I feel a storm coming on over in the Bears parking thread because I groused about Soldier Field being poorly accessible by both car and rail, so I thought this might be a good place to talk about the Metra and the L and how one might make them better here and there.

- a United Center stop on the Pink Line (Madison/Paulina). With the impending Wirtzdorfville development taking away parking spaces, they'll need to compensate with better accessibility from the L. I know there are stops at Ashland/Lake and the Medical District, but between winter and the West Side, one shouldn't have to walk any more than they have to. Besides, with the shops and restaurants they're building, you'd want to drop people off right there.

- extend the Red and Orange Lines to 130th and Ford City, respectively. This is supposed to start happening soon, I think.

- the names of the Metra lines are kind of confusing if you don't know the history of 19th century railroads. The "Milwaukee District North" doesn't go to Milwaukee. The "Union Pacific North" doesn't, either, but it goes to Kenosha, which approaches Milwaukee. The "Rock Island District" doesn't go to Rock Island, and why would it, anyway. Why is the one to Antioch a "service" and not a "line"? Why do I care? Why should I even have occasion to ask? Then there's the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the Heritage Corridor, which tell you nothing about anything. Either do what the Metro-North does in New York and just name the lines for their terminal cities, or just use the direction, so my Milwaukee District North line would be either the Fox Lake Line or just the North Line.

- The Metra Electric in the city should probably be part of the CTA. I'd have to look at a map to figure out if they can connect the lines somehow, but it seems weird to have that whole side of town on another system and probably paying higher fares. There's a guy who's proposing it be merged into the CTA as the Grey Line. That might be better.

- Speaking of Metra and the 19th century, there has to be a better system by now than having a man in a funny outfit punch my paper ticket. Is there ever going to be any way we can get Metra and the CTA onto a universal farecard? I know it's impossible to fare-control the Metra stations, but maybe something where you scan in and out as you board and/or disembark? I'm sure people who are smarter than I am have figured out how to do this, but Metra seems like the kind of governmental organization that drags its feet on everything, not the least of which being any sort of cooperation with the CTA.

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I'll use the 2 busiest stops on the Metra system, Rt 59 and Naperville as an example both inbound and outbound as to why a scan thingy wont work. The BNSF dedicates at least 3 runs of 11 car trains just to service these 2 stops, about 1500 people per train, If they were to be stopped and scanned before people were allowed to get on or depart ( ever seen those platforms at Union Station specifically people trying to catch those 3 express trains?) would result in none of those trains arriving or departing on time due to the clusterfuck of people who cant get their shit together enough to arrive more than 1 minute before their train leaves then have to run the 100 faster than Bolt or risk having to wait a god awful 15 / 20 minutes for the next train.The whole open boarding system they use would have to be scrapped.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Ooh, good point. So what about scanning people's farecards once they've boarded, then? I had pictured scanning yourself in as you board, but that would be hard, logistically, and way too easy to circumvent. I just think there has to be some system that works better than punching tickets and works in concert with the L.

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I heard they are working on some sort of bar code scanning system but all that would be doing is having the conductor hold a scanner instead of a hole puncher. Universal fare care is supposedly in the works too.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Fucking socialists can't leave anything alone, can they?

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

How is it that the CTA is so cash-strapped that they have to raise tourist passes to prices that stop justifying the purchase for anyone with the modicum of savoir-faire needed to load a farecard, charge $5 to take the Blue Line out of O'Hare, yet they can afford to demolish Randolph/Wabash and Madison/Wabash to build some garish, undulating pseudo-Gehry shit at Washington/Wabash?



Why not leave well enough alone and allocate that money to serving the swaths of the city unserved by the L? Or figure out how to make the Metra Electric anything but a urinal? Government, I swear. Make no small plans!

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Are you sure that isn't from the Onion?

80% sure. I wish it were.

The other thing that makes this dumb, which I realized firsthand last Saturday, is that getting off at Randolph/Wabash allows you to scurry right over to Millennium Station in a matter of moments. I imagine this is particularly useful in the winter. I appreciated the ease of such a transfer and it wasn't even that cold. Why add an extra block? Why do any of this?

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