![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muckefuckWhen my new hire told me she intended to come at 9 a.m. rather than 9:30, I figured I'd better shift my schedule, too, so I'd still have that half hour of screwing around before I had to get down to business. It makes me feel better to realise that it wasn't simple laziness that's been keeping me in bed a bit longer, but the general fuckedness of the CTA. I remember it being worse earlier in the rush hour, but whoa nellie!
Today I left at 7:42, which with good connexions means an arrival at work by 8:30. I got to the platform by 7:50. At 7:56, a northbound train roared past--it was going express from Wilson to Morse. The "immediately following" train came two minutes later. It got me to Howard at 8:11, which will get me to work on time if there's a Linden waiting.
There was. Even more amazingly, it wasn't a two-care shuttle or a four-car shuttle, but a whole train. Except it was only a two-car shuttle. While waiting by the last car, we had a worker tell us only the first two cars were going north. Now, that sounds pretty dicko, but in the past no one would've told us anything at all and we'd've still been standing around like assholes while those first two cars pulled out.
So I jogged the length of the platform and squeezed into the first car. Very cozy! At the first station, they announced the train was going express to Davis, skipping two stops. I prayed that it would be stopping normally after that, but of course it was not to be. So at 8:20, I was out again waiting for another "immediately following" train. This one came five minutes later and got me to my stop at 8:28.
For that last little bit, I was able to chat with my morning commute buddy. The Howard train he'd been on also went express from Wilson. I told him about my ill luck last week leaving promptly in order to make a 6 p.m. appointment and getting trapped on a southbound makeshift express to Wilson. In both cases, the announcement was completely garbled so it was only after the doors had shut and the sign had changed to "Express" that people really knew what was up.
It caused me to reflect afresh on how unremittingly hostile the CTA is to newbies. I've always taken a perverse, embittered pride in knowing all the dirty tricks their personnel come up with in order to inconvenience with me which manifests as schadenfreude at the plight of bewildered occasional or first-time riders. But the switching choices are so inexplicable, the scheduled times such a laughingstock, the provision of information so rudimentary, that I find it at little hard to believe it ever gains new riders at all. For me, it's a cantankerous old buddy that I can't live with and can't live without. But you? You're young and fresh! Can't you find a means of commuting that loves you back?
Today I left at 7:42, which with good connexions means an arrival at work by 8:30. I got to the platform by 7:50. At 7:56, a northbound train roared past--it was going express from Wilson to Morse. The "immediately following" train came two minutes later. It got me to Howard at 8:11, which will get me to work on time if there's a Linden waiting.
There was. Even more amazingly, it wasn't a two-care shuttle or a four-car shuttle, but a whole train. Except it was only a two-car shuttle. While waiting by the last car, we had a worker tell us only the first two cars were going north. Now, that sounds pretty dicko, but in the past no one would've told us anything at all and we'd've still been standing around like assholes while those first two cars pulled out.
So I jogged the length of the platform and squeezed into the first car. Very cozy! At the first station, they announced the train was going express to Davis, skipping two stops. I prayed that it would be stopping normally after that, but of course it was not to be. So at 8:20, I was out again waiting for another "immediately following" train. This one came five minutes later and got me to my stop at 8:28.
For that last little bit, I was able to chat with my morning commute buddy. The Howard train he'd been on also went express from Wilson. I told him about my ill luck last week leaving promptly in order to make a 6 p.m. appointment and getting trapped on a southbound makeshift express to Wilson. In both cases, the announcement was completely garbled so it was only after the doors had shut and the sign had changed to "Express" that people really knew what was up.
It caused me to reflect afresh on how unremittingly hostile the CTA is to newbies. I've always taken a perverse, embittered pride in knowing all the dirty tricks their personnel come up with in order to inconvenience with me which manifests as schadenfreude at the plight of bewildered occasional or first-time riders. But the switching choices are so inexplicable, the scheduled times such a laughingstock, the provision of information so rudimentary, that I find it at little hard to believe it ever gains new riders at all. For me, it's a cantankerous old buddy that I can't live with and can't live without. But you? You're young and fresh! Can't you find a means of commuting that loves you back?