Perhaps But I've yet to meet a Republican Gov who did not favor road projects.

Rauner seems different. If Dillard was the nominee, I would agree with you.

I'm not sure if it's legal or not. All I know is that black car drivers will often roam around or call out to passersby asking if they need a ride.

I don't know much about Uber.

Uber offers multiple levels of service now, from medallioned taxis to stretch limos to "I own a car and wouldn't mind driving strangers around", but if you're talking about the original Uber black sedan service, it's almost entirely (if not entirely) licensed black sedan drivers looking to earn a few bucks between regular gigs. The legal arrangement that's made for your transaction is that you're hiring the driver, and Uber just acts as the referral agent and handles the payments. The drivers don't work for Uber, and you aren't hiring Uber, they work for themselves or XYZ Limo Service, and you're hiring them. Technically.

My dad ran a limo service when I was a kid back in Michigan so I'm only familiar with the laws there, but I do know that in Boston there's usually a few black cars parked outside of South Station who'll ask if you need a ride somewhere and will negotiate the price. I'm assuming that's legal, as long as they're licensed and everything. Since a lot of the pre-arranged work for drivers happens at night, during the day they've got to hustle for work. The drivers I've talked to all seem to love Uber for that reason. They might not get the same rate as someone calling their booking line out of the yellow pages, but it's better than having their car just sit there and not making them money.

Progress on Metra Southeast Service
 

From the Southeast Commuter Rail Transit District website -

http://i.imgur.com/dMSFdYz.jpg

And God knows that Beecher has already been infected by those huge housing subdivisions on the north side of town, ripping up all those old fields from families that have been there since the late 1800's. Then there's the gigantic golf course that did the same thing too, then the Knuth's grocer got bought out by Walt's...
These fringe rural towns have been losing some of their charm for some time now and it's been sickening me.

Quality of maintenance, staff, and equipment, over the long term, are additional reasons why just using the existing Blue Line ORD service in lieu of a more premium airport express is a lousy idea.

Today's accident is already being broadcast on BBC's worldwide news - as the train that jumped the escalator. Embarrassing.

Well, that is exactly what happened. :shrug:
http://www.suntimes.com/csp/cms/site...YPE=image/jpeg

Yeah im not sure how else you could describe it. It's not like the BBC went on some sort of diatribe about the Cta being some sort of pathetic second rate system that is stuck in the past, filled with lazy incompetent staff and in many cases falling apart due to lack of maintenance. Although that probably would be justified.

I'd say it's a gross, almost libelous misappropriation of facts, given that the train appears to have jumped the staircase next to the escalator.

O'Hare is a pretty famous airport, I'd expect pretty wide coverage of this. Lucky nobody was killed, if it was during rush hour there most likely would have been fatalities.

In other transit news, the riverwalk construction will require that bridges be kept open for at least a week at a time. http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140...dges-be-raised

That should endear downtown drivers to the riverwalk project, I'm sure.

O'Hare Blue Line crash
 

I've never been in that blue line station, but I've seen the S line in NYC that shuttles back and forth, and ends at a bumper. I'm having a real hard time seeing how that train managed to jump up and over the bumper. Why didn't it just slam to a stop as designed? And how fast was it going to manage that?

Yes, very lucky no one was on those stairs at the time.

Remember there were seven other cars with momentum behind it, pushing it forward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_lu1LLTKo

I think the bumper probably did it's job. I don't think they are designed to "stop" a train, but rather to act as a cushion for low speed impacts or to eat up as much momentum as possible in high speed impacts. Deflection is actually just about the best way to absorb a lot of momentum quickly without jarring the object severely. I have a feeling that the bumpers intentionally derail and buck trains at high speed so as to eat up as much energy as possible while not slamming the train to a dead stop.

Imagine how bad the damage would have been if the train hadn't gone up and over the bumper, but had just slammed to a stop like hitting a brick wall? The train would have crumpled like an accordion. This way the bumper sucked up as much momentum as possible and then popped the train up and out of the track bed letting the incline of the stairs/escalators gradually do the rest of the work.

Very fortunate all around that this wasn't a worse accident. I'll be curious to see what they decide the cause was.

I believe the force of it crushed the bumber back and then the train launched upward at a steep angle from the impact and tore off the wheels and everything under the train. It looks like it must have gone up and come back down on the stairs, because those handrails on either side of the stairs are intact and sticking out multiple feet before the start of the stairs/escalators. If it had bounced up and onto the platform and up the stairs it would have probably mashed in the escalators in at their base and certainly ripped out the handrails that stick out. You can almost walk under the train now, I believe it launched up and over the stairs and then slammed back down on them. You can see a pretty heavy "impact" dent on the escalators about halfway up where it seems to have hit and then slid up a few more feet.

Very strange.

Do they should have some sort of kill switch/ auto speed reducer at these end of the line stations for the CTA ? Seems like they should.

Silver Streak 2?

Of course such an incident is going to be broadcast all over the news, they always are. Especially if it happens in a place like O'hare. Also, I don't see what's so embarrassing. It's not like the system just fell apart or anything. The funny thing is, when I woke up this morning and saw the pictures on the news, I knew right away it had to be operator error. And just now while watching the news, they mentioned the operator confessing to falling asleep behind the switch. Nothing new here as these incidents happen all the time.

Btw, my two guesses were she was texting or sleeping.

2:50AM? Sleeping sounds likely. Three cheers for human controlled transit.

Trains MUST be designed not to slam into the end bumper. Why speed wasn't automatically metered and then abruptly cut before impact is unbelievable to me.

There should be redundant measures. Mechanical and human checks and safety measures in the event an operator falls asleep, is not paying attention or has a heart attack. Similarly an alert operator can reliably stop a train even if the switches malfunction.