More Bus Moves

[jajuan]

Well the site's back up, and that error is still in place.

[MTRSP1900-CTA3200]

1 hour ago, jajuan said:

Yeah. I think their servers crashed shortly after making that post. The main site and the Bus and Train tracking sites won't load at present because of some connection reset error. And they may correct the error I caught on the weekday service change page so I'll say what it was. They put up a bullet stating to the effect of "Note: All CTA bus routes will operate on a Sunday/Holiday schedule on Thursday November 26, 2015." Only problem is this is 2016 obviously. So they copied and pasted it from last year without correcting for Thanksgiving's date will be this year.

Oops! But the one I see now is better.

[jajuan]

I've been noticing that the 6, J14 and 147 have been seeing more 40 foot bus usage quite regularly lately during weekday service. These have been more regular type trips as opposed to the occasional rush hour trips where 40 footers are more likely when 40 footers are seen on these routes. 

[garmon757]

4 hours ago, jajuan said:

I've been noticing that the 6, J14 and 147 have been seeing more 40 foot bus usage quite regularly lately during weekday service. These have been more regular type trips as opposed to the occasional rush hour trips where 40 footers are more likely when 40 footers are seen on these routes. 

That's because 103rd is getting hit with a lot of maintenance of the 60 footers at the shop.

[jajuan]

21 minutes ago, garmon757 said:

That's because 103rd is getting hit with a lot of maintenance of the 60 footers at the shop.

Explains the 6 and J14, but it wouldn't explain the 147, or come to think of it the 146 to a smaller degree, unless North Park is undergoing a similar issue. 

[garmon757]

4 minutes ago, jajuan said:

Explains the 6 and J14, but it wouldn't explain the 147, or come to think of it the 146 to a smaller degree, unless North Park is undergoing a similar issue. 

Or being Bipolar

[MRChiCity]

Good Evening and I hope you all had a good thanksgiving, I would like to know if any current or former operators ever worked Black Friday? Particular on routes such as the 151 that go on the Mag Mile? Do those buses get packed to the gills with shoppers? Thank you

[BusHunter]

Yes the downtown area is at its highest capacity now. You can barely walk and people dodge out in the street to pass obstructions or other people making it a nightmare on the operators then they give you an artic. All you can do is really be careful and take it easy, better to have took your time and not hit anythng then to have something on your driving record or if its serious enough lead to termination but cta's union is pretty strong.

[jajuan]

To add on to what BH mentioned, yeah buses can get jammed. You'll more likely see artics on the north side routes that run along the Mag Mile. As for the south side routes on the Mag Mile, #3 would have none since 77th Garage no longer uses artics, and the #26 sees them mainly during the rush periods. Midday and evening service beyond the PM rush is run more with standard length 40-foot buses. And as you've already surmised MRChiCity, a lot of the downtown crowd on Black Friday would be from shopping as many people would be off from work because of the fact it's a holiday weekend. Another big part of it would be from holiday tourist and others from out of town due to the holiday. 

[Busjack]

2 hours ago, jajuan said:

And as you've already surmised MRChiCity, a lot of the downtown crowd on Black Friday would be from shopping as many people would be off from work because of the fact it's a holiday weekend.

And, I bet again, a lot of artics were running empty on the LaSalle routes on the usual idiocy that Friday was a work day.

[jajuan]

26 minutes ago, Busjack said:

And, I bet again, a lot of artics were running empty on the LaSalle routes on the usual idiocy that Friday was a work day.

Perhaps, but don't forget not as many artics are used in the PM rush on the LaSalle routes even on a workday. 136 switches over to mostly 40 footers between 4:15 and 4:45 PM for example. Also from what I've personally observed, not all folks riding the LaSalle routes do so to get to work on or near LaSalle Street anymore but also as an alternate to Lake Shore express routes to transfer to other bus routes. without dealing with Michigan Avenue and State Street traffic. 

[sw4400]

Looks like limited materials from the Chicago Public Library from Chicago Authors, blog posts about Chicago and other Chicago material will be free on CTA's 4G LTE Network for passengers.

Story

[qwantae]

For the past Month, I've seen more 1000s on the J14 and 6, but this week I've seen J14 being over 50% of 1000s on that route.  So what is going on with the Artics?  

[jajuan]

7 minutes ago, qwantae said:

For the past Month, I've seen more 1000s on the J14 and 6, but this week I've seen J14 being over 50% of 1000s on that route.  So what is going on with the Artics?  

Garmon and I had that discussion in the Random CTA thread when I made that same observation starting about here in that thread. And yes apparently 103rd has been short based his observations of a number of 103rd being sidelined at South Shops during the past few weeks that this has been going on. 

[andrethebusman]

Look for artics off #66 with winter pick. Too many delays.

[Busjack]

13 hours ago, andrethebusman said:

Look for artics off #66 with winter pick. Too many delays.

Too many delays before that, too. If the implication is that artics, due to loading issues, only work on routes with express segments (on LSD), there are too many of them, except for the reports that 103rd is short.

[Sam92]

5 minutes ago, Busjack said:

Too many delays before that, too. If the implication is that artics, due to loading issues, only work on routes with express segments (on LSD), there are too many of them, except for the reports that 103rd is short.

 

13 hours ago, andrethebusman said:

Look for artics off #66 with winter pick. Too many delays.

So how does #22 and 151 get around d those delays as local nearly all artic routes? And another thing where are those artics going? 

[chgofan78]

I wonder why Chicago Garage just doesn't spread the artics out to other routes that could benefit their usage like Madison, North Avenue, Cicero, or Fullerton- instead of just focusing on Chicago. 

