Commute from Hell

Let's start by describing the commute on most days.

Generally speaking, I leave the apartment around 8:25 and get to the bus stop at about 8:30. There are four lines that service the Cornelia and Lake Shore stop at this time of the morning. In order of preference:

1. 135 (Clarendon/LaSalle Express). This is the preferable one because it gets onto the Outer Drive at Belmont and doesn't get off again until Wacker. I get off at Wacker/Stetson (second stop) and just cross the street to the Illinois Center.
2. 145 (Wilson/Michigan Express). This one gets off Outer Drive at Michigan, which means at least ten minutes for the mile down Michigan between Lake Shore and South Water.
3. 146 (Inner Drive Express). Just like the 145, except it turns off Michigan at Wacker, meaning more walking than either of the other two (albeit not by a significant amount).
4. 151 (Sheridan). Ridiculously suboptimal, as it's the only one of the four that isn't an express bus. And of course a local bus takes about 45 minutes to make this trip despite the fact that it's less than five miles.

Today I was at the bus stop around 8:20. It was also fucking cold. About five degrees on the positive side of zero, in fact. The one good thing was that there was no wind, though this is less a "good thing" than simply "not a bad thing." This was probably the first truly bitter cold day of the year - it was pretty cold on Thanksgiving, but it never got below 15 or so, and anyway almost no one goes to work on Thanksgiving - so of course the CTA picked today to roll out its brand new transportation schedule, tentatively titled "No Buses Show Up, Ever."

From my vantage point at the Cornelia/Lake Shore stop I can see north on the Inner Drive about as far as Grace, which is maybe four full blocks up. Roughly speaking, here was how today went:

8:20: Arrive at bus stop.
8:25: Hey, here comes a bus! Oh... it's a 151. Never mind.
8:27: Another one! [the bus turns onto Addison] Okay, that's a 152 (the Addison bus).
8:29: Is this a bus I can get onto?
8:30: ...no. It's another damn 152.
8:32: Okay, now this bus is definitely coming to us... but people keep getting on at Addison...
8:33: ...and it speeds right past us, totally crammed.
8:35: Here comes another 151. Great.
8:37: Here come two buses now!
8:38: Okay, well, one was a 152, but the other is at Brompton [one block north]...
8:39: ...and it fills up. Well, it was only a 146 anyway, right?
8:41: Another 152 turns off at Addison.
8:44: ANOTHER fucking 152 turns off at Addison. How many goddamn people go west on Addison to get to work?
8:45: Aaaaand it's another 151. A guy at the stop actually snaps and shouts at the driver, "What's going on with the express buses? We've been here half an hour!" The driver, of course, has no idea. I finally get fed up and get on the 151.

To recap: I stood there for 25 minutes and in that time five buses went west on Addison. That's one 152 bus every five minutes. Yet in the same 25 minute period only five buses - on four total lines! - came by our stop. Two of those didn't even stop because they had filled up (gee, I wonder why) and the other three were all from the same, local, line. Also worth noting - not a single one of the five buses that actually came by was a double bus. I mean, why would you want to send a larger-capacity bus along a busy route during AM rush? I can't think of a single fucking reason.

Here's the problem with commuting. Say work starts at nine (as it standardly does). If you leave at 8:30, it might take you 30 minutes to get to work, but if the buses don't feel like showing up or if traffic is particularly bad, it might take 45 (or, in this case if you include the 45 minutes I spent on the 151, over a goddamn hour). But if you leave at 8:00 to account for these problems, it probably takes 20 minutes tops and you're there ridiculously early. (Also, then I have to get up earlier.) The train is also usually more reliable than the bus in terms of showing up, and it takes less time to get to Lake (only 15-20 minutes), but it's nearly a ten-minute walk to the train even if you're rushing, probably a five-minute wait (again, at least) unless you get lucky, and then another ten minutes from the train station to the office. That's nearly half an hour of added time and totally negates the train's advantage, plus doing all that walking when it's five degrees out is not exactly the most awesome thing in the world. Plus the train is never not crammed to bursting, whereas most buses at least have some breathing room, if not any seats.

I guess it all probably gets worse during the winter - at least, that's my impression of it so far, as post-Thanksgiving I don't think there's been a decent commuting day yet. Obviously I haven't had to do any of this prior to now, so I don't have previous years to which I can compare this. But is it too much to ask the CTA to actually send buses to meet the need? It's like they have some mathematical formula where the number of buses released is proportional to the temperature outside - as the mercury falls, the bus flow does too. I imagine that the perfect point is at -40, where Fahrenheit and Celsius are the same and the number of buses is exactly zero. Remind me just to stay home if it ever gets that cold.