Nik Hunder
@NikHunder
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Professional drawer of lines that turn into objects. Energy guy when I want to be. @CHIRPRadio DJ
Chicago, IL
Joined September 2015
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Personal project alert! Get ready for wildfire season with
@ChicagoAQ
. Every three hours, it tweets out the current concentrations of the six major air pollutants and provides safety tips when conditions become poor.
At 9 AM the AQI was 41 and the dominant pollutant was PM2.5
PM2.5 = 41 or 9.34 µg/m³
PM10 = 19 or 20.2 µg/m³
NO₂ = 9 or 10 ppb
SO₂ = 0 or 0.4 ppb
O₃ = 35 or 37.96 ppb
CO = 2 or 0.2 ppb
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I wish we didn't throw out the instructions on how to build another one of these
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Woah
@CTA
W. I used the chat bot to report smoking and within a stop, there was an announcement and the operator came back to check the car (the offender stopped after the announcement)
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I just attended
@cta
's flagger orientation to help educate myself and it made me realize why they experience a high attrition rate for that position
CTA's Rail Ops Manager for Red, Yellow, and Purple and the manager for Blue and Pink we're both there to answer questions 🧵
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The consensus is in. After years of hard work by advocates, It's time to say goodbye to Dorval Carter.
Here is every article published about CTA this week (none of them are positive)
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You're going to run a train so I can get to work right? Right?!
There are two trains on the entire brown line. That's a ~27-minute northbound headway and an ∞ southbound headway. They haven't sent off a train from Kimball in 39 minutes
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Rail Ops for RPY said "if your support system isn't strong, now is a great time to start increasing it... prepare your families for it"
That is inconsiderate and also unrealistic. How can anyone plan on working 12am-8am one day 3pm-11pm another and 8pm to 4am on a third day?
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I looked at CTA delays over the past 4 months to see what was slowing down the system. There is a lot of police activity, mechanical and door issues, or sick or injured passengers. But each line exhibits a different makeup of issues
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New from Me and Christina Marfice: We dug up CTA's flagger data to see if they really could train 200 operators in 2024. It's not mathematically possible even if they tried their hardest
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A potential applicant asked if "there was any additional training for rail Operators?" which is valid because it's not advertised... and then the RPY manager just laughed before answering the question.
What is going on over there? Why would you laugh?!
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The Q&A and meeting got cut off after 35 minutes and about 5 questions were answered because I guess the rail managers had something more important to do than help recruit people to help improve service.
I'm not following their math
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🚨 Tomorrow the 27th is a big day for transit activists and anyone who rides the CTA. Pres. Dorval Carter and leadership will be testifying in a new legally required quarterly hearing. I will be providing live-tweet coverage starting at 9:30 am.
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Dorval Carter is legally required to meet with the City Council Transportation committee, but instead, he keeps rescheduling and has become unprofessionally hostile towards activists. Read our open letter and email the Transportation Cmte. demanding they enforce
this resolution
At the Chicago Transit Board’s Jan. 18 meeting,
@cta
President Dorval Carter berated 2 of our members for an op-ed they wrote in an attempt to hold him — and other CTA leadership — accountable. Read the op-ed here:
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Average time spent as a flagger before becoming an RTO 6/1-12/31/23: 439 days.
In January, I co-authored an Op-Ed and it irked the CTA. They called me out in a board meeting, wrote a L-to-E, and made a press release. Told we were wrong, I found my proof.
New from Me and Christina Marfice: We dug up CTA's flagger data to see if they really could train 200 operators in 2024. It's not mathematically possible even if they tried their hardest
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Well, it's 4:07 and I have indeed made it to Polk. That completes today's speed run with doors open at every station. It took 9 hours 33 minutes and 19 seconds. I wanted 9h30m and this is close enough. Calling this a W. Thoughts and observations later after I get some grub.
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What if you had children? $21/hr wouldn't cover the cost and you'd need to find it last minute. It is that or all family duties are shifted to one person at random for 6-12 months of someone's life
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It has gotten so bad for Dorval that he denied everything we said and three board members still suggested that CTA should be more transparent.
