Anyone Want a 2200 Series L Car?
 

There's a CTA auction going on at Rick Levin's website. There's a few cool items that even a transit fan on a budget might be able to afford if a whole train car is too pricey:

http://ricklevin.com/Auctions/Online-Auctions.aspx

I assume the 2200 will eventually go to Illinois Railway Museum or the Fox River Trolley Museum, if CTA hasn't already donated 2200s to these institutions. Really, the auction value just has to exceed the scrap value.

Hell, I'd buy one for $4k all day, but the problem is probably getting it delivered. I own a vacant lot that fronts the L, maybe they can drive one to my lot and I can have a crane on site to lower it?

Uh, no.

It's rather surprising no one in Chicago has used them like this yet. I think its freaking great.

Boiler Room, one of my favorite pizza bars in Logan Square, uses a CTA car for the bathroom.

http://www.boilerroomlogansquare.com/

Thank you! I just bid in a few items. This is awesome

They need to figure out venta on the buses. I got on for free every single day this week because it wouldn't read the card, or twice when the woman just said it didn't work (she assumed because of the cold, they're having issues with that). I seriously wonder if bus ridership stats will take a huge dive.

It also takes an incredibly long amount of time to board buses now when the drivers do want you to try and use ventra. I timed it on Wednesday after realizing how delayed everything was getting and it took 48 seconds for four of us getting on the bus to tap our ventra. Every single person including myself took a long long time. The driver said to me "just keep trying, it'll work eventually". I snapped back at her "Well it hasn't worked since day one, why on earth would it work now?".

It's worked perfectly for me and everyone I've seen use it on my bus routes and train entrances. I see anecdotes like this in multiple sources, but just haven't witnessed it myself. It's working fine for me, and for my boyfriend and other people I see use it.

^ yeah, for all of the large amounts of griping about Ventra, it's worked flawlessly for me every time, both bus & el (knock on wood).

I have also had nothing but good Ventra experiences, although I admittedly don't ride everyday. I'm guessing it has to do with certain routes/garages where the readers and software are not yet up to snuff.

Even if people haven't had problems with swiping or overcharges (I've only had few issues with that) my biggest problem was well stated by a friend of mine.

With Ventra you have to do things

There's more work involved with a new fare system that in theory should be invisible and 99.99% reliable.

The plus card was almost there with the id in your wallet and the balance on the machine. I could walk without stopping at the turnstile. Now everyone has to pause to enter. Why? Shouldn't we all be able to breeze through? This is Chicago, we are busy people with places to be. Why does the reader say processing then go? It should never say neither, just my card balance and release the bar the moment I swipe.

Maybe folks never experienced the plus card system but it was nice. 4 years and I never had to go online for anything like Ventra. Never had to walk up to vending machine either. It's weird using those again to check balances. Or how about Ventra being non-compatible with other services like unlocking carshare vehicles? Nope, had to order a new fob, meaning more stuff to carry.

My philosophy is new technology should save time and be less invasive in our lives. I also believe technology should be tested and proven, redesigned, tested again, and proven by sample customers until it's ready for the masses.

Yeah, i've never had a problem on the trains at all, but buses are a mess every time. This morning the 151 took over 6 seconds of thinking before it said "go". I finally kinda glanced at the driver and she just laughed and shrugged. People behind me had problems too, I think maybe it's the cold since it's right by the door?

i HATED the chicago plus card. every 6 months or so my card would be mysteriously zapped and unable to work, and then i'd have to bitch about it to the CTA, they would drag their feet, then send me a new one after i sent them a "replacement" fee (i never lost the damn cards, they would just stop working). it was so frustrating that after like 4 chicago plus cards i just went back to the old system of the reloadable dip cards.

I'm not sure why the cold would affect solid-state electronics.

The CEO of Cubic pretty much admitted in a San Diego news article that the problems were caused by CTA's unreasonably short timeframe for rollout.

Normally the company would have spread the process out over 6-12 months, testing the system under various conditions and solving bugs before the general public got access to the system. Instead CTA pretty much forced everyone to adopt the new card overnight, and Cubic was forced to play catch-up.

I don't think blaming the other party is "admitting" anything.

You won't find me praising Cubic - the debit card business is still very shady - but the successful rollout of similar Cubic technology in cities around the world suggests that Cubic can avoid such problems when it has the time to do so.

Details for the Blue Line project were posted.

http://www.transitchicago.com/yournewblue/

Logan Square TOD estimated at 5 stories, fwiw

Put in perspective though, the hiccups with the plus card were nothing compared to negative features and use of Ventra. And I'm not speaking of malfunctions. Assume they'll get fixed. At the end of the day, Ventra is still a slower clunkier system to use. If the greater goal over decades in fare payment technology evolution are reliability and speed I think we've dipped from previous technology. Regardless if the old system "used the same technology as gameboy," it was still reliable and fast. Unfortunately we've positioned our systems with the rest of the country which, in my opinion, have some disadvantages.