CTA Official Not Down With the Brown

By Scott Smith in News on Oct 9, 2006 5:30PM

When we heard a CTA official was resigning, we thought we had a winner in our Dead Pool. Turns out that Chicago may be losing exactly the type of transit official we need.

Susan Plassmeyer, CTA executive vice president of construction, engineering and facilities maintenance, will leave the CTA at the end of the month to take a position in alumni relations and development at Washington University in St. Louis. One aspect of Plassmeyer’s job was to oversee the Brown Line construction project.

Though that project was rapidly becoming legendary due to cost overruns and broken promises, Plassmeyer is credited with preventing further problems and bringing the initiative back in line with budget and time forecasts. In fact, the total costs are projected to come in $106 million below the initial bids the CTA received.

Plassmeyer also shepherded the Red Line reconstruction and the building of the new CTA headquarters. Her replacement has not been named.

In other CTA news, the entrance to the Fullerton stop was moved 80 feet to the east to accommodate construction of the new platforms and station. The CTA Tattler shows us a pretty picture of what it will look like when construction is finished … in 2008.

And finally, the CTA bus driver who swore at an elderly woman who had the balls to not show him her reduced fare card fast enough, was fired. Predictably, his union said he did nothing wrong. When reached for comment, a union spokesman said “What? It’s not like he hit the old broad or did coke off her pocketbook. Geez.”