Critical Elephants

It has come to my attention that as a blogger the news media considers me duty-bound to comment on everything in my perceivable universe especially those things of which I am poorly informed. Therefore, I have decided that my latest attempt to be a real blogger should be a feature about topics on which I have poorly informed opinions.

Today's Episode- The trouble with the CTA.

Here's the thing. The CTA is supposed to be serving me as a convenient means of transit between part of the city and another. Most specifically the "L" system is meant to be a rapid and environmentally friendly option for navigating the city. the critical element, and it's a big one, is that it should connect places people actually need to be. Why, in the name of whichever deity is in charge of things like this, would anyone in their right mind create a system like this with parallel lines! If I want to go across the city to somewhere that is on the red line It takes me an hour on the bus or I can take the train all the way down to the loop and catch the red line itself. One train between Belmont(Blue) and Belmont(Red) would clear it right up. and it would still be sufficiently inconvenient for most of the city for the CTA to keep up appearances. You don't want to be too much on the ball or people will expect something of you and I get that. The relative distance is less than between four stops on an "L". i.e. the trip could take 20 mins tops on a system which made sense.

What is more if we hope to host the Olympic games surely we need to step up our game transit wise and the way forward is in high efficiency trains. Look at any London. Yeah, the tube is about as logical as an anthill but if you know what you're doing you can get anywhere in the city and you can do it with reasonable speed.

My recommendation, since apparently I am mandated by the internet to provide it, is to create an outer loop "L" line which would follow Lake Shore Drive between Belmont and Hyde Park and then across to Pulaski where it would complete its loop.

The big benefit here is that it would also serve the purpose of the proposed Gold Line which is to serve Hyde park and it would do them one better by laterally serving the entirety of that neighborhood.