[artthouwill]

2 hours ago, Sam92 said:

 

So how does #22 and 151 get around d those delays as local nearly all artic routes? And another thing where are those artics going? 

Good question.   In regards to 151 outside of downtown,  Stockton isn't the heaviest street in the city in terms of traffic.   Plus only half of the 151 goes past Belmont.   The only real reason for artics is south of Belmont and especially downtown. 

The 22 shares a good portion of its route south of Diversey with the 36 which doesn't run artics, and again the southern portion of the route is the heaviest.   The 151 has help downtown and the 156 helps the 151 through Lincoln Park. 

The 66 is nearly a standalone route and Chicago Avenue is one lane in each direction in its entirety,  which is not true of Sheridan or Clark or the downtown area of those routes. As I have noted before about 79th,  not being able to totally curb an artic causes traffic jams which logjam the following buses.   With heavy loads and heavy traffic on 2/3 of the route,  I have always said Chicago Avenue and Belmont were not good routes for artics.  What Chicago Avenue needs is some peak direction short turns somewhere between Damen and Sacramento.   Maybe they can extend rush hour 94 buses to Chicago and Fairbanks.  Or extend the 11 via Halsted to Chicago and east to the lake.  

[artthouwill]

4 minutes ago, chgofan78 said:

I wonder why Chicago Garage just doesn't spread the artics out to other routes that could benefit their usage like Madison, North Avenue, Cicero, or Fullerton- instead of just focusing on Chicago. 

Chicago has heavier ridership than those routes. 

[Busjack]

54 minutes ago, chgofan78 said:

I wonder why Chicago Garage just doesn't spread the artics out to other routes that could benefit their usage like Madison, North Avenue, Cicero, or Fullerton- instead of just focusing on Chicago. 

 

48 minutes ago, artthouwill said:

Chicago has heavier ridership than those routes. 

And if we are to believe that they don't work on Chicago, they won't work there.

On art's point, 66 has weekly average ridership of 22,349, while 20 has 16,182, 72 has 15,059, 54 has 10,390, and 74 has 11,555 (per July 2016 ridership report).  22 and 151 have similar ridership to 20, but what I figure is that after77th rejected them for 79, the surplus was allocated to NP, which appeared to be the only garage left that could handle them.

[geneking7320]

Do you folks think that the artics would benefit from having 3 doors instead of just 2?

Also if more people would exit using the rear doors [articulated buses or not] service might be better.

[BusHunter]

10 minutes ago, geneking7320 said:

Do you folks think that the artics would benefit from having 3 doors instead of just 2?

Also if more people would exit using the rear doors [articulated buses or not] service might be better.

But by adding doors you're taking away seats. The artic demo I was on I believe had 3 doors but no one used the center one but traffic was light.

[jajuan]

8 hours ago, artthouwill said:

Good question.   In regards to 151 outside of downtown,  Stockton isn't the heaviest street in the city in terms of traffic.   Plus only half of the 151 goes past Belmont.   The only real reason for artics is south of Belmont and especially downtown. 

The 22 shares a good portion of its route south of Diversey with the 36 which doesn't run artics, and again the southern portion of the route is the heaviest.   The 151 has help downtown and the 156 helps the 151 through Lincoln Park. 

The 66 is nearly a standalone route and Chicago Avenue is one lane in each direction in its entirety,  which is not true of Sheridan or Clark or the downtown area of those routes. As I have noted before about 79th,  not being able to totally curb an artic causes traffic jams which logjam the following buses.   With heavy loads and heavy traffic on 2/3 of the route,  I have always said Chicago Avenue and Belmont were not good routes for artics.  What Chicago Avenue needs is some peak direction short turns somewhere between Damen and Sacramento.   Maybe they can extend rush hour 94 buses to Chicago and Fairbanks.  Or extend the 11 via Halsted to Chicago and east to the lake.  

Correction, Art. Chicago isn't one lane in each direction in its entirety. It's two lanes in each direction for much of its length. But it's a narrow street for one of that lane configuration in some spots. The only main spots it's one lane each direction is in the Austin neighborhood west of Laramie and in the downtown area east of Orleans if I'm not mistaken. And while I agree that Chicago could work better with some rush hour short turns, I don't think extending the 94 by almost 5 miles. is a viable option to accomplishing that. But if the artics as Andre reports, then CTA does need to find some more local routes where they can be run because as Busjack notes, if CTA is falling into a mode that outside the 22 (during rush periods and all day weekends/holidays), 151 and 156, artics only work on the express routes, then they have far too many artics on hand. 

[artthouwill]

13 minutes ago, jajuan said:

Correction, Art. Chicago isn't one lane in each direction in its entirety. It's two lanes in each direction for much of its length. But it's a narrow street for one of that lane configuration in some spots. The only main spots it's one lane each direction is in the Austin neighborhood west of Laramie and in the downtown area east of Orleans if I'm not mistaken. And while I agree that Chicago could work better with some rush hour short turns, I don't think extending the 94 by almost 5 miles. is a viable option to accomplishing that. But if the artics as Andre reports, then CTA does need to find some more local routes where they can be run because as Busjack notes, if CTA is falling into a mode that outside the 22 (during rush periods and all day weekends/holidays), 151 and 156, artics only work on the express routes, then they have far too many artics on hand. 

There are viable routes that could use artics like Ashland and Western Avenues.   North Park certainly could run the artics assigned to the 22 on Western instead.   However we know that 74th doesn't have space for artics which would mean that another garage like 77th would have to take those routes and artics as well.