Seems like they're being extremely loud about this. The boards outside the doors at Union/Ogilvie that normally tell you where the trains are stopping now just tell you that you risk being arrested for not having a ticket, which I suppose is in its way more important than ascertaining whether a train will skip your stop. I guess they're even going to have railroad cops lurking over the platforms at the big stations (Naperville, 59, Downers?) fining or arresting people who intend to board without tickets. That's cheerful.

It all feels like a bit much to me. Figure most people are on monthlies and accounted for, pretty much everyone else is paying on one-ways. If a handful of people don't pay, what's the big deal, really? Mass transit isn't a luxury good. Hey, you were going that way anyway.

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They lose WAY more on the overcapacity trains to Naperville where the conductors don’t even bother going through to punch the 10-ride and single-ride tickets.

I really don’t see how people are evading, other than a few cheapskates who buy a Naperville ticket but stay to Route 59.

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Yeah, the big DuPage stations are where they especially need to switch to tap-on-tap-off systems like they have in South Florida with the Tri-Rail. They said they can't afford to buy them. What they can afford are more cops. Okay. Score one for anti-automation, I guess.

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Instead of arresting people, just drop fare jumpers off at the worst station on the line. Enjoy Maywood, dumbass

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Sit upstairs with an old punched ticket clipped on the side, sleep, and pray they don't care enough to bother you.

I'm pretty sure ticket agents at Union Station tried to zone-jump on my behalf. I would come in off Amtrak looking particularly bedraggled as one would from six hours on Amtrak, and ask for a ticket to Fox Lake. "All the way to Fox Lake?" The second time I said "actually I think I can get a ride in Deerfield" and then went to Fox Lake.


It's Amtrak, not Metra, but when I went to Detroit, there was a passenger who was pretty clearly in chemically-induced duress, and we had to stop the train to throw the guy off at 63rd. It wasn't even a stop, they just dumped his bath-salted ass in a railyard.

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When I worked downtown, I typically bought monthly passes.
But once in a while I'd take a couple weeks off for vacation and I'd buy some 10 ride passes instead of a whole month.
I'd say that back then (early 2000s), maybe 1 in 7 or so times they wouldn't punch my 10 ride. Many times the conductor would walk by and see my 10 ride on the seat clip next to a monthly and just keep walking.

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Fare evasion focus is a big thing in DC too. I think the analogy here is taxes. You find out you're facing budget deficits or can't fund a particular project and then you realize there's all this lost revenue due to people exploiting weaknesses in the system. So you shore that up to realize the lost revenue. Obviously way bigger losses in taxes but in principle it's similar.

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Would you believe the conductors make six figures + and retire with full pension? I'm sure they would save a ton with a tap on/tap off system but I'm assuming some union machine is preventing that.

They don't even work 8 hour days. The Dumbshit I know does a morning run from University Park and back. Goes home and sleeps and then goes back in the afternoon for another round trip.

If you knew what you were doing tech wise you could easily code a fradualrent Venture app ticket thing on your phone. They don't really even inspect those things

No fucking way

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

I'm surprised there's fare evasion in DC for three reasons:

1) Metro is tap-in-tap-off, but with fare controls in and out, and because every fare is determined point-to-point, you can find yourself without enough money on your card to get out of the system and then you have to pay at a special exit-fare machine to get out. You can't away with underpaying, the card knows where you are and where you got on.

2) Metro police are notorious hard-asses who will beat the living shit out of you for the slightest transgression. Eating on the train will get you arrested. I just read a story about a woman who got her teeth knocked out by the cops because she accidentally left her farecard at home. (What color do you think her skin was?)

3) DC is a city for hall monitors who grew up.

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Easy way to save money? STOP STOPPING AT CLYBOURN SO OFTEN. Why in God’s green earth is Clybourn serviced by both the Northwest AND North line?!? Outbound is especially egregious! Any idiot in high school could figure out alternate stops there between NW and N line.

The only time fares aren’t taken is when Metra fucks up their own schedule causing multiple lines to pack into a train. For example, Ravenswood has a 7.54, 8:01 and 8:10. Why, who the fucks knows. But it becomes a cluster if 7.54 is delayed 10 min.

Also going home why is there a 3:20, 3:35 and then 4:35?!? Where the fuck is a 4pm or 4:15pm?!?! Fucking Metra

It's the north version of the Western yard or Van Buren, it's like a secondary terminal. It probably serves as a transfer point between Northwest and North Shore, for whom, I'm not entirely sure.

I will say it's frustrating as hell to go puttering in from Clybourn or Western, it accounts for at least 25% of the journey, but that's the logistics of rail travel, nothing you can do, it'd be like that even if you didn't stop there.

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I’m sympathetic to inbounds stopping at Clybourn. I rarely see anyone getting off but UP-NW and UP-N are servicing two distinctively different suburban regions. However, outbound from
Ogilvie makes zero sense. It’s absurd the 5.12 UP-NW and 5.13 UP-N BOTH stop at Clybourn

Well, if you have to get off there before Ogilvie, don't you have to get back on, too?

I don't get the Gladstone Park stop. Trains never stop there and it appears to be a neglected parking lot. Why is it there at all?

EDIT: what really doesn't make sense is skipping Jefferson and Irving, which are transfers to the Blue Line. Skip one or the other, but not both unless you're running express to Arlington Heights or Barrington or something.

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I just don’t understand Clybourn overall. It’s servicing Lincoln Park/Bucktown/Wicker which doesn’t have the corporate density of RN/Loop/West Loop. Resident living there are either taking CTA or bicycling. It’s a stop that aggravates me to no end

I always thought that Clyborn was mostly reverse commuters and the occasional person who lives NW and works in Lincoln Park.

The stop I don't get is Halsted on the BNSF. Except for White Sox games where someone might want to transfer to the 8 bus, it makes no sense. Fortunately all of the morning trains from the big stations skip it.

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Interesting. 100 - 30 or so years ago that stop was probably the shit for many a working man. Time passes.

Yeah, the vibe changes. For reasons that would take too long to explain, I knew some Cubs fans who lived near Cub Park in the late 80s and early 90s, and many were blue-collar: a forklift driver, a plumber, a security guard, etc. (I waited for tickets at Cub Park with them, believe it or not. Never been inside, but three years in a row, I waited for tickets, which were for other people. It was actually fun--and cold.) Last I heard, some of them were in Carpentersville and Round Lake. Just got pushed out. I don't even think you can wait to buy tickets like they used to do anymore. Don't get me wrong, the Great Scorer detests the Cubs and all they stand for, but that was a good baseball tradition right there, and those were outstanding fans.

I just realized that this post adds zero to the discussion, but I'm leaving it. If the aforementioned Great Scorer wants to penalize me for it, He knows where He can find me.

Sounds more like you were in line at "Berlin".

Sounds more like you know a lot about the freaky deeky than the average Cub Park goer. Care to share there CB? Anyplace else you casually drop in conversation with a buncha dudes....and Spaulding?


Just funnin.

Holy shit, that was hysterical

whats the difference?

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i love the conductors. Old school. Quit automating everything. We should feel lucky e have that. Probably feels neat to out of towners.

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It was always skipped, and noone ever got off, but I still like having it. You never know. The minute u take it away is when u need it. I mean that's West Loop which is booming, so probly has a place now more than ever.

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yea about 1 in 8 or 10 times for me. I still felt like I always got punched though. theyll even wake u up or get ur attention if ur tryin' to ignore them. You guys falsely make it out to be that it's a free ride. It's not. Its like anything else. Expect to pay, and let the occassional free ones be unexpected.

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