Humanize the Earth!

high speed rail in Michigan

Excellent news from the Chicago Tribune via Rick Harnish at the Midwest High Speed Rail Association:

The Midwest’s first high-speed passenger trains are nipping along at speeds of almost 100 miles per hour on Amtrak’s Wolverine service in Michigan, while technology hang-ups are sidetracking progress on similar efforts in Illinois.

Michigan got a five-year jump on Illinois. It partnered in 1995 with the federal government and the railroad industry to develop a train-control system that assures safety at up to 110 m.p.h., which is how fast Amtrak trains will operate in part of Michigan beginning in 2006. Since the fall, the top speed is 95 m.p.h.

CTA To No Longer Accept Pace Transfers

Could this be true? This is a terrible decision. CTA To No Longer Accept Pace Transfers For those not familiar with transit in the Chicago area, CTA is our Chicago-focused agency. They run busses and the el trains. PACE is the suburban bus service. When I comute to work from Regula’s house in Wilmette, I sometimes take a PACE bus for $1.50 and then transfer to the el for $0.25. After work if I do the reverse, it’s $1.75 for the el and then $0.25 for the tranfer onto PACE.

Recently I started leaving a bike at the Wilmette Metra (the 3rd of our 3 agenies, they run commuter trains) station in Wilmette and then ride to her place. That’s necessary because Metra doesn’t place nice with the other agencies. Seems CTA is going that route. This will make it much less likely that I’ll be ever taking the el to Wilmette again, since it’s a mile walk to my bike, and I’m sure as heck not going to pay full fare for just that distance, or walk it very often. Much faster to take the Metra in the first place. So PACE loses bigtime with this decision, and CTA loses as well. Ugh.

edited to see if I can ping CTA Tattler’s story about CTA and paratransit which doesn’t mention this Pace/CTA transfer issue.

updateI wrote about this at the Chicago El livejournal and the answers that came back indicate that if a rider is using the Chicago Card (which I am) proximity card, then there is actually no change in policy. So that’s good news for me.

train travel and the Commons

I’ve ridden the Amtrak from Chicago to Dearborn (just before Detroit) quite a few times in the past couple of years. I love it. Here’s part of a post that made me think to write more about why I love the train: OnTheCommons.org | Train:

The Coastal Starlight was five hours late and I gather that’s not unusual. The train is on time only about half the time, and the main reason is that it doesn’t own the tracks it runs on. Those belong to the Union Pacific railroad, which requires Amtrak trains to pull onto a siding and sit while its freight trains pass. (Those trains can be very long.)

Stuff moves while people wait. There is something emblematic in that. But actually it’s worse. The tracks sit on land that by and large the railroads got for free. Congress gave it to them, which means that we taxpayers gave it to them, along with large sections on either side. The reason for the grants was so that the railroads could serve us taxpayers with rail service, including passenger service.

So now we get shunted aside on land we ourselves gave the railroads so that we could move.

Trains are public transportation. This means we’re supposed to fund it from our common resources (taxes) for the common good. We gave the land to the railroad companies. Our land (well, we stole it from the Native Americans, true). We fund air traffic infrastructure, highways, city streets, sidewalks, street lamps, water and sewer systems, garbage pickup and the like as public services. Why is public transportation any different?

I don’t often talk with people on the train. I can be very introverted and highly value my privacy, even in a public place. I sometimes listen, however. And there’s usually opportunities to smile at children. And the guy that runs the snack car is very funny. I like bantering with him a bit. I might be more able to talk with people and make friends on a longer trip. It’s only 5 hours between Chicago and Dearborn. Maybe not. Maybe I’d be just as quiet. The possibilities are there, however, for human interaction.