Why I Don't Go Downtown More Often

[muckefuck]

Without any notification, the CTA made a major alteration in a train route. For as long as I can remember, the Express has circled the Loop clockwise. This means that when going to the opera house, for instance, I would always have to change to a Brown Line train at some point (usually the Mart) in order to get to the next stop without a 10-15 minutes tour of all downtown elevated stations. Today, however, I was going to State & Lake and relished being able to remain comfortably seated all the way--or so I thought until I heard Wells & Washington announced as the next stop. I wasn't in a great hurry and would've just sucked it up if not for the fact that my "Express" had been stopping unpredictably between stations for half the route. After we sat for several minutes at Lasalle (despite the absence of a train immediately ahead of us), I'd had enough and got at out at Library & State in order to a catch a northbound bus.

I thought about changing to the Red Line, but I can never remember which downtown stations are closed and when--or even when the Red Line is running underground and when it isn't. I once spent 20 minutes at an underground station until some CTA employee finally informed me that no trains would be coming by all night. This is partly why, after the movie, I gave up on the trains altogether and decided to take an express bus instead. Some idiot in an expensive car (you'd think I'd know what make it was since I almost ended up on top of it) tried to run me down at Wabash. I had the light, she started turning without even looking, and I literally had to bang on the hood to get her to stop.

Did I mention it was pouring rain at this point? That's relevant because there was a huge puddle in front of the Michigan and Randolph stop. Incredibly, most drivers--even the cabbies--changed lanes to avoid it or slowed to crawl to minimise their wake. It only took one asshole, however, to do the exact opposite for everyone in the shelter to get soaked to the skin. After at least fifteen soggy minutes of wondering where the hell the bus--any bus!--had gotten to, we spotted a 147 turning north onto Michigan from South Water--two blocks north of us and four blocks north of where it should be turning. Figuring I couldn't get any more wet at this point, I tramped two blocks north to a now-empty shelter, determined not to miss the next one. When it finally came by, I asked the driver if the route had been changed. He explained that it hadn't, but that he'd been held up over 20 minutes because of filming for a movie (Public Enemy with Depp and Bale, according to a co-worker) and surmised that the other driver had sought an alternative route around the mess on his own.

In short, public transit is for suckers. I've got to start making a lot more money so I can just take cabs everywhere I want to go.

Comments

[his-regard.livejournal.com]

To be fair, there was plenty of notification a year and a half ago when the "all counterclockwise, all the time" routing was first put in place. I'm pretty sure the route signs all have the arrows pointing that out, too.