Response 1:
Thank you for your feedback, though we have heard no suggestion about removing all the seats from any CTA train.

--CTA Customer Service

Response 2:
Please review those reports again; they said nothing about banning all the seats on any CTA train.

--CTA Customer Service

Response 3 (after the 3rd time I requested they tell me what cities have tried this):

It has been proposed to have some cars without seats during the weekday rush hours, no more than two cars per train. That is a far cry from trains with no seating. Thank you, however, for your feedback.

--CTA Customer Service

Response 4 (final):
Thursday, July 17, 2008 1:23 PM
From: "cta help" <ctahelp@transitchicago.com>View contact details To: "Wil "<wil@yahoo.com>

Thank you for your added comments. We are certain you can do whatever research you feel is necessary to develop an informed opinion on this proposal--you have already indicated a familiarity with other major transit systems around the world--and we believe that each customer is very much entitled to his or her own opinion. We welcome all feedback and consider it before implementing any such proposal. As of this moment, we have registered your opinion as being against having any train cars without seats. If we have misinterpreted your current view or you modify it after looking into the pros and cons, you are welcome to provide a correction or update. --CTA Customer Service

MY INITIAL EMAIL TO CTA HELP……
________________________________________
From: Wil (edited) [@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 12:35 PM
To: cta help
Subject: Stop the insanity (leave some seats on our trains!)
Please share with Chicago Citizens the major subways in the world that have NO seating?!?

I thought Ron was on top of things until this. Now I see we just have a person running CTA who has no idea what mass transit is.

I have ridden NYC, SEOUL, TOKYO, LONDON and they ALL HAVE SEATS.

Stop the madness.

Several years ago CTA after spending tens of thousands of dollars said they were going to only have the seats that go along the windows...so there would be more standing space. This is like I have seen in major city subways that are better than ours. Why hasn't CTA gone a head with this plan? Why are they doing something that no one else has done? Have other cities tried it? Why haven't the 1st class subway systems that put education into their decisions ripped out all the seats? We cannot even get bars to hang onto in the CTA when we stand....if CTA hasn't figured that out yet...should we trust them on this idea?

WOW - Two cars will be seatless - TWO. That is it. The CTA knows there are enough people that prefer to stand that will fill those cars up. Geez. I think the CTA did a poor job of advertising this, thus the confusion.

chicago3rd -
They are still planning on getting those cars.

Other cities with 1st class subways systems actually receive the capital funds to buy new railcars (both for regular replacement and fleet expansion) and upgrade facilities to run more frequent service.

And actually, several other systems do have "convertible" cars with foldable seats, that can be folded up in rush hour for extra standing room.

In regards to this specific decision:

The 3200s are not the best choice, as they are already the highest capacity cars due to a clever seating arrangement that actually allows people to move to the middle of the car and not cluster terrified right in front of the doors. Removing seats would accomplish a good deal more on the 2600 and 2200 series, e.g. Red and Blue Lines.

Plus, all cars have those heaters that stick out that realistically need to stay covered....with a seat. Unless you reconfigure the heater, but now we're talking some more substantial expenses.

Seoul and New York still get more people on their cars with seating than we do. I laughed when I first moved to Chicago from San Francisco at what "personal space" people on the "L" think they are entitled too. In SF I often helped pull people on board the Muni by pulling them in so we could get the doors shut. In Korea they have pushers...the cars are so pact with "chairs" they have pushers (doesn't matter how much money they have). YET they do not have cars that are seatless. Why?

So... you're saying CTA should create a whole slew of new union positions (pushers) to do something that Chicagoans probably wouldn't tolerate culturally anyway, not getting into the liability issues of CTA employees manhandling the riders?

Most "world" transit system also have substantially less peaked vehicle requirements than CTA. A large proportion of CTA's fleet is only called into action during rush hours when capacity is constrained. At all other times, all cars on all trains would have seats as only a fraction of CTA's railcars are needed to meet demand. This is why CTA has "married pairs" of railcars instead of full articulated train consists like many other agencies such as those in Asia, Europe, (some of) NYC, or (soon) Toronto; because CTA needs the broad flexibility to couple/decouple trains to appropriately meet service demand.

You are behaving the same way as the CTA Help desk. You are really deflecting nicely....not answering the question...typical CTA.


Why don't other cities who have similar issues do what CTA is proposing? You tried to blame it on not having money..and I just wanted to show you that train capacity isn't always related to money..i.e. Seoul has money and trains that are more croweded that ours to the point they have pushers. Why haven't they...a city that has a far superior public transportation system think of just removing all the seats?

Have other cities studied it?
What did they find?
What are the pros and cons they found these other cities found?

I am not even asking to do the studies...but it seems strange that this practice isn't being done anywhere else and that no one ever thought about it until CTA did yesterday.

don't like cars without seats? don't sit in them, there, problem solved.

Why does it matter if other cities have done this or not? Chicago needs to do what's best for Chicago and the CTA needs to do what it thinks is best for it riders and system. We can barely get funding as it is. If having a couple of cars with no seats on rush hour trains can help out with capacity, who cares if New York or Soeul is doing it too. Maybe some other American cities facing this same "higher-transit-demand-but-no-state-funding-to-purchase-new-anything" problem as we are will follow our lead.