He offered no correction and said it's on activists to converse with the CTA. We've been trying but keep getting stonewalled
Rallying against Christina and I's ope-ed. Calls Christina and I are liars. Says people don't always wait. Says we don't understand the necessary context. Well, maybe if you were transparent, people would cut you some slack. Garbage of response
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CTA was insistent that it could confidently run 100% of this service reduction and on day one, we still got 90%. No matter what the schedule says, the best we can do is 90%.
How much service needs to be cut before we get to 100%?
Hourly breakdowns by line are in the next tweets
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If Dorval Carter gets fired,
@ctaaction
should charter a train around the city to celebrate
Did you know you can charter a CTA train and throw a party on board?!? I have a new life goal.
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2K
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They emphasized that a strong support system was needed to excel in this role because CTA's needs fluctuate with construction needs. That has created a system where employees find out the day ahead by "calling" (needs context) to find out which 8 hrs (12 in OT) they'll be working
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Now that the Skokie Swift is back in action, it is time for a
@cta
speedrun attempt. Follow me along throughout your day starting at 6:35am at Linden as I attempt to not set a record, but at least get under 9h 30m for a Class A attempt (doors open at every station)
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If you're annoyed. Go be like other ghosties and sign
@ctaaction
's letter to make sure Dorval Carter shows up to City Council in February
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@cornoisseur
Going to put my forklift certification to use and start moving boulders into intersections
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Did it delay us by three minutes? Yes. Did it work? Also yes. I'd prefer stopping the smoking over arriving a little bit sooner
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This is great momentum to have. It forces Johnson to do his research to pick someone qualified so he doesn't get embarrassed again.
Maybe it's a good thing we don't have the guy using "former rapper" as an insult as our representative to the RTA
Rev. Acree pulled no punches on his way out of a 25k/year appointment to an influential transit board.
He called questions about CTA President's future “political puppeteering” and slammed Ald. Vasquez, saying his “previous job was a local rapper.”
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I'm haunted by the quote thrown out at the public hearing for the budget last week "The entire city is coming to a halt because the CTA can't hire 100 workers"
Carter is drawing a comparison to airlines where he says "you now have less options with airlines because they have less pilots"
I don't agree. This is a system that moves people around a city, meant to increase GDP, to make this city livable. They serve different functions.
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It's the middle of the month which means it's time for a
@CTA
board meeting. At 10am, come back here for updates from the love of my life's board meeting.
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"As soon as our 24/7 Operations Control Center was notified... responders were on scene within a couple of minutes"
"The initial 911 call was made at a nearby BP gas station and not from CTAs control center"
Someone died on their watch and they can't even be truthful about it
1 hour.
That's how long a CTA employee sat in the driver seat of their bus before being found unconscious. They later died. I looked into what happened that night and how a stalled bus, that missed over 50 scheduled stops, never raised any red flags.
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Jakes speaking to Carter: Told Carter to talk to
@ctaaction
DC says it was on us to talk to him about the data. Thanks. I had to FOIA to even get it. I don't see how this is on us because Carter hates when we engage with the CTA. Jakes at least believes there's some truth to it
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New CTA Board Appointment, Roberto Requejo from Elevated Chicago. He's got my support. Here is someone who understands what equity means and why we need it systemwide. Also, if you can run a non-profit successfully, that's a leg up on most Exec. Directors
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Happy to hear
@Metra
has it in their System Network Plan to start planning for through-routing to get from one side of the city to another
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Rallying against Christina and I's ope-ed. Calls Christina and I are liars. Says people don't always wait. Says we don't understand the necessary context. Well, maybe if you were transparent, people would cut you some slack. Garbage of response
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It doesn't matter who you are, it's always "you don't have accurate information" and then it will never be provided to you. It's also your fault for not knowing better. No matter if you're a rider or an alderperson, they're going to stick it to you.
