Around this time last week I was sitting on the El. That’s how my traveling party and I spent the better part of our vacation. Sitting on the El.
The weekend of two major games, the Cubs vs. the Cardinals and the White Sox vs. the “other” Sox, the Chicago Transit Authority decided to take on a big construction project. This construction project involved rerouting trains and more. Read on.
Let’s just say this isn’t a good idea at the height of the tourist season with already bumbling tourists even more confused, and highly drunk baseball fans navigating even more blindly through these frustrating alterations to their schedules.
Perhaps the most frustrating construction snafu involved when we had to get off of the train at Jefferson Park. We walked out to a bus, which transported us to the NEXT stop, Montrose, where we RE-BOARDED the train. Yes, we had to get off of the train for ONE stop to bypass the construction.
It was quite exasperating. The bus ride alone was tedious enough.
Look, I understand the need for progress and often necessary changes to outmoded systems. I understand the value and need for construction. I don’t want to sound like an incessantly complaining Andy Rooney on one of his “grumpy old man” tirades.
I am just saying that the re-routing was quite confusing even for someone who knows the El well (I lived in Chicago for six years). The one-stop bus ride was just exasperating and time-consuming.
If I and my travel companions were confused and had much of our leisure time eaten up by never-ending train rides and attempts to find stations which were actually open amid all this construction, I can’t even imagine what tourists new to the area must have gone through. This construction truly had the potential to destroy what limited time they may have had to enjoy themselves.
All I am saying is that better planning could have made this run a lot more smoothly, not to mention better TIMING. Making such massive changes during a weekend where two big games are taking place and at the height of the tourist season is simply not a good public relations move. Though someone will always complain about the inconvenience, I believe it is all the more justified in this case.
I, and the many people who shared the trains with me that week, would like to know what CTA was thinking … Some nasty psychedelic fumes must have blown into the Windy City and headed straight for CTA chairman Carole Brown’s office when she and other organizational leaders made that decision.
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