God forbid we try something new or different! And of course all of the good ideas have already been thought of and implemented by NYC and Korean cities. Who the $*^% are we to try something different than the real cities!?!?

Among the transit agencies you list, how many of them have 5/7ths of their rail lines converging on a single set of tracks in the CBD? Do you think this might put a lower limit on the headways at rush hour that other systems don't have?

Further, don't you think that sense of entitlement for personal space probably factors into why the CTA might be trying this? I know I personally get pissed off when people don't "move to the center" during rush hour, but this is Chicago and guess what? People don't move to the center. In fact, when the idea of center-facing seats was floated, I remember hearing a *ton* of people bitching about it. "I don't want to stare at someone's zipper the entire trip!" "Don't take out seating, the poor people who work long hours have tired feet!"

It is hostile reactions like yours (go ahead and re-read your initial e-mail to the CTA...could you be any more reactionary?) that really do the CTA in, IMO. Trying new things to improve efficiency and throughput should be lauded, even if they don't work out in the end. Being proactive about trying new ideas to improve the system is all we can ask for in transit leadership, IMO.

Give their ideas a chance. I think the new leadership at the CTA deserve it.

Taft

^ chicago3rd

big F*CKIN deal. Ive taken the blue line almost every work day of every week for three years, and if there were two cars with no seats, so what??? I get in the exact train car i want to every time. I stand where its gonna be. You think they're gonna have "I'll have whats behind door number 3" train service? NO! and whats good for other cities might have nothing to do with chicago.

i might have an issue if it was more than two and/or if it was longer than just rush hours

SIGH. you sound like someone complaining about shadows and congestion

Lol....wonder why there are no answers.

whats that supposed to mean? The way i see it, you're just bitching about a temporary fix that probably won't even affect you or anyone who doesn't want it to

Other cities don't have similar issues. Huberman and the CTA management are coming up with novel solutions to a unique set of problems.

First, all the ideas have been coming out of the CTA with regard to increasing their revenue are really quite creative, since they all improve the experience for the riders as well. They've planned for LCD advertising (which generates a profit AND displays useful information for riders). They now are trying to leverage underused real estate, and many of the potential buyers for the real estate are businesses that would provide a real amenity for CTA riders. The main suggestion was grocery stores, but I could also see some form of urban rental car place taking advantage of CTA real estate as well.

Realistically, the CTA is so cash-strapped you can't believe it. They're being buffeted on all sides by people demanding money out of them (the union pension funds) or people withholding money from them (the state and city). CTA funding in real dollars (inflation-adjusted) keeps dropping, while expenses rise faster than inflation.

Compounding this is that people, in cities around the US, are now turning to transit like never before due to high gas prices. This didn't really happen in the 1970s at the last time oil prices got huge, but the situation is different now - a cultural shift that makes urban living, and by extension, transit, socially acceptable. The CTA knows that they have an opportunity to drastically increase ridership across the board, which they may lose in a few years as hybrid and electric vehicles are developed, or even faster if the Big Three automakers can somehow increase production on their compact cars.

So, increasing the ridership by putting more people on trains can add income to the CTA's budget while pulling new people into riding transit. Without any money to spend, the only cheap way to increase capacity is to remove seats.

One question, though...

if CTA is able to reconfigure an existing rail car by removing the seats, can't they simply shuffle the seats into a longitudinal setup? It's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying new cars with the longitudinal seats, and it increases capacity without making the CTA into a set of cattle cars.

Also, reconfiguring the 2600s to the same seating arrangement as the 3200s, which would probably quickly add about 10-15 passengers per car.

Can the railcars' suspensions deal with an additional 25+ people, particular as regards the physics of the various curves on the system? Probably, but I'd like to think this has been considered thoroughly before the idea was released to the public.

^ TOTALLY unreasonable.

How about blaming the people who really deserve the blame--the people in Springfield--for forcing the CTA to take such measures to increase capacity. Give me a friggin break, dude, you sound so belligerent in that email. If I was that CTA helpdesk person I probably would chuckle and move on.

Are you not READING a thing that's being written here? We're talking about 2 cars per train being seatless. Let me repeat that: 2 CARS. If you're so bent out of shape about it then it's actually quite goddamn simple: get into one of the other, non-seatless cars. Voila, end of story, end of whining.

You're not in New York, you're not in London, you're not in Tokyo. Get over it. Look at the financial situation around you and try being a reasonable transit constituent instead of barking up the wrong tree.

the CTA is fighting for survival. Instead of writing the CTA and complaining to them you should be writing your elected officials to do more.

This is something I always did when I lived in Chicago. If everyone did it, you'd be looking at a system that was undergoing substantial improvements instead of trying to stay relevent.

1st class subway systems don't have to rip out seats. CTA rail is not a world class system. It's in many ways a 3rd world system coupled with slow zones and deteriorating equipment.

I wonder how hard is it to simply add overhead handrails so that more standees can stand away from the doors on busy trains, currently other than the 3200 on the Brown/Orange Line no other train has these and that would improve capacity by the same amount.

ohohoh... I can answer that one.

because you haven't actually asked a question, just whined a bunch and stuck a question mark at the end.