[Chicago] CTA
Feb. 22nd, 2007 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI used the CTA last night, taking a train on the Brown line to a bus to get to the fish place (mmmmm…. fish) near Skokie.
I was surprised that the price for a train + bus differs depending on which kind you start with. (If one doesn’t have a day/week/month pass, of course.) A CTA employee helped me buy a ticket (notably, the machines don’t give change, and having an ATM next to it without a change machine isn’t quite as useful as it might be), and we chatted a bit, comparing Boston and Chicago. He thought $57 cheap, and spent a while looking at my CharlieCard.
The automatic announcements included the usual ones about the doors closing. There were also ones letting people know whether the doors would open on the right or the left at the next stop. I got to hear the things that are verboten on the train: smoking, littering, eating, soliciting, and gambling (does this mean the T is behind or ahead of the times in only reminding people that smoking is forbidden?).
I was surprised by how open the platforms are, rather worse than Charles/MGH, since the windows are just holes in the back walls, if there are walls rather than railings at all. Some parts have roofs, while a lot more don’t. I’d’ve thought that a city known for its severe winters and strong winds would have more shelter offered to those waiting.
For some of the way, there was another line that used the same stations, including the same platforms, since the trains were going in similar directions. It was entertaining when the tracks paralleled each other for a while, even through a station, which let me look into another train car when we were both paused.
There are ads inside the trains, as I’d expect. I hadn’t thought about ads on the outsides of the trains, though it makes sense, given that they’re mostly visible. Even so, it seemed odd.
Being on an elevated train meant being able to watch the sunset, and see into houses and backyards. I was surprised more people didn’t pull their blinds, and wondered about the probability of an Agatha Christie sort of moment, the brief only-possibly-seen witnessing of a crime…
The triple deckers (and quadruple ones, and similar sorts of buildings) are very different from the back, with back staircases spiraling from porch to porch, rather than inside, making the porches rather more public than they’d be in Boston (plus there’s the issue of clearing them off if there’s a storm).
Some of the buses were very new, announcing each stop, with information about the time and route and such. The bus I took, though, was old, requiring pulling on a cord running the length of each side to request a stop. I asked the bus driver to tell me when we got to my stop, and she did; I’m glad, ‘cause it was hard to keep track of streets and intersections in the dark as we passed.
One bus annoyance: it seems that a lot of them don’t run the whole time. Which would be fine, if signs said something like “last bus at 7 P.M.”, but saying that the bus runs until early evening or until the end of rush hour doesn’t cut it.
Good Morgan’s is a combination fish store and restaurant (in the sense that they’ve got a couple of tables; I get the impression more people get take out than eat in). I was there once five years ago and had an amazing whitefish sandwich. I got another one, which wasn’t quite as perfect as the one I remembered, but it can be hard to live up to memories, and it was pretty darned good (especially given how hungry I was…). The woman behind the counter was chatty, so I talked (well, listened) rather than read my way through my meal. When she heard I was planning to walk back to the train (the bus I’d taken stopped running in the evening sometime), she said it was too cold, too dangerous, and so on for me to do this (rather like some suburbanites feel about Boston, actually; I didn’t think it would be an issue), and she’d give me a ride to my hotel. I was very surprised, and when she insisted, didn’t argue overmuch. Paying it forward….
I was surprised that the price for a train + bus differs depending on which kind you start with. (If one doesn’t have a day/week/month pass, of course.) A CTA employee helped me buy a ticket (notably, the machines don’t give change, and having an ATM next to it without a change machine isn’t quite as useful as it might be), and we chatted a bit, comparing Boston and Chicago. He thought $57 cheap, and spent a while looking at my CharlieCard.
The automatic announcements included the usual ones about the doors closing. There were also ones letting people know whether the doors would open on the right or the left at the next stop. I got to hear the things that are verboten on the train: smoking, littering, eating, soliciting, and gambling (does this mean the T is behind or ahead of the times in only reminding people that smoking is forbidden?).
I was surprised by how open the platforms are, rather worse than Charles/MGH, since the windows are just holes in the back walls, if there are walls rather than railings at all. Some parts have roofs, while a lot more don’t. I’d’ve thought that a city known for its severe winters and strong winds would have more shelter offered to those waiting.
For some of the way, there was another line that used the same stations, including the same platforms, since the trains were going in similar directions. It was entertaining when the tracks paralleled each other for a while, even through a station, which let me look into another train car when we were both paused.
There are ads inside the trains, as I’d expect. I hadn’t thought about ads on the outsides of the trains, though it makes sense, given that they’re mostly visible. Even so, it seemed odd.
Being on an elevated train meant being able to watch the sunset, and see into houses and backyards. I was surprised more people didn’t pull their blinds, and wondered about the probability of an Agatha Christie sort of moment, the brief only-possibly-seen witnessing of a crime…
The triple deckers (and quadruple ones, and similar sorts of buildings) are very different from the back, with back staircases spiraling from porch to porch, rather than inside, making the porches rather more public than they’d be in Boston (plus there’s the issue of clearing them off if there’s a storm).
Some of the buses were very new, announcing each stop, with information about the time and route and such. The bus I took, though, was old, requiring pulling on a cord running the length of each side to request a stop. I asked the bus driver to tell me when we got to my stop, and she did; I’m glad, ‘cause it was hard to keep track of streets and intersections in the dark as we passed.
One bus annoyance: it seems that a lot of them don’t run the whole time. Which would be fine, if signs said something like “last bus at 7 P.M.”, but saying that the bus runs until early evening or until the end of rush hour doesn’t cut it.
Good Morgan’s is a combination fish store and restaurant (in the sense that they’ve got a couple of tables; I get the impression more people get take out than eat in). I was there once five years ago and had an amazing whitefish sandwich. I got another one, which wasn’t quite as perfect as the one I remembered, but it can be hard to live up to memories, and it was pretty darned good (especially given how hungry I was…). The woman behind the counter was chatty, so I talked (well, listened) rather than read my way through my meal. When she heard I was planning to walk back to the train (the bus I’d taken stopped running in the evening sometime), she said it was too cold, too dangerous, and so on for me to do this (rather like some suburbanites feel about Boston, actually; I didn’t think it would be an issue), and she’d give me a ride to my hotel. I was very surprised, and when she insisted, didn’t argue overmuch. Paying it forward….