Strangers on the Train: Highway Work Forces Chicagoans Off Road

 

Commuters Bemoan the Loss Of Quality Time in Cars;

 

By ILAN BRAT

April 21, 2006; Page A1

 

CHICAGO -- Ann Schue used to cherish the time she spent alone in her 2003 Ford Expedition during her 90-minute morning commute to her job at the University of Chicago. Nestled in heated leather seats, she planned her day while listening to the news.

 

Read more at:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB114557703642531892-lMyQjAxMDE2NDI1MTUyNzE3Wj.html

Poor babies! Poor, lazy-a$$, selfish, self-absorbed babies! How I grieve for them.  :-D

 

South Shore ridership is up 30 percent, and they were already running at capacity. I'll be making the trip into Chicago from South Bend in a couple of weeks, and I'm glad for the heads-up. I'll be sure to take off-peak trains, and take along my hearing-protection earmuffs to block out the cell-phone yappers.

Interesting....I see nothing peaceful about driving 90 minutes to work!

great article. expect to read bushel's more just like it from around the usa given the rise in gas prices.

I used to wonder what people even in developed nations (Europe, Far East etc) were saying when they complained about "spoiled, materialistic Americans."

 

My eyes were gradually opened over the last 10 years or so, and the pathetic responses by many to the three-year rise in gas prices has only solidified that belief.

 

Remember that survey question from some months ago I posted, about whether driving was a constitutional right or a privelege? Remember that something like 20 percent thought it was a constitutional right?

^ i do.

 

here's a follow-up article from newsweek i saw today:

 

extreme commuters: the long and grinding road.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12438812/site/newsweek/

 

it's a crazy extreme, but how long do you think these people would last at that kind of commute?

 

driving has never been a constitutional right. driving, as my parents told me, it a God-given privilege, plain and simple. I cant believe some people will drive 90 minutes or 36 miles just to get to work, especially in a Ford Expedition! I like my car, but thats sad when people start to get choked up about not being able to drive, especially in Chicago. I have driven in Chicago and theres nothing to be choked up about, especially on the Dan Ryan

 

"This was a very, very big step for me," says Ms. Schue, 42 years old, who had never been on a train in her life before she recently started taking the Metra rail service. "I'm still very...," she says, choking up, then pausing to compose herself. "I miss my car."

 

 

What's wrong with her? It's as though she thinks she better than everyone else taking the train. screw her.

As a Chicagoland commuter for the past 14 years, my time is too valuable to drive to work. My train commute is my only "quiet time" I have most days, a chance to relax and read. (or sleep) Most rush hour trains are full of adults - people who know how to act in public. Rush hour trains pretty much police themselves. Off peak and weekends are a different story. Which is why I now travel with earplugs for the loud talkers and the ones who don't know how to use a cellphone. But it still beats driving, hands down!

 

The people in this article make it seem like traveling with people you don't know is the same as being sentenced to a Siberian work camp. But you adapt. You learn. You figure out where the bakeries are downtown and pick up a cake there or have it delivered, not travel with it on a crowded train. (DUH!) Or carry everything you had in the trunk and the back seat with you on a train back and forth. At least for long....

 

Once upon a time we were a nation of doers, of innovators, of thinkers. Now the slightest change and we whine and moan - but do NOTHING constructive about it. Unfortunately, the suburban lifestyle has produced a generation who have little contact with others, especially people different from them.

 

It would be interesting to follow up with these people in six months or a year, see how they adapt....if they do

 

Mark

 

PS: If Northeast Ohio had decent rail options, I'd be back in a heartbeat, but...one day!

Once upon a time we were a nation of doers, of innovators, of thinkers. Now the slightest change and we whine and moan - but do NOTHING constructive about it. Unfortunately, the suburban lifestyle has produced a generation who have little contact with others, especially people different from them.

 

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

 

More than one generation, in fact, with more on the way. Adaptation may start with the current crop of young children, but it won't be fully accepted until the expiration of the generation now establishing households in cul-de-sac land.

 

Oh! And welcome, marky-mark48.

Welcome Marky-Mark! Glad to have you on board.

Also just for anyone who is not familiar, these two chicks are taking the Metra commuter locomotives...which are really clean and comfortable.  They are hardly slumming it. 

