This morning is the first work-day rush period to feel the effect of service cuts by the CTA and the suburban Pace system, and many commuters weren’t liking what they found.
“It sucks, we hate it,” said Mary Joyce, who commutes from the west suburbs to her job working for the state. “This is very inconvenient.”
Joyce hops on a train about 7:30 a.m. And arrives at the Ogilvie Transpotation Center around 8:30 and waits for an eastbound bus on Washington Avenue and Canal Street.
She and a friend were trying to figure out alternative buses to take while they stood in a line several dozen people long. Two No. 20 buses were too full to let Joyce on. After about a 10 minute wait she squeezed onto a No. 56 route.
“I’ll probably be late today,” Joyce said, adding the wait for a bus is usually no longer than a few minutes.
Riders of the 81 Lawrence bus in the Uptown neighborhood on the
North Side, for instance, complained to the driver of having to wait 20
minutes in the bitter cold.
“Yeah, they got rid of the bus in front of me,” the driver said.
Others found a way to cope. Joe Winston, a savvy commuter who knows that no two CTA commutes are alike, set out an hour earlier than usual for work this morning, as he said, “anticipating a disaster.”
Instead of taking the CTA all the way downtown, Winston, who lives in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, rode two CTA buses to the Metra stop at Ravenswood.
“By using the CTA Bus Tracker and running full tilt a couple of blocks, I made it fine,” he said.
“But if I had used CTA all the way downtown, I shudder to think what it would have been like. … CTA service can barely pack everybody in during rush hour as it is.”
CTA workers in neon vests were making the rounds of bus stops
passing out yellow pamphlets to inform riders of the bus and rail
service changes.
As part of the CTA’s plan to deal with a $300 million deficit,119 bus routes and seven rail lines are running less frequently. Forty-one bus routes are starting later or ending earlier, and nine express routes are no more.
Anticipating trouble Andrea Hill, 26, said she left her Lincoln Park residence 20 minutes earlier than usual this morning and had to let two standing-room-only No. 134 buses go by until one arrived with seating available. When that one arrived, some 20 passengers were waiting to get on; usually there might be a half dozen, she said.
On a No. 3 northbound bus at 18th Street and South Michigan Avenue about 7:20 a.m., passengers who normally would take the express bus were standing up in the aisle to the back of the bus.Three northbound buses in a row passed that intersection, while two northbound No. 4 buses arrived there at the same time.
The CTS service cuts were implemented Sunday, but most people didn’t encounter them until this morning.
The CTA said train passengers generally can expect to wait and additional minute or two between rush-hour trains, and bus passengers should anticipate an extra two to five minutes between buses.
For the morning rush hour, Green and Pink Lines will be the most impacted by the cuts.
Bus riders along Western, Ashland, Cicero and Cottage Grove avenues, Irving Park and Pulaski roads, King Drive, Garfield Boulevard and Madison Street also are seeing big changes. Express bus service on those roads have been cut, and riders have to ride the non-express alternative service along those routes.
Not everyone had problems. Jake Cameron, who got on a No. 156 bus in Lincoln Park said the “wait was about the same,” and Geoff Brown who missed his usual Blue Line train in Oak Park only had to wait 10 minutes for the next one. “That would have been wonderful even before the service cuts,” he said.
As problemantic as public transit may be today, tomorrow likely will be much worse. A heavy snowstorm with high winds is predicted to dump up to a foot of snow in the area.
A last-ditch effort Friday by Mayor Richard Daley to reach a compromise between the CTA and union officials was unsuccessful. The CTA is seeking contract concessions to reverse the cutbacks. About 1,100 CTA employees were laid off Sunday.
Pace is eliminating 15 routes and reducing service on nine others.
ChicagoNow’s Tracy Swartz is blogging the CTA service cuts throughout the day
– Serena Daniels, Angie Leventis Lourgos and Colin McMahon
