Sick people on the CTA

This morning I'm on the Blue Line headed to work on a jam-packed car. We get to the Chicago stop and all of a sudden, at the other end of my car some of the passengers are forcing the doors open and getting off. I wonder what's happening (luckily I tend to have a good vantage point), and it becomes apparent that someone is "sick" on the train.

From what I could tell it was a little Hispanic lady who wasn't terribly old or fat. Yeah, the train was kind of warm, but when it's full of people that's going to happen. So the conductor and someone else (I guess the guy who was working at the station) come down and are just kind of talking to her for a few minutes. After this goes on for about 10 minutes we finally take off with this lady still on the train!

Now...

Unless someone is having a seizure or heart attack or stroke or something, why in the hell can't they just get up? Why can't we carry them off? This lady looked OK to me (not that she wasn't sick, but she could have gotten her ass up and off the train). We had to hold up morning rush hour for her to catch her breath or whatever? Meanwhile, the rest of the train was getting hotter and we were all getting warmed up while she had tons of room to calm herself down or something.

I'm quite aware that this may be my most misanthropic post yet, but I just don't get it. She wasn't going anywhere, so why not just get the train two more stops to Clark and Lake where everyone else can get off and she can be attended to? The whole thing is just done with no consideration of the hundreds of other passengers on the train sweating our asses off, not to mention the other trains behind us now getting clogged up.

Go ahead, take the train to O'Hare

The CTA finished early on the slow-zone work between Rosemont and O'Hare. There are still some slow spots between other stops, but that part always seemed really bad to me. Maybe it was because it was so long that seemed slower than other parts.

Lucky she didn't get my picture

Whew, that was close!

I recently found myself on a nearly-empty Brown Line car during the early evening, when I realized that a man sitting next to me was masturbating. I kicked him and yelled at him to stop, which he did, and he left the train at the next stop.

More seriously, that's pretty gross. I can't believe anyone who isn't mentally ill would think that's a good idea. "Hey baby, I love you THIS much!"

Funny blog

Here's something I just found: R.O.C.K. on the CTA.

I'll let the proprietor describe it herself:

A somewhat snarky, sometimes cranky, borderline stalker-y view of the world from my seat on the bus. No offense meant to anyone.. all of these stories are just made up. I really know nothing about you. And I care even less. I love watching the urbanites as they do their daily dance along the train tracks and bus routes...They make me happy. And sleepy.

She takes pictures of random people on the CTA and makes up stories about them.

UPDATE: An intrepid commenter pointed out that the author is a dude. Reading his comments I wouldn't have guessed that. Oh well.

Attention Brown Line riders UPDATED

This weekend a big shift is occurring, as two of the best drinking stops are re-opening (Diversey and Southport) and two of the lame ones are closing (Wellington and Paulina). Rejoice in your own way.

UPDATE: Commenter "Fubar" forgets about the Armitage stop, which I always thought was like a daily beauty pageant. I await his response.

Chicago City Council parodies itself

From the Sun-Times:

Before they could agree to raising the [real estate transfer] tax from $7.50 to $10.50 per $1,000 of sale price, aldermen demanded that senior citizen home buyers would have to be exempt from the increase — and that active members of the military and disabled veterans join seniors in riding the CTA for free.

Aldermen also demanded that CTA pension funds in line for a $1.2 billion windfall diversify their roster of money managers.

Only six of the 43 existing financial advisers are minorities and they receive only a “small fraction” of pension funds invested, according to Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke (14th).

“If Chicago taxpayers’ money is at risk here, the pension fund ought to do business, to the extent they can, with Chicago-based businesses. That’s where the jobs are provided. That’s where economic development occurs — not in New York or in Menlo Park, Calif.,” Burke said. “Giving $1.2 billion to the pension fund, which has a record of ignoring issues that we’ve been talking about here with our pension funds for years, is counterproductive.”

So they don't know how they are going to pay for new money for the CTA, but one of their solutions is to give away more free rides! This is too silly to comment further.

Then, they have a problem with CTA pension funding. One part of the solution has to be good investment returns (believe me, since I work in the field). You'd think they would say to hell with their affirmative action policies, we just need the best investment managers we can find. You'd be wrong.

See, when I rail against government-run programs it's because I know they will be run horribly inefficiently compared to the way private companies would do so. Private companies only care about making money, so they are ruthless in cutting costs and finding people who do good work for them.

The information in this article is a microcosm of it. When faced with a funding problem, the obvious solutions are to cut expenses or increase revenues. These guys want to increase revenues and expenses (only less than revenues).

