So what is with the CTA "shuffle forward"? I'm calling it out, they're doing it on purpose, I know they're doing it on purpose. You all know what I'm talking about. The train pulls into the station and stops. Everyone gets up to go to the doors which will inevitably open given the trains' state of non-motion, then the train shuffles forward a foot throwing everyone down. Is the train really better off one foot in front of where it just was? What were the ramifications of it opening it's door one foot behind where it opened them?
Here's a mysterious fact. We all know there's a failsafe point about 50 yards away from the train station that is the point where you couldn't catch the train no matter how fast you ran. Inside the failsafe zone, you can run your ass off and with a little luck and a touch-card you can make it to the train. But if you're behind the failsafe line, the walk remains leisurely and you'll just catch the next one. My morning train, without fail, has arrived with me just outside the failsafe point for the last two years. Flawlessly. It ALWAYS does. You mean to tell me that if I left the house 30 seconds earlier I'd catch the train perfectly EVERY day? And what really is thirty seconds earlier? Can you leave earlier than left?
But given that I'm outside failsafe everyday, I just walk and catch the next one. But then once a month the train does the ultimate fuck you. I continue to walk, get in the failsafe perimeter, and the train still sits there with it's doors open, tempting me to run, but I do not, after all the train arrived when I was outside failsafe. I get closer, train still in the station, doors open, I get in the the station, haven't heard it leave, I get on the escalator, it still hasn't left, so now, like an idiot I decide to run, only to have the doors close the second I get up there. It's like they fucking know.
And what's with those train horns, is there anything louder in the universe? A really, how many miles away is an effective range for a train horn anyway? Is it necessary for the people at the Sheridan stop to know that a train's pulling into the Fullerton stop? And just once could the beep of the train horn be motivated? Since there's never a reason you can never be prepared for that loud son of a bitch. I feel physical chest pain when the unpredictable train horn blown for no fucking reason scares the living shit out of me.
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I'd love to start a thread just on the sort of Bermuda Triangle-like dream logic that the CTA runs by. There's the old standby, of course: as soon as you light a cigarette, your bus will arrive. But how about this? No matter which side of the street you are standing on, waiting for a bus, exactly THREE buses, traveling in the opposite direction, will arrive before yours does. I've even tried standing on the opposite side of the street, hoping that this will bring the correct bus faster.
But it knows.
It just knows.
Also, I'd like to leave you with my friend Erin's theory of bus dispatch within the CTA: "The Bus dispatcher, as I see it, is an autistic 6-year old, who sends out the buses in packs of three or four, so that they can be safe together, and won't get mugged."
Something to mull on for us all...
Oh my God! So true. That damn three to one bus ration is as true as true and it's ridiculous too. You can be somewhere where it's a dead-end to the north and the loop to the south and STILL three buses will head north. Lately, it's been absurd how poorly the train drivers have been driving, it's such a joke. I mean, it's a train, it has a knob that you push forward, it doesn't have the option to be driven shitty, and yet they find a way. Thanks for reading.
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