kiss and ride on the my ass, CTA
It's fun to bitch about public transportation in the DC area, but to be honest we've got it pretty good. My lengthy tale of CTA woe is below the cut. Be warned: this is more about catharsis than entertainment. But then, this is a blog.
It began last night around seven. Metro to West Falls Church, bus to Dulles, plane to OHare. Everything went without a hitch, and without delays or irritations — 5 minutes before the bus left; one drink at the airport bar's worth of time waiting for boarding to begin; an on-time arrival. Okay, so a couple of drunk guys on the Metro were screaming rap lyrics and congratulating themselves on how angry they perceived the other passengers to be getting (although to be honest, I popped in my earbuds and couldn't hear them after the first 30 seconds). But aside from that, it was a pretty enjoyable trip. I like travelling alone at night. It makes me feel like I'm hurtling through outer space.
Once I landed in Chicago things took a turn for the worse. The walk from the gate to the CTA was at least a quarter mile, and my bags don't have wheels. Escalators were broken. Moving walkways were, too. And there was a lady at the gate to the train station resignedly telling weary passengers that the trains weren't running. "There's a shuttle to Rosemont upstairs."
No, there wasn't. There was just a sea of people milling around, waiting for buses that weren't coming. I had just begun making peace with how far I would have to walk to find a taxi stand when another CTA employee — perhaps realizing that the past weeks' events have made promises of nonexistent buses somewhat gauche — approached and told us that no, the trains actually were running. The mob rushed back downstairs. Being the last person in line for the shuttle paid off, and I managed to grab a seat on the crammed train.
There were unexplained stops. There were service announcements. There was ponderous trundling. But finally we got to Clark/Lake, where a walk of a few hundred yards put me in position to catch the purple line to Belmont. This is where Chicago residents will have started to laugh.
CTA doesn't seem to like to talk about the purple line. It's missing from some maps; sometimes it's hashed out in a way that none of the other lines are. The purple line is like Tony Manero's priesthood-quitting brother, Frank Jr. Why would you want to bring up such an uncomfortable subject?
But I didn't know all this. I was the guy at the CTA family reunion blithely asking how Purple Line Frank's parish was doing. So I sat on the bench until I got bored enough to doublecheck the outdated maps under the scratched-till-nearly-opaque glass. Above them were some weatherbeaten black and white, laser-printed, thoroughly unofficial and in no way purple sheets showing the time of the last train on the line I intended to ride. I was about three hours late. If it had been the weekend, my tardiness would have been measured in days.
Well, eventually it worked out. I took orange for a stop, made an extra transfer (that required me to actually leave the station for some reason), and eventually got to Belmont, sweaty and exhausted. The trip from the airport took 30 minutes longer than the time I spent in the air. I thought OHare was the older of the two airports? You'd think that by now it would be at least kind of accessible through public transportation. But the blue line that runs to it seems to avoid integration with the useful parts of the CTA as much as possible.
I realize that my El experience has been limited to just a handful of trips, most of which have been fine. It's not that I dislike the El. It's an impressive feat of engineering, it's a nice way to see the city, and as Charles has noted, it evokes fond memories of riding the Grizzly at King's Dominion. It's just that the city seems to have, in some ways, outgrown it. DC's a lot smaller and the Metro is a lot newer, so this comparison isn't exactly fair. But still: Metro is faster, cheaper, has much better signage, and there's only one "last train" time that riders have to worry about. Plus the turnstiles, while considerably less quaint, are much easier to get through when carrying luggage. New York, London and Milan's subways are also much easier to comprehend and use, despite the last of those being run in a foreign language. The BART is pretty much the only big-city public transportation system I've been on that's worse — and really, it's more of a dedicated commuter train than a subway-equivalent.
Anyway, I'm sure the El will serve Catherine well and with a minimum of irritation. But its attempt to make OHare accessible is pretty half-assed. For those who'll be coming to visit Catherine: just pay for a goddamn cab.