The second part shows the other main problem with government programs, which is that politicians like to inject political considerations into everything. That's fine when it comes to a law against murder or whatnot. That's no so fine when the public's money that's being used to prop up a pension fund has to be managed by a certain number of black- and Chicago-owned business. That only leads to more inefficiency. I mean, maybe a black-owned business would do a great job. But if that's the case, why can't they compete on their own merits? It's not discrimination, since if they are good everybody will let them manage their money since (as mentioned above), all private compaies care about it making money.

Hyperbole at the RTA

In this article about the new public transit deal (you know, where the state pours a bunch of money into the CTA, Metra, and Pace and old people ride for free), RTA Executive Director Steve Schlickman had this to say:

"We can’t afford to have fare increases and service cuts this Sunday. It would be the worst thing to happen to transit in this region, in this state and possibly this country if we allow that to happen,” Schlickman said, pounding his fist on the table at one point.

Did everyone else in the room start laughing at him? The service cuts are 81 circuitous bus routes that have low ridership. The fare increases would be an extra $1 during rush hour. And this would be the worst thing to happen to transit in this country?

Here comes the CTA bailout!

Not a surprise when you have Democrats in charge of everything on the state level of government. I mean, of course they were going to throw money at a failing mass transit system. It's in their DNA or something.

Anyway, as a daily rider, I will actually benefit from paying a little more in sales taxes (especially since I'll just make more big purchases in Indiana or online) to keep fares down. Since I'm not a selfish a-hole, however, I realize that's not a good reason to support it.

However, I'd like to make a point about part of the plan, and why government management of anything is so stupid:

Key Illinois lawmakers appeared ready Thursday to back Gov. Blagojevich's surprise offering of free bus and train fare for senior citizens in order to avert a Jan. 20 meltdown of the CTA.

Sounds nice, right? Let old people ride for free.

Well, I'm going to analyze this in economic terms (keeping in mind I don't know much about economics). Who is most likely to ride the CTA? People who can't or don't want to drive, for whatever reason. That would be mostly people who are poor and/or old. So old people, who are more likely to ride anyway, now will ride for free. That means people who are less likely to ride (younger and more affluent) now are paying an even greater share of fares.

In addition, more old people clogging up the busses and trains (which is what will happen with free rides) will only drive younger people away since they are so slow and take up so much room.

How many private businesses would do this? Businesses understand incentives. They give senior discounts, sure, but it's to entice old people to do things they might not otherwise do. This plan is like Wal-Mart giving a 20% discount on Ensure or Metamucil for seniors.

Lost wallets...

...broken dreams.

In the hubbub Saturday night I lost my wallet. I didn't have much in there except my whole life. Anyway, I've done my part in rebuilding it by ordering new cards, getting a new driver's license, and loading up on cash at the bank.

Why does anyone care? Because it allows me to tell a story and write the only post ever on this blog that's like one of Mrs. Reuter's...

At the Secretary of State's office (why don't they just call it the DMV like every other state?) who was in front me by no more than 2 people? Why, none other than Mrs. and Mr. Knowles. Apparently April had the misfortune of her 401(k) being frozen due to her driver's license not matching her address (or something like that). The Knowles made a lunch date of getting new licenses and hitting up the food court at the Thompson Center. After getting numbers we chatted about the various issues of the day in the holding cell (excuse me, waiting area). Then in line at the cashier we did some more, and finally again at the photo area. At that point I had to walk to CTA headquarters for a new Chicago Card Plus, so I declined their tempting offer of joining them for lunch.

After getting cash I stuffed my face with McDonald's, all the while wondering if buying gorceries in the Soviet Union was a similar experience to navigating the beaurocracy of the DMV. I decided the answer was "Yes".

Amtrak and the CTA

While perusing National Review Online today, I found an interesting article about Amtrak. The basic point is that it's hugely inefficient and wasteful, even selling BEER:

Amtrak may be the only commercial enterprise on earth that actually loses money selling beer. Its food and beverage service requires an $80 million subsidy from Congress each year, and this despite the fact that the food and drink are not cheap. Airlines, facing hard times, have already cut back on free food and beverages. By contrast, starting today, Amtrak is offering some frequent riders a $100 booze credit on certain long trips.

An attempt by Sen. Tom Coburn to require that food service on each route break even or else be cancelled was crushed in a 67-24 vote on Tuesday. Part of the problem is that Amtrak’s workers are ridiculously overpaid. Amtrak’s food-service workers make $54,000 per year plus tips, according to congressional testimony from June 2005 — comparably skilled food-service workers make less than half that amount.

This isn't a surprise to anyone who has ever read about Amtrak. The interesting thing is how the article ended:

Unfortunately, this proposal [to privatize it] makes too much sense, Utt explains. Some congressman, tears in eyes, will tell a story about the man who absolutely depends on Amtrak to get him from Helena to St. Louis for his monthly kidney dialysis.