20 aldermen have now signed onto the resolution. CTA has put out a statement pushing back hard on this:
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Bad news, CTA only got 56 train operators (CSO+RTO) into service in the last six months of 2023
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Can you help me verify these businesses are still operating at any of these stations? These are businesses CTA thinks are operating in its train stations, but some like the Dunkin at Grand (Red) no longer operate there.
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Alder justifications for blocking this:
"...Done nothing immoral, unethical or illegal"
"I dare my colleague to take that resolution to that man’s wife and children"
"But I'm just not in the business of taking food off people’s table"
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@itskylelucas
is up: Direct talking to DRC. Tells him he knows Carter is tired. But commuters are also tired. They're both making eye contact. Says activists are here because they want the system to succeed. Reiterating that we all want this system to succeed
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Not only were trains added, but they were added at useful times and are useful lengths. Maybe this merger will be good after all, if the Metra ops team's protocols are applied to CTA ops
Metra’s newest station at Peterson/Ridge in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood is set to open to the public on Monday, May 20. On the same day, Metra will add four trains to weekday service on the UP North Line. View the news release here:
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Chris Gentry is speaking now: Sold his car within 6 months of moving here bc of CTA but it is not the same as 4 years ago. Watching his friends buy cars again bc of unreliability. Had a friend lose their job bc of bad service. His company provides rideshare reimbursement now
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@mollyfleck
I feel as if in the last year, there are just less and less things in stores. I want to get less delivery trucks on the road but everything has to be ordered online
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Thursday, May 30th at 10am is the Q2 CTA-Committee on Transportation meeting where CTA President Dorval Carter will be answering questions from committee members.
I'll be live tweeting updates from the City Council chamber during the meeting in this thread
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If government officials are making tiktok-stlye videos on their social media about a problem the city is facing, someone is majorly in the wrong
Next week I’m introducing a resolution with Ald. Vasquez calling for new CTA leadership.
Chicagoans deserve frequent, safe, and reliable transportation, as well as leaders who will help make that a reality.
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"Every transit agency’s recovery is influenced by... service reliability, service levels... In NYC, residents are much more likely to be reliant on public transit than owning a car" Kilgannon wrote.
I wonder who could have made Chicago reliant on cars?
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I've created the Chicago Transit Authority FOIA document repository so that everyone has access to CTA info.
You can find it here:
Not all documents have been provided due to legal sensitivity and the right of the requester to review the materials first
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We did indeed go the entire meeting without discussing service cuts or the death of a bus operator
I'll be providing light live-tweet coverage of tomorrow's CTA Transit Board meeting. It is slated to begin at 10am tomorrow. The agenda is below.
I'll be looking out for 1) if we start on time 2) we talk about the recent service cuts and 3) if we talk about Antia Lyons' death
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The vibes that I got from the meeting today really just point to a bad pattern the CTA has.
Were critiquing him because he's obscured facts and we're un-satisfied. So he rebuffs it. But in doing so, he doesn't provide all the details so we continue to get at him. 1/3
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If anything underscores the need for this hearing, a Brown Line train broke down and dumped a bunch of people on the Wellington Loop platform. The delay came and went without any communication from
@ctaalert
This is what advocates mean when they say the CTA is not transparent
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Slides from the Ravenswood Greenway Community Meeting.
I saw a lot of bikers and not a lot of opposition. Begone excess parking
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It's that time of the month... get ready for a CTA Board meeting. Starting at 9:30am I'll be live tweeting the meeting (10am) along with the Finance Committee (9:30am). If you'd like to provide feedback, email the board at boardoffice
@transitchicago
.com 🧵
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@bsmcfadden
"The question is, what would I say to a commuter who is uneasy about taking the train. I will say that taking a train is very safe and incidents do happen. But the most dangerous part of a commute is driving on our nation's roads. There are 43,000-car related deaths each year"
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Going through a batch of DRC's emails I got and there are some strong takes in here. "It's not a 'service' cut if it was service we weren't able to deliver because of our manpower"
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@bsmcfadden
Oh, you mean the one month of playing "smoking is not prohibited on CTA property" at stations a few months ago didn't work
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Public comments are up first: 1st speaker via remove is Ethan Saltzberg. Says CTA is on a spiral due to poor headways and ghost busses. Underlining how being late really affects hourly wage earners. Noted only a +6 net gain in operators last year. CTA is fighting riders on data
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If we are wrong, it's a good thing, but CTA has yet to provide the paperwork that would verify the disputed fact.
