Ruminations, Haunts, and Errors

With much fanfare the CTA unveiled their next big experiment: special lanes for the Chicago Card set. Yep, express lanes on certain bus routes and certain El stations.

Now, I’m sure this will help speed things up on buses, but I’m not sure I see the point at the El stops (especially the big ones like State/Lake that have 8-10 turnstiles). Sure, I’ve been stuck behind That Guy trying to board the bus while fumbling with coins or trying to figure out which direction the farecard goes…but is this really a problem for the trains? Since the Chicago Cards have been out I have never noticed that they register particularly faster than the farecards; moreover, even at two-turnstile stops like Southport I have yet to see a farecard-fumbler cause any significant backups.

Chicago Card-only fare machines, on the other hand, would speed things up, as I’ve yet to see the person who reloads their CC with small bills and coins…

Word out of Springfield this week is that Governor Gonad and the General Assembly leaders agreed to a state budget plan that shifts some monies out of school funding and even more out of pension funding to cover the CTA’s shortfall for the year. My prediction was thus partially successful, I’m actually quite astonished that the fix happened well before we got to the doomsday schedule.

Now, while at some level I’m happy that neither my fares are going up nor my schedule is impacted, I can’t say I’m comfortable with the ’solution’. For one thing, I’ll happily pay a little more to ride the train if that’s the only way to ensure both CTA service and proper funding for other big items like schools and state pensions. Besides, as an Illinois taxpayer I’m on the hook for the (already severly underfunded) pensions in particular no matter what, so isn’t it better to pay a little more now than a lot more later? Yet the worst part of this ’solution’ is that it doesn’t fix anything at the CTA, all it does is paper over the problem for a moment. Barring some major finding during the audit of the CTA’s books, we’ll probably be back in this situation again next year; the CTA in particular and RTA in general need to rethink their revenue, scheduling, and funding formulas, and that’s a fact.

Combined with some of the recent goings-on in Washington, it struck me this week what distiguishes a politician from a statesman. A politician will do what it takes to balance out competing interests and constraints right now, whereas a statesman considers how we got here and tries to include the interests and constraints of future consituencies. Too bad there are so few of the latter among elected officials in this country.

• When gasoline prices seemed to zoom past the $2 mark a few months back, WBBM-AM started highlighting the filling stations with area’s lowest pump prices. It was intriguing at first, but why do they still continue? The current price level is almost certainly quasi-permanent, so it’s not news any more. For a station to lower its prices in a gamble to be mentioned on the air seems like an ineffective advertizing strategy. Moreover, to gush over ‘gas for only $1.99!’ or ‘look, it’s down a nickel from a few days ago’ is nothing but make-news sensationalism. Really, even if you’re throwing 20 gallons into an SUV twice a week, a nickel-per-gallon change in price comes out to…$2. Two whole dollars a week, not even a grande at Starbucks! If $2 a week, $100 a year, has a significant effect on your finances, I posit that the price of a gallon of gas (and the fluctuations thereof) are really the least of your problems.
• Speaking of making news from nothing, I was shaking my head the other morning at Red Eye’s headline that screamed about the impending crime wave of iPod thefts. Turns out my skepticism was justified, as even cursory digging indicated precious little evidence that iPods have been or are becoming a significant target. Sheesh, I know the red funny papers are fluff to kill time on the morning commute, but can’t they at least just oversimpify the real news (fluffy and otherwise) that’s out there?
• Yes, Newsweek deserves some heat for shoddy journalism–going to press with a story about desecration of the Koran that wasn’t properly verified–and their public retraction and contrition was necessary given the obvious consternation it caused in Afghanistan and elsewhere. (Even if some top brass at the Pentagon do not believe that the story was the basis for the deadly riots.) But for the White House to have the audacity to scold and lecture about the terrible human price that is the cost of going forward without first getting the facts straight and the dire need to repent for such sin…well, that might be funny if the underlying hypocrisy weren’t so galling and sad.

Today’s theme: people who don’t seem to get it…

• That Jennifer Wilbanks was freaking out before her 600-guest wedding (!!) is understandable…but how did she think that faking a kidnapping could possibly improve things? Understatement of the day: ‘Jennifer has some issues the family was not aware of.’ Ya think?
• Iran’s Ayatollah Khameni told the U.S. to butt out of their plans for a nuclear program. Uh, sorry, but the whole ‘we’re a sovereign state, we can do whatever we please’ ship sailed away long ago, especially with regard to nukes. Don’t like the long-standing international laws and treaties on the subject? Tough, get over it.
• So a thirteen-year old girl is too immature to make the decision to have an abortion on her own. Fine. But the corollary seems to be that she is old enough to go through the rigors of a pregnancy and bring a new person into the world? Huh? Okay, there’s no way any of this can really come to any good no matter what, but some of the prioritization seems out of whack here.
• Not only can’t the U.S. government and military take the heat of a simple mea culpa for the tragic killing of the Italian agent who retrieved a hostage in Baghdad a few weeks back, but apparently the crack staff at the Pentagon thinks that simply marking some PDF text as ‘hidden’ is sufficient to prevent its release. Nice. Hope they use something better for information that really needs to be classified.
• After four years and umpteen millions of dollars, the vaunted TSA screeners and terrorist hunters at the Dept. of Homeland Security (ugh, really, can’t we get a less Orwellian name for that?) still rely on error-filled name-only database searches and give no discretionary authority to experienced field personnel, which puts us behind the Phillippines, among others, in terms of sophistication. That should fill the travelling public with confidence, huh?