Well, we could give every such man in America a free automobile — with chauffeur — and still save billions of dollars if we were to stop subsidizing Amtrak. For $54,000 a year plus tips, I might even consider making myself available to drive.

The basic point here correlates with these silly sob stories about some people who will be affected by CTA bus route cuts. These schools (or the city, or whatever) could just run their own buses back and forth rather than beg the state for money. Of course, that wouldn't both increase the CTA's size (and therefore power) and allow Chicago residents to leech off of taxpayers everywhere else in the state, which is what this is really about.

11/1/07 CTA and city budget updates

Some of the high school kids who have been glomming off those silly bus routes are angry. Good thing they can't vote! (Ha!) They are probably illegal immigrants and they'll never be able to, anyway.

In city budget news, the Mayor is apparently cranky about not getting his property tax increase. Why would I say that? Because he decided to pull out of his budget the only new spending items that people actually want:

Mayor Daley today postponed what few sweeteners there were in his 2008 budget — hiring 50 police officers and expanding curbside recycling to 131,000 more households — to pave the way for rolling back his proposed, $108 million property tax hike.

Thanks Mayor Daley! Good thing we'll still have new libraries to look at as they get vandalized due to not enough cops.

As a postscript, I don't want curbside recycling since that's hippie stuff. My point was that lots of people do, and since it's one of the less egregious new programs the city has devised recently I don't get very cranky about it.

10/31/07 CTA and county news update

Now the city is going to take desk-duty cops and have them hang around schools that will be most affected by the elimination of certain bus routes. That's a good idea, in as much as it has the police actually working to reduce the influence of gangs in bad areas. Gee, Mr. Mayor, what a brilliant idea!

Meanwhile, the county government is up to its usual shenanigans in hiring. It's the usual wasteful patronage stuff that won't go away until voters realize that a Stroger may not be the best guy to run the county. I'm not holding my breath since blacks here vote so monolithically.

UPDATE: How could I miss this the first time around? Here's the usual extreme sob story of the day, courtesy of intrepid Sun-Times reportes Ben Goldberger. Apparently, someone who lives in THE SUBURBS is going to be affected my CTA cuts and fare increases. Gee, no kidding. Here's the good stuff:

By the time he returns home at the end of the day, Riggins, a married 20-year-old with no car and a full-time job, has transferred at least four times -- and spent nearly $10. And that's just when he's stationed at a West Side hospital. Some days he's assigned to jobs in Oak Park, Orland Park, Melrose Park, Tinley Park, Cicero or the Loop. Mass transit is the only way he has to get to any of them.

"It's costing me a pretty penny, costing me too much," Riggins said Tuesday. And as someone wholly dependent on the CTA, Riggins says the doomsday fare increases scheduled to take effect Sunday put a tight squeeze on an already limited budget.

"I'm going to have to stop doing everything I used to do for fun. If I want to eat, that's out of the question right now. It's costing me too much. Something's really got to change."

"This is a big part of my life," Riggins said of the CTA, "and I'm mad at the governor for not getting down there and signing that bill. He had plenty of time, and they say if he doesn't get it signed by January it's going to get even worse. And with winter coming, man."

Now what's not mentioned in the story? How about this: why doesn't he have a car? Has he had a bunch of DUI's or does he blow all his money on fancy stuff? Who knows? I'm guessing it's not because the car fairy hasn't yet left one under his pillow yet like she's done for everyone else.

So an extra $2 to $4 a day is going to cut out all of his fun money? This also isn't questioned, but rather it's taken for granted to be true. I don't believe it. Even granting that it would be true, this guy has clearly made some terrible life choices to even be in this position. I don't have a lot of sympathy for him.

The real problem is that he's allowed himself to become so dependent on cheap, publicly subsidized transportation. That's NOT a reason for forcing taxpayers all over the state to prop up a wasteful beaurocracy.

10/30/07 updates on county and city government

We've had a lull lately in our local governments and their budget battles, but it appears that each Cook County Commissioner gets a 27% increase for his office:

Commissioner Tim Schneider said he never asked for, nor will he take, the $90,000 in extra salaries Stroger is offering his office, saying the county's "in dire straits" and the board should "keep county government at the most efficient level we can" by giving back extra money.

Commissioner Joan Murphy said "maybe [Schneider] doesn't do the amount of work the rest of us do."

"Feel free, if you want, to give yours back, but I'm keeping mine," she said.

Murphy later apologized to Schneider for the verbal attack.

This perfectly sums up the attitude of these guys. Keep in mind this isn't an increase to actually provide more county services (such as they are). They are only to fund commissioner offices and staff. I realize that Murphy apologized (and thus it's not really fair to pick on her for her comments), but the idea that a fellow commissioner wants to save money for taxpayers means he's not doing as much work is infuriating. The only work I see any of them doing anyway is spending and taxing, so maybe a little less of that "work" would be good thing.

