Results tagged “buses”

Eight legislators saw the best and worst of the city's transit on a tour led by the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee to show the need for a multi-billion dollar program to upgrade and maintain the transit system on Friday.

The fall-out has begun from the CTA's decision to pull around 200 buses from service. So what exactly happened to these accordion buses? It seems a bus driver noticed a crack in the actual accordion section of the bus that attaches the front end to the rear. The bus in which the crack was discovered was five years old and had 152,000 miles on it.

The CTA is removing a bunch of buses from service, according to the Sun-Times, "due to a structural crack that was found in one of its 60-foot-long articulated buses." The buses will remain out of service until an independent source can look into the problem, so prepare to get a little closer with your fellow bus passengers as more folks crowd onto available buses. Could someone remind us again why the 2016 Olympic bid didn't include money for transit? Update - The Trib reports that it's actually 200 accordion buses that will be removed from service.

The CTA is adding an additional 20 buses to its bus tracker roster, bringing the grand total up to 52 routes. Starting June 23, CTA Bus Tracker will include the 54A, 56, 56A, 68, 77, 78, 80, X80, 81, 81W, 84, 85, 85A, 86, 88, 90, 90N, 91, 92, and 152 buses.

Mayor Daley suggested over the weekend that if our city improves bus efficiency, bikers could use bus lanes and everybody would win. He mentioned the plan Friday at a Bike to Work rally.

The City of Chicago announced today that we're getting a $153 million government grant to try traffic-busting transit plans. On the to-do list? A special "bus rapid transit" subsystem and pricier downtown parking to make public transportation more attractive and driving drastically less so. From the USDOT press release:

On Saturday, a select group of CTA Tattlers sat down for coffee with CTA President Ron Huberman to discuss the state of the CTA. This morning, CTA Tattler posted the first report from their meeting with Huberman, covering the various bus initiatives that were discussed on Saturday. During the meeting, Huberman also told the tattlers that the GPS Bus Tracker pilot program will be expanding to 20 new bus routes, which will be announced this morning.