Time to release some thoughts peskily bouncing around my head so I can do something else…

• On southbound I-94 south of Milwaukee there’s a billboard for The Fish radio station that reads ‘Safe for the Whole Family’. Umm, tell me, how can radio (or for that matter TV or any media outlet) be safe or unsafe? Inappropriate? Disturbing? Infuriating? Annoying? Sure. But barring volume excessive enough to cause hearing damage, radio simply conveys ideas and concepts which by their very nature can’t be safe or unsafe. (I won’t even bring up the issues of what defines ‘family’ and how one defines a single standard of family-safe anything.)
• Bulls hosting the opener of a playoff series…and winning. Been a while since those concepts were legitimately strung together! And to think for the better part of decade that was the norm, even during Jordan’s great Birmingham (mis)adventure.
• The weather tonight is certainly an improvement over the chilly weekend, but I still don’t understand why the Cubs scheduled–months in advance–night games for tonight and tomorrow. Sitting outside at night is generally unpleasant in these parts during April and most of May. If it were to help acclimate the team after a road trip, okay…but this is the middle of a homestand! Night games still constitute less than a third of the Cubs home schedule, save ‘em for July and August when they’re most useful for players and fans alike!
• Recently reported was a possible HIV-eating bacterium that works by attaching to certain sugars on the virus coating, discovered by a UIC dentist no less. Ain’t biochemistry grand?
• A Blue state with a Red governor managed to enact a reasonably non-contentious civil-unions law through the good old-fashioned legislative process. Hard-liners on both sides of the gay-marriage issue are probably disappointed in the end result, but maybe that means it struck a balanced compromise. Think whatever juju that led to such productive use of the political process can make it’s way down I-95 to enlighten those inside the Beltway? Nah, I didn’t think so either. Sigh.

Both main papers and their red-headed stepchildren screamed out headlines today: Doomsday for the CTA! Draconian cuts in service and hikes in fares, all the result of internal mismanagement (is there anyone competent involved with the Brown Line rehab?) and certainly not helped by quirks of the 22-year-old RTA funding-allocation formula.

As a daily commuter I should be worked up about this, what with the prospect of extended waits for overcrowded trains during rush hour come July…but I’m not. To me this just seems like a scare tactic aimed at the General Assembly, yet one that seems a bit ham-handed. In business they talk about companies that are ‘too big to fail’ (see Citibank a few years ago), and I think the same general sensibility holds here: the social, economic, and (especially in this case) political costs of letting the Doomsday Scenario play out would seem greater than the costs of fixing things. The brunt of the inconvenience is likely to fall on the affluent residents of the North Side corridor–from downtown through Lincoln Park, Lakeview, and the near north suburbs–whose happiness means a lot to politicians. (Hmm, at first I thought the decision to axe service in affluent areas where it would be merely annoying rather than in poor areas where it would be devastating was a rare example of politicos doing the right thing, but maybe it was another sneaky way of applying political pressure.)

The media will be having a field day as the drop-dead date approaches, and us yuppies will be voicing extreme displeasure after a full workweek of Sunday schedules. As Eric and I discussed over morning coffee recently, the deafening silence of His Honor the Mayor has been interesting: unless he’s developed a tin ear (which I find unlikely), it probably means he knows the solution is out there but that it’s too early to call in the political chits necessary to solve it now–like other mayors, maybe Daley feels that the solution won’t really become obvious until the crisis lies heavily upon everybody. My prediction is that the funding gap will be filled either by the end of June or after only one to two weeks of the Doomsday schedule, probably with some eleventh-hour maneuvering by Daley and some state legislators (Emil Jones, most likely) that might include some heads rolling over at the CTA leadership.

Of course that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong…

A couple weeks back the news/weather types were making much ado about nothing, but today we’ve got a real snowfall to deal with. While an inch in North Carolina leads to chaos and day-long traffic jams, Chicagoans just shrug off the snowdrifts and keep going:

Given the conditions shown here, I certainly don’t want to drive my Honda right now let alone a big, clunky mail truck. But I just had to laugh when I looked out the window to see this…I get this mental image of the mail carrier barrelling down the street, sliding and screeching to a halt, and casually stepping out with an air of ‘Hey, perfect parking job!’

Here’s what my aforementioned vehicle looked like when the snowfall had (mostly) stopped

Surprisingly, we decided that there was no pressing need for a vist to IKEA today after all.

