This dudn't look good.

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They forgot red light cams!

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

sinicalypse called this in a thread that's since been deleted, about how it's a RushCard and stuff.

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First he didnt sell the parking meters, Daley did.

CTA and CPS, have done such a wonderful job over the past 50 years, I see how you could not agree with this.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Same with the red light cameras.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

That program has expanded exponentially under Emanuel and, in spite of wanton corruption and explicit evidence that it does nothing for safety, he has dug in his heels, the same way he is digging in his heels with Quazzo on the school board in spite of crony capitalism that is obvious to everyone.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

Putting a charter school VC on the CPS board,

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I dont like the cameras, yeah its a cash grab, I get it...but I do drive slower in a couple of areas I never did. Irving, between Clark and Broadway...always a fave!

My entire life seemed to be an annual story of finding rooms of CTA cash or a case of employees stealing.

Also, knowing a few guys who do work for the CPS, they bill huge $$$ because there is nobody to quote the job, nobody cared. Yes, thye needed to wait 90 days for payment, but these guys did CPS work because they knew they could add an extra billing and there was never anyone to question it.

And how can we disagree with the fine test scores with Chicago owning 5 of the worst top 25 HS's in America testing per Businessweek. Maybe we should have a meeting with Karen Allen and increase the funding to the schools! Anything to take control away from the existing people in power in a step forward.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

the reason government programs are good is because they inherently come with public oversight. privatization might make the millionaires richers, and i know how much we all strive for that, but it really does nothing to help anyone else.

governments are not supposed to be in the business of creating profits.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

The worst is Western in front of Lane. That shit isn't just for school hours. It's in effect if any kids are on the grounds.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

And when Public oversight is absent as in the case of the Chicago Public Schools and CTA. Lots of complaints, no suggestions, both have been in downward trend for 40+ years

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

yeah dude, it's totally a rushcard, which in and of itself was called a cynical ploy to stick black people for $$$ using russell simmons' cred/brand as an "in" to "the community."

as i've said b4 (and i'll likely say again, sorry) the thing that pisses me off to no ends about the ventra card is how that it refuses to notify you when you're running low on transit fare. i would conjecture that they WANT YOU to get caught with your pants down aka getting on a bus/train and not having enough $$$ on the card, so you have to end up in some socially/uncomfortable situation where you either miss the next train or have to bug people on the bus for change (altho unless you have a total prick of a driver they usually just let you go) because you had no idea that you're out of $$$.... and to make the waters even more murky the ventra card is capable of randomly deciding to hold a negative balance of anywhere between -$0.25 to -$1.50 if you have $$$ on the card that isn't enough for a fare. but yeah, they do all of this because they want you to be shamed into using the option where you tie your ventra card to your bank-account/credit-card and have it auto-refill $50-100/whatever whenever it gets below a certain remaining-balance threshhold, lest you have to deal with the humiliation of being that guy who gets on a bus and your card's out of juice and you don't have a few singles on you so you're stuck in a pickle.

when i called up ventra to bitch about this they told me that they couldn't show us our remaining transit balance (you know, THE ONLY THING THAT THEY DEEMED IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO TELL YOU WHEN YOU USED THE OLD TRANSIT CARDS) because "there's a debit card on your ventra card" and they can't show the balance because of potential ne'er-do-wells seeing how much $$$ is on the card. so i was like "oh cool so if i throw $50 or something on the card and i'm short on cash i can use the card as a debit card to get a sandwich or something?" and they said "no, the transit card and the debit card are completely separate so the balances in each respective account don't affect each other" and i'm like "wait a minute, so if i threw a few paychecks on the debit card side of the ventra card and i've got like $2000 on it, you're telling me if i run out of transit balance it won't go and take the $$$ from the debit card? and i can't even set it up to recharge the transit card amount from the debit card balance?" --- nope. the debit card is COMPLETELY SEPARATE and cannot be used in any way shape or form with the transit balance (because they know the debit card is BS and therefore they want access to your bank-acct/credit-card)

so when i said "ok, so if the debit card is COMPLETELY SEPARATE from the transit card, then why the hell can't the display on the buses only show me my transit card balance? if you say they're completely different then the debit card shouldn't matter at all, but it was the reason you gave me for not being able to show me my transit balance" and that must have flummoxed them because after a ~3 second pause i got "i'll bring the issue up with my supervisor" which no doubt was a blowoff.

so yeah, outside of the whole thing where ventra wants you to have a card tied into your legit personal information so this way they can have a nice little database where they can see where/when any fully-registered-ventra-card has taken pubtrans (as it keeps records of which bus/train you took at what time and etc... you're able to look through your complete "transit history" on the ventra website) this whole ventra thing was basically a clever way to not just freely distribute a bunch of high-interest rushcards to millions of people, but furthermore you stick them with a $5 cost to get a new ventra card at the onset (and trust me, they'll mail you 50 free rushcards if you sign up for them). it's a brilliant little hustle/scheme, and if anyone's dumb enough to use the ventra/rushcard then they're going to make their $$$ off of microtransactions from every transaction you make with the card. hell, don't they even take something like 5% when you DEPOSIT money on the thing? yeah, predatory might be too nice of a word for this because predators often eat to survive and this isn't about survival as much as it is about bleeding as much $$$ from people as you can because you can. it's out-n-out extra greed.

sorry for the TLDR, but this is something i feel strongly about.

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Public transportation sucks.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Are the old CTA fare cards completely dead now? I think I still have one with about 10 bucks on it. Are all the old machines gone now too?

