Dearest CTA,
We all know you’re a little worn down, and, well slow. We’re kind of used to it, actually. But could you at least pretend to not actively hate your customers?
Imagine for a moment train A arrives a second or two before train B on opposing platforms. Imagine further that trains A and B carry passengers who may well want to transfer to the other line. What is the appropriate response? Hint, the correct answer is not “drop your passengers as quickly as possible and pull away from the station seconds before a reasonably athletic passenger, optimally placed, can sprint between the two lines so you can proceed to wait 3 minutes with your final car still overlapping the platform (doors closed, of course) so no passenger can board and no train can pull in behind you.
Fuck you very much.
Hugs & kisses
-scu
that’s crazy talk. timed transfers? your time in the bay area has made you soft.
Ha. I just got to Chicago about 2hrs ago and one of the first things I noticed was how slow (and creaky) the trains were. It felt like it would be faster in a lot of cases to walk through the loop instead of staying on the train, and I was in late enough that it wasn’t peak hours at all…
I did like that everything was spoken through the computer, was very clear in it’s information, and was loud enough for everyone to hear. Way better than relying on the BART operator to talk or not talk and barely be heard over the sound of the train whizzing through a tunnel.
What brings you out here?
A plane. 🙂
Actually, it was mostly just because I had a free flight to use on Southwest, and a free place to stay, and wanted to have a fun vacation before school starts in a few weeks. Aaron and I were in Ocean City last week, and after Chicago, I’m going to Portland for a bit before going home to get back into the swing of school.
1. We don’t have to listen. We’re the CTA.Clearly incentives and information assymetry are to blame for this market not clearing
2. The machine functions for its own reasons, not those of people.
3.
4. At least people who drive have the diffuse blame to cast over all the other drivers. You public-transport-users know specifically that that one driver is FUCKING WITH YOU. This one bit of schadenfreude somewhat makes up for having to pay for all that damn gas. Somewhat. Dammit, I thought about paying for gas. Now I’m sad again.
5. You now have proof that we live in an imperfect universe. The hypothesis has been disproved. We can now move on to testing more interesting hypotheses.
That’s par for the course for the CTA. Things like this are why the CTA is my arch-nemesis.
sounds like new york standard service 🙂
Or DC Metro. Bad enough before the screw up earlier this summer, now pathetic in afternoon rush.