• The formality of Congress counting the Electoral Votes is now complete, so it’s official that we’ll have a second Bush term. Alas, this time there’s little doubt regarding the legitimacy of the outcome. The sideshow drama of the formal challenge to Ohio’s votes, resulting in each house debating (and rejecting) it, seemed to me ill-conceived…why didn’t they do this in 2000 when there was–and still is–a legitimate concern that glitches may have put the official tally at odds with the will of the voters?
• A number of news outlets had headlines trumpeting that Alberto Gonzales, the AG nominee, vows to protect civil liberties and opposes torture. Great, I’m glad to hear it. But isn’t it disturbing that recent Administration policies and memos–including one authored by said nominee–gave him legitimate reason to loudly and repeatedly make such pronouncements? One would hope that these positions would be so obvious and expected as to make their explicit reaffirmation unnecessary.
• The RTA passed its 2005 budget with no help for the CTA. No surprise, back to Springfield we go. The Trib paraphrased Metra officials as claiming that the funding formula works just fine for them, has since 1983, what’s the problem? Now, I understand that it would be unfair to have the suburbs completely subsidize the CTA…but the reactionary attitude that ‘I’ve got mine, everything works and always has, so there’s obviously nothing to fix’ is not only unenlightened but not helpful in the slightest.

Christmas in Bartonia means lots of driving of late, from Milwaukeeland to the southern end of the collar counties. As my passenger has a tendency to succumb to highway hypnosis, all that time in the car lends itself to various ponderings…

• Good driving requires multiple things from people: Rules of the Road, Operating a Vehicle, Situational Awareness, Predictive Analysis, and Temperment. That our training and licensing systems only really deal with the first two aspects probably explains in large measure why so many people do stupid or annoying things on our roadways. (Okay, there’s some implicit training in Situational Awareness, but Not Hitting the Object Right in Front of You and Checking Your Blind Spot are hardly comprehensive.) While the other three aspects are more difficult to teach or measure, arguably they are more important–especially on city expressways.
• WXRT fades out around Racine, so we ended up listening to an all-Christmas music station for a while. Fortunately they played a wide mix of songs covering all styles and eras. The juxtaposition of classic crooners (Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, etc.) and more contemporary acts (Luther Vandross, Mariah Carey, etc.) allowed me to identify exactly what drives me nuts about American Idol-style singers: they put vocal embellishments on essentially every note and phrase rather than simply using them for effect. Tony Bennett and Billie Holliday knew that extended notes sometimes need a vibrato to make them interesting, and bent notes or variant rhythms add a nice jazzy style to a song; in contrast, the modern divas can’t seem to sing any part of a song straight, so it sounds to me that they’re either just showing off or else don’t appreciate the more subtle aspects of musical phrasing.

Yesterday, the Governor’s people asked the CTA’s people to remove the ads for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from city buses. While the request wasn’t surprising given the Guv’s recent (quixotic?) crusade, I was a bit puzzled by the CTA’s response: no, sorry the ads are within legal limits so it would be illegal for us to cancel the contract. Hmmm. Methinks the contract wouldn’t be considered so sacrosanct had the request come wrapped in, say, a state-backed plan to fix the CTA’s budget hole.

After a long, frustrating day fighting (mostly unsuccessfully) to stage some servers, I was annoyed to find the Brown Line car was shoulder-to-shoulder. It turned out to be a sort of blessing in disguise, for instead of sitting and reading I was forced to stand and do little more than stare out the window–thus allowing my agitated thoughts to rattle around and dissipate. Twenty-five minutes of this, and amazingly I felt much better as I exited onto Southport Ave. I suppose one can bring his Zen onto a rapid-transit line just as well as a mountaintop or cave.

The last couple of mornings, the CTA has been performing extra security sweeps during the morning commute. For the most part this hasn’t been a problem as I’ve only noticed delays of a couple minutes. No big deal, really, and just like the extra uniformed cops on the street corners in September and October of 2001, maybe a little show of force will make a few miscreants move along and make some of the public feel just a little safer.

However, while waiting at Merchandise Mart both mornings, I noticed something that bugged me. In addition to a uniformed cop and some CTA workers in obnoxiously colored vests, the CTA hired an outside security firm (Securitas, I think) to provide extra staff of the canine variety. At first glance they grab your attention: combat boots, black commando-style cargo pants, black golf shirts with official-looking patches, black low-crown caps, dark cop-sunglasses, and muzzled german shepards. They have the paramilitary look you’d expect from seeing TV and movies…and that’s exactly the problem, they’re trying way too hard to look impressive; it’s so obvious that they are trying to look tough that they just look ridiculous. Sorry, I don’t think too many bad guys are going to be particularly intimidated by a 5′6′ woman in costume just because she scowls, has patches on her shirt, and has a dog.

Even worse, the dogs themselves don’t look particularly threatening. Indeed, I watched one this morning and it was obviously nervous: tail down, slightly panting, definitely looking like it would rather be anywhere but in a crowd of people. This is a line of defense against do-badders on the El? Sigh.