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Yup, a year ago got a warning luckily for a Saturday morning!

I like Ventra.

But it doesn't have to.

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"I honestly don't see a good bet on the board here."

I gave in and got my Ventra card in October. I haven't used the L since then, just Metra, and all it shows against my initial deposit is a $2.25 trip and a $.25 transfer which was actually just my return trip back downtown from Lake View. I got my $5 deposit back for registering the card online. I haven't noticed any microtransactions of that nature yet, but I'm sure they'll find a way. They're probably penalizing me for not using the L enough.

EDIT: I suppose I'll have to put any additional money on the card with cash at a Ventra machine rather than pay a fee to transfer it from my debit card to my Ventra card. Man, riding a train got fuckin' hard, didn't it.

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It pretty much does have to.

The only way to effectively use public transportation is to build your life around it. Live in this area. Only go to this area you can easily reach. Double your travel time to go literally anywhere not on predefined routes. Then, to top it all off, you have an early flight at Midway, and the train isn't even running and you end up having to take a cab!

It's good for commuters, getting to sporting events if you live in an area that is on the line that goes past the stadium, and people who enjoy standing in the cold.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

i know at first they kept some old machines/turnstiles, and still to this day pace buses still have the old card terminal because the $$$-taker is built into it, but i think july 1 2014 was their big cutoff date where they'd stop honoring the old cards and/or giving out paper-card-transfers on the pace buses. so while there's a chance you MIGHT be able to use it if the old card readers are still there and working, i would go into any pubtrans endeavor assuming that it wouldn't work and therefore it'd only be a nice bonus if you could use it.



oh no, you don't get microtransactions on the transit card side of the ventra card. that's fine as long as you either know your balance in your head or just keep pumping money on it regularly so you never run out. the microtransactions are for the rushcard side of the ventra card, as that's how the rushcard makes their $$$. like i said, i think they take as much as 5% (or maybe it's .5%?) when you deposit $$$, so you know they're going to take a little bit off the top when you actually use the thing to pay for something. everything you do on a rushcard gives them a little cut, so all those microtransactions add up to nice $$$ for them which is worth the cost of freely mailing out rushcards to anyone who will have 'em

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its fine in madison. some weird people ride it, but its not scary

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

I just use my transit card for transit. Doesn't need to be used as a pre-paid debit card.

same reason the NSA became so harmful to its citizens. oversight was non existent.

if we had an elected panel police them i would have no problem with them reading our emails and listening to our phone calls. that is the only way to gather necessary intelligence. but if your caught abusing your powers you go to jail. JAIL.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

My point was that yes it is bad here but other cities get it right.



Also Washington DC rail where the train is actually close to the airport and does run. And Portland bus (which, at least according to my son, who says seem to actually be on the same schedule as the college classes start and end times).

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"I honestly don't see a good bet on the board here."

I'm saying they don't really. You have to plan your whole life around the train and where it can take you easily. You have to choose to live close to the train and overpay.

The best public transportation system I've used is the NYC subway, but you pretty much have to be rich to have it be good for you.
The DC rail actually shows how much good public transportation is bad. We had friends in DC who hated how expensive any close housing to it was. It is great for visitors who get a hotel right next to the station but if you wanted to use it as a resident you had to pay huge money to be close to it.

If I decide to move tomorrow, I don't have to start mapping out how long my walk will be in the cold to the nearest station and what the line goes to. In my experience, besides the line that you are close to, it takes at least twice as long to get pretty much anywhere using public transportation outside of rush hour. When I was growing up, it was like a 45 minute drive to the United Center or Comiskey. Public transportation was going to be about 2 hours.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

While Brick is going on another public transportation tirade I'd like to point out that the city also sold off the Skyway. And the port at Iroquois Landing. They even tried to sell Midway.

This will only get worse. In a decade Lake Shore Dr will be sold off and turned into a toll road and crossing the drawbridges will cost $.25 (they also will no longer actually "draw" the instant they are privitized)
O'Hare and Midway won't last this decade in the hands of the public. The rest of the port will go. The parks, the one that might finally piss some people off, they'll go too.

There will eventually be nothing left.

Ohare is basically private right now.

Those employed directly by the city, for the most part, are those who would never get a job in the private sector. I am ok with less city worker involvement.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Self-assured wanna be capitalists shitting on public labor is as time honored a tradition in this country as fireworks on the 4th.

I love those, because I imagine someone from the CTA or BART or SEPTA coming across the board, reading it, and being like "oh, crap, Boilermaker Rick just solved public transportation. Welp, our lives are a hollow lie. Shut the whole thing down."


Yeah, probably. Millennium Park will be the first park to go. Hell, with the British Petroleum Bridge, it's been dipping its toes from day one. Now that you mention it, I don't think Lake Shore Drive makes it through Rahm's second term without being sold to Syner-G Equity Solutions or some gaggle of petro-rapists from Dubai.

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If you're rich enough you can buy the parks right now, sometimes just temporarily. Some poor working schlub plans his entire July around a picnic with his girlfriend only to show up and find police officers keeping him out of a public park because Mellody Hobson or Penny Pritzker decided she wanted to use it for herself that day.

And sure, I've attended Riot Fest, Pitchfork, and Lollapalooza, but those things don't belong in the parks either.

And now Obama wants to snatch a huge chunk of public land to aggrandize himself. I don't think most of the public actually understands what a presidential "museum" is, that it isn't a museum at all, but rather a privately run shrine.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

I'm pretty sure they know it sucks too.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!