federal highway funds. At the time of the 2nd, in early November, the Governor said he and the legislature just needed a couple more weeks to come up with a permanent solution. They haven’t.

The Governor and the Legislature have continued their petty bickering, acting like children on a playground rather than grown-up, elected officials. The Governor has been the worst offender of all. He has continuously vowed to veto any tax increases, instead preferring some half-baked plan to increase gambling (’cause that’s healthy) in Illinois.

That’s what has come before. What’s happening now? Well the Legislature finally managed to pass a measure to increase sales tax in Chicago and the collar counties by 0.25% (that’s an extra penny on a $5 purchase) and to allow Chicago to increase their real estate transfer tax (I think that’s a bit of a scam, but what can you do?). It passed by the exact number of votes required. So what does the Governor do? In a blatantly transparent move of political theatrics, he refuses to sign the measure unless all senior citizens are given free rides on all buses and train operated by the three transit agencies. Huh? This came out of nowhere! For one thing, seniors already pay reduced fares. For another, the Chicago Tribune reports that seniors as a group are no more or less poor than those in other age brackets, but they do vote in higher percentages. The transit agencies now say they will need to raise fares to compensate for the lack of money coming from seniors. And there is no guarantee that the measure will pass the Legislature.

House Speaker Michael Madigan said Monday he expects lawmakers to go along with Blagojevich but warned of “weakness” among some who voted for it last week.

“The governor would be well-advised to get to work, stop causing conflict, stop causing confrontation, get on the phone, talk to people who are a little weak on their support for his position,” Madigan said on WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight.”

Madigan should probably take his own advice a little more, but he’s right on this one. (quote link)

This whole situation is simply infuriating. Illinois is a national embarrassment. There are probably tens of thousands of people wondering if they’ll be able to get to work next week. And Blagojevich plays games. He should really stick to Candy Land, as that seems to be about all he can handle.

RedEye Blog Doomsday News

For the last couple years, the CTA has had to beg, plead, threaten and cajole to get the money it needs. It is very annoying. They always come up with these horrible contingency plans that will result in both massive fare hikes and service cutbacks if they don’t get the money they need from the state.

Normally our illustrious mayor is fairly quiet on the subject of the CTA. He seems to take a fairly hands-off approach, at least publicly. So you know if he’s getting personally involved the situation is serious. The deadline for funding is quickly approaching (Sept. 15). And he’s getting involved.

“If Springfield doesn’t act, every resident will suffer through more traffic congestion, more air pollution, more absenteeism and less productivity, slower transit service and more money out of our pockets for higher fares and car travel,” Daley told about 200 sign-carrying transit advocates, union workers and others at a rally organized by the Regional Transportation Authority at the James R. Thompson Center.

I’m not a huge fan of Daley these days, but he rather nicely sums up why the CTA needs the money from the state. Mass transit is an issue that effects everyone, whether you take it yourself or not.

Our useless state government is being even more obnoxious than usual.

The RTA [Regional Transit Authority] and other transit agencies have been calling for approval of the legislation for months, but the General Assembly has been stymied by budget negotiations and personal differences between the governor and legislative leaders.

Come on, guys. Get your heads out of your asses for a minute and figure this out! I can’t decide who makes me more angry, the idiots in Springfield or the CTA itself.

Though to be fair (and I know I’m jinxing myself here) my commute was uncharacteristically quick and smooth this morning.

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve blogged again. Bad Josh! Eh, who cares?

Anyway, I’m still alive and still blogging, when I get around to it. Summer is coming, so don’t expect me to spend too much time slaving away at the keyboard to update all 2-3 of you on the mundane details of my unexciting life! But then again, the presidential campaigns are under way, so I may need to get back into more political blogging. Time will tell.

As far as my life now, I’m still working and in class (stupid quarter system!). I had a neat experience recently that I plan to blog about soon, complete with (camera phone-quality) pictures. But not today.

The CTA went to it’s three-track system last month. To compensate for that, they added more buses to certain routes. That included the route I ride most often, 22-Clark. For a few weeks commuting was almost enjoyable. There were more buses which meant shorter waits and I was frequently able to get a seat. I stayed on the bus instead of switching to the train like I used to. For awhile, things were pretty good. (But only during rush hour. . . off hour commutes were still pretty pathetic.) I predicted early on that it wouldn’t last. The bean counters would see that the buses were no longer running at 110% of capacity and way behind schedule. They would realize they could save money by cutting back on the extra buses, resulting in service levels on those lines more like what they were before the 3-track cutover (service levels I would classify as POOR, by the way). And it seems that finally happened. Starting last week, I’ve had to wait longer for buses, both in the morning and evening and those buses have been much more full than they were. *Sigh* I miss the old days (well the recent old days) when I could get a seat on the bus and read my book.