Meanwhile, it's not the city budget that's in the news, but the CTA. Yes, yes, the threatening cuts are on the way. Blah, blah. The vast majority of riders are completely unaffected. You know what bus routes are being cut? The goofy, circuitous routes that only run at rush hour or during special events for the benefit of a few people. The sob stories ring pretty hollow:

Daley used Mather High School, 5835 N. Lincoln Ave., as the backdrop for a news conference called to "put a face on" the 39 bus routes on the chopping block.

One of those routes, the No. 93 California, runs right past Mather. If the route is eliminated, junior Christina Correa and hundreds of her classmates will be forced to walk in the dark to Western four blocks away or to Kimball six blocks from their high school.

California and Western are exactly one-half mile from each other. I walk further than a half mile EVERY DAY I take the Blue Line from my house. So do a lot of people, and then think of those who walk even further. And yes, it gets dark and we all have to deal with it. Buck up, kids, and walk with friends. Geez, if there are hundreds of you who do it you won't have any trouble finding some people to walk with you!

Apparently there's also the issue of putting a casino downtown to help fund the city's budget. Anybody who thinks this is a good idea should walk around Las Vegas some time. I don't mean on the Strip, but off of it or downtown (off of Fremont). As much as I love Vegas, those casinos bring with them many problems. Think there's already too much crime and homelessness in Chicago now? Just wait until that thing opens up. It's not worth having easy, quick access to a blackjack table after work.

The riverboats tend to isolate themselves from it to an extent, but even those cities have problems from the boats.

CTA cuts would affect some people!

Big news, right? Actually, it's just common sense. I guess not for intrepid Sun-Times reporters Annie Sweeney and Norman Parish, though, who apparently spent some time looking for another big sob story:

About 400 Steinmetz High School kids use the bus on Narragansett -- not even a block away -- to quickly get to and from the Northwest Side school every day.

But under the proposed CTA "doomsday" cuts on Nov. 4, they would have to scatter to new bus routes for longer commutes -- some crossing through gang turfs.

I am sympathetic to these kids who have to deal with gangs, as they are just trying to get to school. However, it's not the CTA's job to keep them safe from gangs. It's the city's job.

The real issue is that through years of misrule in the city, there are crappy neighborhoods infested with gangs in Chicago. That's not the CTA's fault (nor, arguably, the state of Illinois', who are being asked to bail out the CTA with a big infusion of cash). Are we to keep a whole bus line, with the attendant expensive unionized workforce keeping it running, for a few high school kids? It would be much easier and cost effective for the city to provide regular school buses for these kids.

CTA cuts would hurt some people, yes

I guess after years and years of the entitlement mentality in this country (fueled by a certain political party), you get people who actually believe things like this:

"One feels mad. Sometimes the politicians don't think about us poor people," Komaniecki said. "It's not just me, there's so many of us. [Politicians] are thinking about other things, but what is more important than public transportation?"

Indeed, it's the most important thing for a politician in Springfield to do. You know, to keep a bus route active for someone who lives at 50th and Cicero and works in Glenview. Let that sink in a bit. I'm not kidding:

"Where it took me two hours on two buses, it went down to an hour and a half," said Komaniecki, a 60-year-old Honduran immigrant who every day travels from 50th and Cicero to her job as a housekeeper in north suburban Glenview. "If these cuts go through it will take me 2½ hours each way."

That's Glenview, in the north suburbs, from 50th and Cicero, on the southwest side. She expects some crazy, convoluted bus route to continue to bleed money for her convenience. Well jeepers, I'd love a bus that leaves from Rockwell and Altgeld and makes a direct route to Wacker and Washington, but most people aren't such selfish a-holes that they expect the public to pay for it. Maybe she should either move or get a job closer to home.

Why doesn't she just drive?

"I'll still get there but it'll take more time," she said as she rode the express, perhaps for one of its final runs, knowing that her fear of driving leaves no alternative. "I have to keep working, we can't retire."

So she also has an insane fear that me and other taxpayers have to subsidize. How nice of the Sun-Times to once again take the side of the public (like, the taxpayer). Oh, wait, they didn't do that at all. Instead they sided with another moron with a lame sob story. At least this one is so ridiculous that all but the most empty of bleeding hearts can see what a joke this woman is.

I really hope the legislature has the balls to cut off the CTA, as maybe then we'd have some reform. I'm sure they will just cave in like usual, though.

UPDATE: Cry me a river, sister. Of course businesses would take government subsidies, which is what these goofy bus routes really are.

Unfair headline

Don't get me wrong, I have lots of problems with the CTA. However, this headline is blatantly unfair. Anybody who has ever walked a street in the city of Chicago knows anywhere on and near EVERY decently-sized street is near a CTA bus stop.