Travel Planner

[trainman8119]

It continues to amaze me just how bad the RTA travel planner really is. Now, before I totally go off on this thing again, let it be known that I know the guy who designed the computer program and put it into practice. But, if I were the average joe who knows nothing about bus routes in Chicago and Suburbia, I would be in big trouble.

Perhaps the funniest routing I had is when I looked up getting my wife from Mount Prospect to the area around Wrigley Field. They had the train routing right, but upon exiting the train at Irving Park, the so called travel planner had her walking out the east end of the platform to Pulaski and taking a 53 bus for 2 blocks to Irving Park instead of just going out the west end of the platform down to Irving and getting on the bus there. 1 extra transfer and perhaps 10-20 minutes of extra waiting time.

For fun, with my wife heading into the city to go to the Criminal Court for jury duty, I checked it out again. Well, they had her getting off at Clybourn and taking an Ashland bus and transferring to Blue Island-26th bus on 26th street. Curious to say the least. I checked out another routing by eliminating the least transfer option (yes, remember that). They had me going downtown (which is what I would have done in the first place) but instead of getting on a 60 at the train station without having to make a further transfer, they had me getting on a westbound Madison bus and transferring to a 94 at California. Huh !!!!

These routings will get you there, indeed. But are they the most efficient ?? Usually not. Had I not know they guy who worked on this, I'd swear that there is a program to insure the CTA gets transfer (or in current terms extra fare) money. Unfortunately, this system is so tied in to time that you do not get the absolute best routing to get someplace. To make matters worse, if you were to call the TIC and challenge one of the agents there, you get responses that is what the computer tells us. The people working there, for the most part, have no clue what they are talking about and are under instruction that they are to give no info other than what they are looking at on the screen.

I would strongly suggest that the RTA take out the time factor option in this route planning (other than to check if a route is actually operating) and then maybe people would get the BEST routing available to them.

[Busjack]

One time, just to see if the scope is throughout the Pace area, I put in a Hammond address. While it recognized an address near the Hammond Transit Center, depending on the time of day, it would route a trip to the north suburbs by suggesting taking a 364 bus to the Oak Forest Rock Island station. Of course, the obvious answer would be to walk about 1/2 mile north to the South Shore, or take Hammond Transit there (which wasn't in the system). The suggested routing also passed by the Harvey Metra Electric station, for an unknown reason.

Other instances of "playing with it" indicated to me that one can't rely on it.

The jury summons suggests taking the Blue Line to 21st and California, and transferring to 94 there. I assume that your example first takes one on the UP NW, and, as you say, the least transfer option from NW Station would be 60 (don't both 20 and 60 now run on Madison?), although the quicker one might be the Blue Line one (although I wouldn't feel like transferring at either Madison/California or 21st/California).

[trainman8119]

The jury summons suggests taking the Blue Line to 21st and California, and transferring to 94 there. I assume that your example first takes one on the UP NW, and, as you say, the least transfer option from NW Station would be 60 (don't both 20 and 60 now run on Madison?), although the quicker one might be the Blue Line one (although I wouldn't feel like transferring at either Madison/California or  21st/California).

20 and 60 do both run on Madison, however, 60 is a one bus trip to 26th and California then about a 1/2 block walk to the Courthouse entrance...thus the ideal route. I am sure that what would be printed as instructions would come from the Travel Planner. When I was last at the Courthouse, I took the trip back downtown on the 94-Blue Line connection. The 60 was a quicker trip...plus the Walk from Clinton-Congress to one of the train stations can be a long one on a cold day. The 60 bus stops outside both Union and Ogilvie stations, again making it a much better option.