In defense of the CTA

As my Chicago readers, and possibly select others, will be aware, the Brown Line is currently undergoing a series of renovations wherein stops are closed for a while - this "while" has usually turned out to be a year, which I'll admit at least sounds like a lot - to increase capacity, as prior to the start of renovations the Brown Line was incapable of handling trains as long as those on other lines, even though it presently services some of the fastest-growing and most popular neighborhoods, and thus seems to be turning into one of the busiest routes (especially in relation to the overall distance it covers, especially in its NW-of-Belmont non-overlapping-coverage section).

This has left people along the route, including certain friends of this blog, feeling kind of put out. And I'm not going to say that that's entirely undeserved, but I think in general the CTA gets a bad rap. Open a Red Eye sometime - it seems like at least once a week there's a piece the general gist of which is, "Hey, the CTA sucks, right? We interviewed five twentysomethings who didn't grow up here for the answer!" And the MOTS interviews commence, with Rebecca, 28, Lakeview (but probably having grown up in Kansas) citing the one time she ever had a problem with a bus as proof that CTA buses are like Dante's Inferno on wheels.

The CTA isn't perfect - it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise - but is it really worse than mass transit systems in other cities? (New York's trains have more coverage but their buses are harder to figure out; Washington's trains are nicer but are only comparable in coverage and none of their lines run all night [a good way to gerrymander the cleanliness, I'm guessing]; LA's system is kind of horrible in my limited experience, but then LA is horrible in general from a transit perspective.) More importantly, does anyone have any real solutions?

I actually once complained in this space about the CTA after I had a particularly bad morning, but in retrospect, that's by far the worst morning I've had - I mean, by far - in a year and a half of commuting five days a week. The commute most days is exactly the same - I leave the apartment, get to the bus stop 7-8 minutes later, and I'm on a bus within 10 minutes depending on how well I've timed my arrival. Even on bad traffic days I'm at work within 25-30 minutes of boarding the bus, and it's usually more like 20. This really isn't bad at all, and it's the case for 99% of my year.

To be fair, this is only one person's experience, but a lot of people seem to feel about a late bus the same way they might feel about, say, their food being late in a restaurant, and I think we all know the kind of shit-fits you'll see in those situations. There are people responsible for your service, not automatons. If 9 times out of 10 there's no real problem, why kick them in the butt on the tenth? Yes, people can be made late for work by transit problems and being late for work is traditionally frowned upon, but the CTA isn't making you late on purpose. No, not even when they do track maintenance. You know what makes you late? Tracks falling apart underneath the train. No one ever made any friends by slowing people down with preventative maintenance, but God forbid they didn't do this stuff and something fell apart? Do you suppose a lot of the same people would be first in line to condemn the CTA for its inaction (and, of course, for the fact that a busted track is now making them late to work)?

Here's the thing: the Brown Line serves Roscoe Village and Lincoln Square, two of the most newly-happening neighborhoods in the entire city. And it wasn't built with that in mind. What's wrong with a desire to increase capacity? Sure, it's a headache now, but this isn't the kind of work that can be done by elves while the shoemaker is in bed. The whole idea is that it's a year of hassle now for years of no hassle (or less, anyway) later.

The CTA's slogan is apparently "Leave early, leave late, alternate," those being the three possible ways to avoid big human gridlock at peak hours. Leah's opinion is that "Nobody in Chicago thinks this is going to work." I agree, but her reason seems to be that it won't work because the CTA always sucks, whereas I think it won't work mostly because 99% of people aren't actually going to do that. They're peak hours for a reason; people are going to pin their hopes to "Maybe other people will try those things" and do exactly what they do every day, and things will get worse and worse. To be fair, "Leave early" isn't the best solution if you like sleep, and "Leave late" isn't the best solution if you like work, but frankly I see no reason why "alternate" couldn't work. Consider Leah's situation as stated in her blog - she lives three blocks from Damen and less than that from Montrose, which puts her pretty close to Montrose Avenue itself. Well, checking the CTA map, we see that the 78 (Montrose) bus goes eastbound to the Wilson Red Line stop. Assuming that the average of every ten minutes in the 78's schedule holds even close to true, this gives us:

1. Less wait time in the morning (highly unlikely you'd be waiting 23 minutes for a bus)
2. Slightly longer transit time to the Red Line (probably 10 minutes instead of 7, oh nooo), but:
3. No waiting at Belmont, plus the Red Line will probably be a little less crowded when it gets to Wilson than it would have been at Belmont.

All told, I honestly doubt this commute would be much worse even than a non-renovation-affected Brown Line commute of two years ago. This may very well be the "alternate" experiment route that Leah is planning. I'll be very curious to see how it works out. That said, be wary of generalizing off one day - the post linked above seems to imply that the CTA is garbage because this one time a train was late, which I find to be specious reasoning.

I've had few problems with the CTA, personally. I think it's easier to navigate in combination than pretty much any city's system you could name that covers a similar amount of ground. And I think that most people who complain don't consider the alternatives enough. Train issues? Try a bus. Don't like fares going up? How else are they going to pay for the more modern buses I think all us bus riders prefer? People want to kick the CTA whenever it's down but they also resent paying to help make it better. What world are we living in? The real one, or the one where taking the train is something I do when my unicorn is too tired to fly me to work?

I say, give the Brown Line capacity increase a chance. If they fix up the stations and lengthen the trains and things still suck ass, then by all means, complain away.