I know this is probably a bit like going from here to St Louis by way of Memphis, but I have to be out near O’Hare tomorrow for work. Unfortunately, I can’t go straight to the Harlem Station on the EL from downtown, but must go to my work first. Here’s my plan:
Take either a 151 or 156 back to downtown from my work to hop on the Blue Line, which takes me straight to Harlem(I then have a ride to where I need to go). Then take the Blue Line all the way to Clark/Lake and walk to Randolph from there.
OR I could drive to my work, pay $12 to park for 2 hours, then leave, pay to park where I’m going, then face the Kennedy/Dan Ryan nightmare for the trip home. Um, no thanks.
Looking at the route/system overview map (which is not easy to find on the CTA site, but I digress), I see that to catch the Red Line (to then catch the Blue Line) not only makes me walk several (as in many) blocks to get to the RL, but also I would have to ride it all the down to Jackson(?) to change to the BL. That’s even more fucked up than what I’m doing, so that’s not happening.
I’m going to go ahead and do it the way I described, but is there a more direct way? I have to say that in London or Paris, the Tube or Metro is so easy… This seems very convoluted to me, but perhaps I am just not getting it. I did like the EL the last time I took it–it was clean, fast and quiet. What’s not to like? It’s just not located in a place convenient for me to hop on and off…
I didn’t look at the bus timetables and routes. They make my head spin. I just don’t have the energy today to be Julie McCoy. Any suggestion are welcome. Thanks.
Have you tried using the “plan a trip” on the CTA site? The Google Transit is a little strange sometimes - once when I asked for directions from O’Hare to a hotel it gave me train & bus directions to a spot about 5 miles from the hotel and then told me to drive the rest of the way.
Tried that–got nowhere. And once on Google Transit, it sent me from work to Springfield IL(!). