It's deeply satisfying to see my native city--Chicago--praised for doing something not only right but smart. William Galston in today's Wall Street Journal (11/29/17) gives a shout out to the CTA--the Chicago Transit Authority whose trains have an on-time record of 96 percent [no Mussolini jokes please]. Galston lays out that budgetary, supervisory, and planning strategies that created this record.
He contrasts it to New York's MTA--the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which runs the city's subway and buses. The on-time record of its subways lines has fallen 25 percent since 2007. The worst, the no. 2 train has a 33 percent on-time record. The MTA claims increased ridership causes the delays--it takes more people more time to enter and exit. But in contrast to the Chicago practices, the MTA's budgetary, supervisory, and planning strategies are woefully misapplied and mismanaged with predictable results--worn equipment, breakdowns, and signal delays.
In today's NYTimes, Jim Dwyer (the Mike Royko of New York) looks at the burden of delays and overcrowding combined with the city's housing costs. As housing prices have risen, people move to the far-flung outer boroughs. That can mean twice-a-day, two hour commutes on trains and buses.
I know all of you drive on empty roads and find parking places wherever you go, but shed a tear or two for New York commuters, and if you're thinking of vacationing in a big city, go to Chicago where the trains are on-time!
The way I mostly visit Manhattan is via the Weehauken Ferry or the train from Dover, NJ.. It's nice to have any kind of public transportation but interesting that one big city can have such success relative to another.
ReplyDeleteOf course, it is easier to be on time when you run on a realistic schedule. When they started having to report statistics the airlines drew up schedules that allowed for taxiing time and runway delays and, voila, were able to do much better at being on time than they were when they assumed a constant 450 mph from Point A to Point B.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to look for Galston's piece. Coincidentally, I cancelled my WSJ subscription yesterday :-)
ReplyDeleteFor most of the years I lived in Chicago, I didn't own a car - I rode the CTA buses and trains for my daily getting around. It's not as time-efficient as owning a car but it's also less aggravating than city driving and parking and, given the prices for parking and fuel in the city, it's almost certainly cheaper. Service has actually diminished quite a bit since Margaret's younger days - the trains run slower due to aging track infrastructure, and worse, a number of bus routes have been discontinued or service scaled back. Chicago has no money, and it affects virtually all areas of civic life. But also over the years, some rail service has expanded - one can now ride an El train from the loop to Midway Airport, there is a new West Side line called the Pink line, and they are gradually adding stops to the old Skokie Swift, which is now called the Yellow Line. It's one of the aspects of Chicago life that makes the city livable.
Even though I am a crotchety conservative on many issues, I am in favor of public investment in, and subsidy of, mass transportation. We waste a lot of time and burn a lot of fossil fuel because we insist on driving from point A to point B. I do some work with homeless people in my local community. Some of them have cars - and not infrequently live in them. But if they don't have a car, they walk or ride a bicycle to get around, regardless of the weather, because there is no bus service worth mentioning, and the trains only work if you want to go from the suburbs to the Chicago Loop. If you need to get your kids to school or get to the grocery school, you're SOL.
Trains that transport people...what would that be like? Our town is on the main branch of the Union Pacific, so is my hometown. Trains rip through here about 80 mph all day, but they are freight trains. Passenger service ended here in the middle 1960's. Amtrak doesn't count, they go through flyover country in the middle of the night, and only stop at 2 towns in the state anyway. My sole experience with a passenger train was the time we rode the City of Denver when I was a child. That was fun, I sat in the bubble top car and ate breakfast in the dining car. My husband said he used to ride the train to college, but by the time I was in college, service had ended. I bummed a ride or rode the bus (gaaah!). We don't even have bus service anymore.
ReplyDeleteOur town is in the process of building two more overpasses, so we can get rid of all the railroad crossings and the trains can rip through here even faster.
Driverless cars, bring it on! I would love to kick back with a book and have the car bring me safely to visit family members who don't live close by.
P.S. If you have ever played "train poker" you probably grew up in a small town!
DeleteI always liked Toronto as a city to visit. I could easily use the rail transportation. However it also has all those underground connections between stores. So you can easily get in a lot of exercise too.
ReplyDeleteThen there were the ferries that go out to the islands. I would always stay at the hotel right there were the ferries leave. I would rent a bicycle, then go out on the ferries very early in the morning, ride around the islands on the bike, then come back around ten or eleven o'clock in the morning when everyone else was headed out to the islands.
I went to Chicago each year when I was in graduate school to the Midwestern Psychological Association annual meeting in the Palmer Hotel. The bishops met at the same time on another floor. So they were often in the elevators with the cross tucked away as if they were mobsters packing a gun. Didn't realize at the time how accurate that image might have been.
Yay, Chicago! I always enjoyed taking the Amtrak to Union Station and then a short walk to pick up the train to LaGrange where our other office was. You had about enough time to have a cuppa coffee and read the newspaper, and then your friends met you at the station. Always found it very congenial and relaxing compared to having to travel via air. Ugh. Nice big seats on the trains!
ReplyDeleteBut, in my area of Michigan, I pretty much do drive on empty roads and can always find a parking space.
Raber and I gave the extra car to The Boy when he moved out (and we're still helping with payments and insurance, apparently), so we ride to work together. The fact that we are overrun with Canada geese and deer, or whose corn or bean field hasn't been harvested and when they might get around to are always popular fall time conversation topics.
Metropolitan areas out here in California are car country! Public transportation (1) reflects and (2) causes that. I'll be dead and gone long before public transportation is efficient enough to drag people out of our cars.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in grade school "street cars" still ran from our town, Charleroi, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh to the downtown.
ReplyDeleteI remember going in to the allergy doctor with my mother.
By high school the street cars had become a bus line,
and so I actually went into Pittsburgh daily one summer for ecclesiastical Latin classes at the Cathedral.
No car, no parents to drive me.
When I was a student at Saint John's Collegeville, I went back and forth by train. Train left Pittsburgh around 11pm. Got into Chicago early in the morning. Switch to train that left for Minneapolis and then Saint Cloud. Went up around the Mississippi.