Comments
As a lifelong New Yorker I find the El to be well and truly an embodyment of the city of Chicago. It's quaint and kind of reminds you of a what a city is supposed to look like, but in the end it's more decorative than anything else. My biggest complaint is that it only goes in and out and not round and round which forces you to use downtown as a kind of sligshot or roundabout. To someone from New York this is infuriating. It's so annoying that the last time I was in Chicago(during what they call spring but the rest of the world calls winter) I wound up walking forever because I refused to take a drain going in the "wrong" direction. Lesson learned, don't go to Chicago.
You did it all wrong. The eL is designed in a sun-burst pattern, so indeed, it is a pain in the ass to go from O'Hare to the Lakeview/Lincoln Park area in a timely fashion. The thing to do is is to get off on the Belmont Blue line stop, and grab the bus (#77) east towards the lake. It's right at the top of the (underground)el Station. This will take you right to the area you would have gotten from the Purple/Brown Line.
You'll get the hang of it. Don't blame the CTA (I find it much better than WMATA) as I did the move from DC about 2 years ago.
get to know www.transitchicago.com (they have an online MapQuest type thing that will tell you the best way to get from point A to B using Mass Trans).
It'll be your friend. Get the Chicago Card and learn the bus routes (which take you anywhere you need to go) as well as the eL routes.
Welcome to town, you'll love it. Chicago is a great place, although you just missed the best part of the year, summer.
Thanks for the tips. I'm sure Catherine will have no trouble at all. And yeah, I had a feeling that a bus would've provided the answer... but I only realized my purple line mistake after landing, and wandering through the airport is no time to try to figure out a foreign city's bus system.
Next time I come to visit (or perhaps when I leave) I'll definitely take your advice, though.
> You'd think that by now it would be at least kind of accessible through public transportation. But the blue line that runs to it seems to avoid integration with the useful parts of the CTA as much as possible.
In his comment above, Chris is right to point out that riding the L from any outlying point to another does often involve a bit of wasteful travel into the Loop. Still, if you'd just waited for one more stop on the Blue Line, you'd have picked up the Red Line directly, which would zip you (uh, relatively speaking) north to Belmont. It's really not that complex, and I can't imagine it would take more than 45 minutes, tops. And who wants to figure out bus routes in a new town?
The Purple Line (and I suppose you know this now) is almost exclusively devoted to business commuters from Evanston and Wilmette, running express alongside the Red Line weekday mornings and evenings. And only the Red and Blue Lines run 24/7 (though this shouldn't really affect travel to the North Side from O'Hare).
The L is old, slow and creaky, and its coverage away from the Loop can be problematic, especially to the west and south. That said, it is one of the oldest mass transit systems in the world. And with the CTA threatening service cuts over a budget shortfall, though I'd kill for mass transit coverage like folks have in NYC I've pretty well resigned myself to accepting it for what it is.
Interesting. I'm not quite sure how I missed the existence of the Washington station until now, but wow, there it is. Maybe that's how I'll get back to the airport on Sunday.
Okay, I'm pretty well convinced that my experience was atypically bad, primarily because of my own ignorance mixed with a little bad luck.
The one criticism I'll stand behind, though, is the signs/maps. They're worse than they need to be. Once you get used to them I'm sure they make perfect sense, and obviously I'm biased in Washington's favor, having grown up with the familiar Metro map... but still, it seems a lot more intuitive to me.
> The one criticism I'll stand behind, though, is the signs/maps. They're worse than they need to be. Once you get used to them I'm sure they make perfect sense, and obviously I'm biased in Washington's favor, having grown up with the familiar Metro map... but still, it seems a lot more intuitive to me.
That Metro map doesn't strike me as that much better or more intuitive than the current L map (though the Loop inset could use less clutter). These days, transit maps everywhere are all just secondhand knockoffs of Harry Beck's classic London Underground design.
Still, Chicago's is undeniably grotesque in strictly aesthetic terms, a quality epitomized in their use of Helvetica. And it really shouldn't be too much to ask for a system map and schedule on every platform.
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