I saw this too. Many people angry because in such a predicted high volume times, trains were 15+ minutes in between. People were angry, trains were so packed that people that had been waiting for a long time couldn't get on.
I know there are factors like labor, etc on scheduling, but we KNEW this was going to be the biggest weekend in a very long time. It was sad to see the worst case scenario was playing out. People were upset and angry at all the huge delays and taking Ubers instead on frustration.
When our train system is running reliably, it is hard to state the impact that this has on regular ridership, because I don't have to think about waiting for 20 minutes for a train but instead head to the stop knowing it will always be less than 10 minutes until the next one.
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Originally Posted by MayorOfChicago
Not to pile on the CTA, just making sad observations. We had multiple people fly in from out west for St Paddy's weekend and we told them all to take the train to our house right off the Blue Line. Both coming and going it was a huge mess, trains delayed for a very long time, etc.
Two times as people tried to leave on Sunday we had to run over and grab them after they got up to the platform because the next train coming was just "Delay" on the tracker, meaning it was at least 20 minutes away since that's all the tracker goes up to. We hadn't planned that the next train would be up to a half hour on the blue line in the middle of the day. Once it comes we're only a 15 minute ride to O'hare.
Took the Brown Line with our three year olds and family in town two weeks ago - just for fun, a "train ride". Got on at Kimball and only rode to Montrose and ate there and took the train back. It was 26 minutes before the train left going to Montrose and we stood up in the cold for 33 minutes trying to get back. Everyone was super pissed and we were very embarassed since we said it would be fun. Feel even worse for the people trying to go downtown, there was already a large crowd waiting when we got up there and when I finally saw their train heading towards them it was at least 5-6 minutes after we had left Montrose going north. I bet those people waited ~45 minutes for a Brown Line going towards downtown on a Saturday afternoon. This is going to really cause people to give up on it.
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