It's the height of rush hour and an accident on the Stevenson Expressway stops traffic for one hour in both directions as workers hastily clean things up. From 5:30pm until 6:40pm, nothing moves and thousands of people are left to stew in their cars.

Do you think you might hear about this on the news?
I'm thinking it would be the major story on the Six O'clock news as well as a page one blurb in the papers the next day.

Okay, how about this: It's the height of rush hour and an fire in a subway tunnel stops "L" trains for one hour in both directions as workers hastily clean things up. From 5:30pm until 6:40pm, nothing moves and thousands of people are left to stew in on the train.

Apparently, you're NOT going to hear that story on the news-because it happened this past Friday, August 15th. In fact, there was nary a mention on any of the five late newscasts, no news brief in either newspaper on Saturday and no mention whatsoever in Chicago's only alleged "Transportation Column." Nothing.

Pathetic.

I got on a Blue line train at Monroe when it pulled into the station at 5:30 on Friday. A minute later, the conductor announced that due to a fire between the Grand and Division stops, there would be a delay, and that no trains were moving southbound either. He said he didn't know how long it would be, but we might want to go topside & catch a bus to Damen. That would be the 56 Milwaukee bus. I knew that hopping that bus would mean about an hour ride to Damen, so I decided to wait it out. A woman who sat next to me eventually decided to go the bus route, but returned 15 minutes later. There was a huge crowd of people waiting for the bus, but she couldn't figure out which bus to take. That's because a CTA attendant was telling people to take the number 156 bus, which is interesting because the 156 LaSalle bus runs due north and nowhere near another blue line stop. I hope those "Customer Service Agents" don't ever mistakenly think they deserve raises. Anyway, around 6:40 the trains started to move again--very slowly until we exited the tunnel and got to the Damen stop. The fire was probably one of those third rail overheating fires just past the Division stop--I didn't see anything around there save for several workers on the tracks doing something.

Okay, so I can't pin down actual ridership affected so I'll have to make an educated guess. According to the CTA's own figures, on an average weekday in June 2003, about 35,200 riders entered the Blue Line via the eight downtown Subway stops (from Clinton to Grand). I'm going to make a guess that 1/3 of that figure accounts for the Morning Rush, 1/3 for the evening rush & 1/3 for all other times of the day. That would mean approximately 11,700 riders use those stops during the evening rush, and all things being equal, let's assume the delay encompasses only half the 2-hour rush hour. So we have a figure of approximately 5,860 riders who were stopped during Friday's evening rush.

Over 5,000 people were delayed by an hour as they tried to get home and not one of the TV news departments or newspapers saw fit to report this--even after the fact (I can't speak for radio in this instance). Adding insult to injury, the top story on Friday night's news shows? How New York was getting back to normal after Thursday's power outage. This was NEWS? This was the top story in CHICAGO? Gimme a break.

Ignorance of the problem is no excuse--CTA radio frequencies are relatively known among transit enthusiasts. Amazing to think that the various assignment desks at our news organizations don't feel it important to monitor the radio chatter of our public transit company.

Meanwhile, The Sun-Times' transportation reporter Robert Herguth on Monday once again scooped the Tribune's Transportation columnist Jon Hilkevich with the story of how the CTA padded their pensions when no one was looking a couple weeks ago. This in contrast to the CTA claiming poverty while bus drivers haven't had a raise in four years. How embarrassing is it when you have a column dedicated to transportation, but you repeatedly get scooped out of your jock strap by a transportation reporter who does occasional articles? I would say it's very embarrassing. It must have been so embarrassing that the Tribune decided to ignore the story entirely--mentioning it only in passing two days later at the bottom of a labor union story:

On another subject, Daley raised no objections to recent action by the CTA board to increase pensions of some management employees, including Frank Kruesi, the agency's president. "There is nothing wrong with that," he said of Kruesi's pension enhancement.

Actually, this is very old news--that the Getting Around column is the last place to look for CTA criticism. Transit enthusiasts have railed about this for years. It's just too bad that the best source of CTA mishap info--the Weekly Breakdown is no longer with us. Wonder if the Sun-Times would consider letting someone do a Monday-Thursday Transportation column. Might be a smart move.

Sigh.