This scaling back in service happened not long after a new person was put in charge of the CTA. I know people are (skeptically) hoping he will clean things up over there, but if what I’ve seen is a sign of things to come under his leadership, I’m not very optimistic.

Some statistics from my commute this morning:
Temperature: 0 F
Wind Chill: -10 F

Time spent waiting for a bus: 24 minutes
Buses that should have gone past: 5-9*
Buses that actually went past: 3
Buses too full to fit anyone on: 2
Number of people that fit on other bus: 4-5
People waiting at bus stop: 20ish

Total commuting time: ~54 minutes

I eventually gave up and took a different bus route to a different train (Armitage bus to the brown/purple line, for any locals) which is out of the way, but I was too cold to care.

Once again, I repeat: Fuck you, CTA!

* Per bus schedules published by CTA

Recently I had been having reasonable luck with the CTA. I say “reasonable” not “good”, but you take what you can get.

Today my luck ran out. My commute to work, which should take 25-30 minutes, took 45 today. And 1/3 of that time was spent waiting for a bus, outside with temperatures in the teens. This is how it went down:

I left my apartment a few minutes late (later than usual that is. . . I always leave later than I should) and show up at the bus stop. There is a bus approaching in the distance. I think to myself “Oh good, I got lucky. It’s damn cold out here and I’d hate to have to wait.” Oops. That bus was jam-packed. The driver didn’t even open the door for us. Shit. So I start to wait. I continue to wait. After 13-14 minutes another bus went by. I say it went by because it didn’t stop, just zoomed past as it too was full. A couple minutes later another full bus arrived and one person managed to squeeze on. And then. . . it’s like a bus convoy. At least 3-4 more buses came right after that one. Finally, I was able to board a bus. . . which then crawled along the street in its little convoy until I finally got to my stop. At which point my journey was half over.

I then descended into the dank and dark depths of the subway and waited for my train. To my relief, it arrived within a couple minutes. And then moved slowly, oh so slowly. It stopped several times between stations and sat at 2 of the 3 stations I went through for a time. Finally, I got to my destination. Oy vey!

Holy shit! My arch-nemesis, the CTA, is about to escalate our little war by going nuclear (aka nukular).

Travel times are expected to as much as double when one out of the four tracks used by the Red, Brown and Purple/Evanston Express Lines between the Armitage and Addison stations will be taken out of service from about April 2 through the end of 2009, transit officials said Wednesday.

Capacity will be reduced by 16 trains, or about 8,640 passengers, on southbound runs between 6 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., the CTA said.
…
Northbound between 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., there will be 31 fewer trains–reducing passenger capacity by 17,460 passengers–because the Red, Brown and Purple Line trains will temporarily share one track at the Fullerton and Belmont stations.

Also from this same article, in case anyone thinks my bitching about the CTA has been unwarranted:

The rail system has been plagued in recent months by a series of fires, derailments and track-switching problems that have snarled operations and delayed commuters, who are becoming increasingly impatient with the transit agency.

(Source: Chicago Tribune)
Commutes that are already painful are about to get unbearable.

The CTA is hoping we find “alternative travel choices”. Let’s see, my alternatives are: 1) Move downtown so I can walk to work. 2) Move to an area served by the Blue, Orange (yuck) or Green (yuck) Lines. 3) Take a bus the whole way, through the throngs of downtown traffic which may be getting even worse. 4) Buy a car and drive through the throngs of traffic. 5) Stay home. Hey, I have a lot of choices! Thanks, CTA. Fuckers.

CTA. The Chicago Transit Authority. “Hate” is not a strong enough word.

I loathe, detest, despise and abhor you. Fuck you, CTA, with a broken beer bottle. My time is too valuable to waste waiting for your perpetually late and overcrowded trains and buses. You have the collective organizational skills of a kindergartener and your people have the customer service aptitude of a South American dictator.

This morning was my 7th commute of the week, and the 4th that was delayed by more than a few minutes; the longest was over an hour! Today I had to wait 22 minutes for a train during morning rush hour. This was at a time when the trains, according to the CTA, run “every 5 minutes or less”. Of course the train was already crowded, and the driver tried to assure everyone there were “2 or 3 trains” following us, so people should just wait if they couldn’t get on. At that point most people were probably thinking what I was thinking: “I’m getting on that fucking train!” And I did. (And I did so without pushing and shoving; my fellow passengers were in the same situation as I, and the delay was certainly not their fault.)

Someone (I forget who) once remarked, “Rush hour seems to catch the CTA by surprise every day.” I think of that often, because it seems so true. Incompetence reigns supreme there.

I detest the CTA with such vehemence, that I have declared them my arch-nemesis and created a new subcategory on this blog just for them. If nothing else, the venting is good for my blood pressure. I try very hard not to get angry at transit delays, because it doesn’t accomplish anything. But goddamn, it’s so fucking hard not to. So this is part of my self-imposed therapy.

In conclusion: CTA, you are steaming pile of parasite-infested shit. That is all.