They didn't contest they're only gaining 1.13 workers a month because of attrition which I find notable. If you can't recruit employees, it doesn't matter if your 1/2
We're glad to see the CTA sharing more information about their rail operator training goal with the public
Being wrong is the best-case scenario because 200 new rail operators will be a huge step toward schedule and service improvements
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Olivia Gaham: First note is CTA didn't even spend $1mil on mental health but shelled out for K-9. Talking to Alds. Vasquez and Mitchel about the importance of bus service in their wards. Asking this cmte. to require CTA board to require the board to ride the system once a month
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@jcliffordknecht
If we're concerned about food on the table, maybe they should consider that if they run bad train service people lose their job and will have food taken off of their table
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4th speaker is
@FabioG_CZ
: Talking about how transit is a key part of world class cities. Bring in the environmental concern (Chi has car density on the rise). Highlighting how CTA leadership does not ride the system.
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Says he had no roadmap. He gets paid 375k
You're supposed to innovate for that kind of money. There's not supposed to be a roadmap. Keeps saying other transit agencies have also made permanent service cuts. He will not explain how to get back to 2024 levels
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You never want to dampen excitement when "good news" comes from
@cta
But the CTA owes it to be honest with its customers. Today marks a new level of deception techniques employed by the CTA to pretend the problem is less severe than it really is
BREAKING: The
@cta
Board just confirmed that the agency is DOUBLING rail operator training capacity in 2024! This is a BIG step toward rebuilding rail service! We look forward to supporting the agency's goal of training 200 rail operators this year!
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Gonna eat this mystery gummy if my train stays halted for another minute
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Couldn't attend the CTA Board Meeting today has really shown me how much putting not one, but two committee meetings before the full board meeting is disrespectful to people's time. They've blown over the normal public comment period and now I can't comment (back to work)
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Excellent article from
@_ManuelRamos_
underscoring why advocates want the board overhauled in addition to CTA's president. Someone who isn't an advocacy group needs to ask questions, not rubber-stamp the C-suite once a month.
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Only note is the chat bot should be on the home screen and not the "get help" menu option
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@cta
"We wont tell you how much more so you can't call our bluff when it doesn't materialize"
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Question: How did DRC get here today?
Answer: They took CTA.
Q: How do they track staff usage
A: Says they regularly ride the system (not true). Says they go through reams of data daily. Didn't answer the question. He's still blaming issues from two years ago, three years later
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I'll be providing light live-tweet coverage of tomorrow's CTA Transit Board meeting. It is slated to begin at 10am tomorrow. The agenda is below.
I'll be looking out for 1) if we start on time 2) we talk about the recent service cuts and 3) if we talk about Antia Lyons' death
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Dorval Carter is rarely seen in public and even less frequently answers questions. Remember, he had never taken a question on the Yellow Line incident. This is the beginning of a new frontier where every quarter, its president can be called to answer questions. It's a huge win.
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@ChicagoAli
@bsmcfadden
The CTA provided 243.5 million rides and there were 484 violent incidents. That is a ~ 1:500,000 chance of occurrence. The Nation Safety Council determined driving has a 1:93 chance of getting in a car crash. Its not even close
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Ald. Fuentes: No official should need to worry about their personal safety. Says he didn't use the processes available to him to start a bigger conversation. She was hoping to learn about how CTA is going to fix issues and all the heard about was a defense of himself
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Second up is, me. I said roughly this. Made some more eye contact this time.