 

"Taking the train is "a nightmare," says Mary Dennis," "One day she lugged a three-layer cake on the train and, by the time she reached her office, it was "almost as horizontal as it was vertical," she says. "But at least it tasted good.""

 

I'd like to see that fat ass try and bring her 3 layer cake onto an 'L' or cta bus.

 

"This was a very, very big step for me," says Ms. Schue, 42 years old, who had never been on a train in her life before she recently started taking the Metra rail service. "I'm still very...," she says, choking up, then pausing to compose herself. "I miss my car."

 

Someone get her a tissue...Oh wait, they are probably in the back set of her car.  When will her persecution end.

 

 

Even though he lives just five blocks from an El stop, he had been driving to work and paying $18 a day to park. Facing the prospect of daily gridlock, he ditched his car. He likes to sit in a single seat toward the back of his train car because "nobody sits on top of you

 

Hmmm, 10 years of taking the 'L' and no one has ever sat on top of me.  Might be kind of fun.

 

." One recent morning, two men walked past his seat peddling aromatic oils and candies. In a car, Mr. Pierson says, "you can roll the window up."

 

OR.... if if it bothers you on the train you can report it to cta, they have laws against soliciting.  It's called being part of society.  It's really frightening how socially inept these people are.

 

 

I had a few choice words after seeing this posted at SSC. 

 

I can sort of understand the woman driving to work at UC from where she lives, but the guy driving to work in the Loop when he is close to an L stop sounds just plain nuts...

 

This article should needs to be understood in the context of the newspaper in which it appeared, The Wall Street Journal. Wonderful paper that it is, the WSJ has shown an anti-transit bias. And not just on the editorial page, but in the news articles as well. It's been going on for many years. Just start following the WSJ's drift on the subject of a more balanced transportation system; you'll see.

 

Why this is true, I don't know. You'd think that for a paper based in Manhattan, where most commuters arrive by buses and trains, that there would be an inherent understanding of the power of these systems.

 

Some newspapers get it: USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Rocky Mountain News and the Dallas Morning News come to mind - the last four are all new light rail cities. My general observation about how a newspaper will report on this subject is that if the number of pages of car ads on a typical Saturday morning exceeds the number of pages of news, then you'll seldom read a balanced article about transit -- especially rail transit since it is so car-competitive. Food for thought.

I would have to agree with John on the WSJ.  They have almost nothing good to say about passenger rail.  Even when a professional and highly competent railroader like David Gunn was running Amtrak, the WSJ sounded like the mouthpiece for the Bush Administration.

 

Now, mind you, this is a newspaper aimed at business professionals and investors, most of whom understand that rail is the most efficient way to move large amounts of freight and people.  The only news service I have seen that's worse is Reuters, they make the WSJ seem like a railfan magazine.

 

But back to the subject of people who whine about gas prices and then have the gall to whine about the very mass transit system that is saving them both time and money......

 

SHUT UP!!!!!

i'm sorry, if you cant figure out how to find a bakery in downtown chicago to buy a cake, you don't deserve to live.

This is priceless!  Check out this response to the PD's Monday question which was:

 

Does the recent spike in gas prices make public transportation around Greater Cleveland any more attractive to you?

 

 

What a wonderful experience briskly walking through the neighborhood, early morning, before sunrise, to the bus stop, always looking over your shoulder for pit bulls, muggers and rapists. Need crack, smack or meth? Bus stops are a gathering point for young entrepreneurs.

 

[email protected]

 

Thanks to John Schneider for giving the source of that article, and thanks to metrocity for pointing out that those women were complaining about riding the Metra commuter rail, not the El.  I have some sympathy for people who have to ride the El, it is a total piece of crap- slow (oftentimes slower than street traffic), hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and not as thorough a system as I would like (a lot of that has to do with Chicago's geography).  The El is probably the least comfortable public transit system I've been on save the London Underground.  However, I think that just shows that they need to refurbish and update the El system just like they constantly do with the Highway system, and are currently doing with the Dan Ryan.  And those people who willfully accept those hour commutes are crazy.  Driving can be fun, but sitting in traffic is infuriating.

I don't think it helped CTA when they did away with A and B trains, and made everything all-stops. Trains barely get moving before they have to stop again.