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I need CDOT to meaningfully show they are working on their Better streets for Busses olan. The same X49 has been behind me since I got on a 49 at Armitage. I'm at Lake and we've already lost 20 minutes of time
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Dorval Carter is the epitome of "if I'm not required, I'm not doing it"
Just talked with
@ntsb
chair
@JenniferHomendy
, who’ll lead the investigation into the
@cta
crash. She’s spoken with
@GovPritzker
and
@janschakowsky
. NTSB staff talked with CTA’s top safety officer. But as of minutes ago, CTA director Dorval Carter had not returned her call.
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We're at in person comments now: Natasha Grey is up. Train operator and user of CTA. She enjoys her job but has concerns. She has major safety concerns. Been assaulted on CTA. Makes a point that dealing with safety and unhoused people should not be operators responsibility
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CTA c-suite has been very attentive. DRC has not looked up at commenters
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Next speaker is also talking about this morning's experience: Had to wait 15 minutes during rush hour. Making a metaphor between stalactite in the subway (slow drips and calcifying) and leadership.
@CPDTransit
parking in the bus lane. Tow trucks circle NYC to remove offenders
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Wide diversity of activists here.
@ctaaction
@chi_streets
@ChicagoDSA
with a different policy than usual, we are not getting everyone here before 9:30. Growing number of journalists
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Tim is speaking (he lost his daughter in a bike incident): Bike free, notes bus lane violators
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CPD is really trying to compete with CTA for the worst FOIA dept. I sent them a picture they posted of an officer handing out fliers and they said "no records found" Uh huh
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I want the phrase "feeling stranded in my own city" to haunt DRC until he resigns
fuck you dorval carter, fuck you brandon johnson. you greedy corrupt unaccountable assholes. i don’t want to wait 25 minutes for a fucking bus. i don’t want to plan an hour ahead to see if i can go to the grocery store. i’m so sick of feeling stranded in my own city.
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In my comment, I said, "If you disagree with this statement, please provide a copy of the plan [you] said [your] staff created for [you] at last November's board meeting"
And he won't even do that to help himself and the agency out. A denial with no correction is worth nothing
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Carter says "no one can say we're in a worse place than we were last year... And that to me is progress"
No, WMATA and MTA have drastically rebounded schedules already. That is not progress
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If I've learned anything about how the Rail Ops team and the Front Office get along, it's that the Rail Ops team proposed something more equitable and the F.O. disregarded the suggestion and went for this which they hoped would stop some criticism rather than be more equitable
Well folks, we've joked about it for so long, but the CTA finally did it:
#HalfHourHeadways
scheduled on the Blue Line.
#MeetingTheMoment
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I have not caught this speakers name after applause for Chris' comment (note: DRC looking up now): Speaking on the public assets value of CTA; friends getting cars again too. Asking CTA to leverage experiences to inform policy decisions
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Soleil Smith from
@fixthecta_CDSA
: had to stop someone from assaulting a passenger on the Red Line. No mention on service alerts. Didn't go to work that day since they were too shaken. Notes DRC's vision has not worked (see 2015 appointment) They ask for better working conditions
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Really inconsiderate and honestly inappropriate to play the "10,000 hard-working" employees card when you won't talk about the one who died on your watch (even to offer condolences and regret)
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Here it is again, more proof that flaggers are expected to work 6-12 months before transitioning to RTO. This is something CTA keeps telling me I am incorrect on.
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If Chicago thinks the sole blame is on these companies and that have caused the most damage in this city, they need to look inward
BREAKING: Chicago sues five giant oil companies, accusing them of climate-related destruction and for alleged fraudulent actions. The suit follows similar actions in New York, Los Angeles and other cities.
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@Eric_Erins
Chicago was and still is the "try it out here first" theatre town. Sinatra didn't actually write that song, but basically, the song was written in the 1940s before "off-broadway" became a thing in New York. Probably a reference to something more avante-garde than on Broadway
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David is our next speaker: Talking about this morning's experience of bumper to bumper trains. Says people jam on since the next train is never truly known. Implored board and leadership to make sure people are on time for fam and friends. Wants CTA to allow people to sell cars
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Austin Busch: CTA problems are unique to this system. Calling out this cmte and mayors authority to govern over the board and president. Calling out CDOT obligations under Better Streets for busses and complete streets
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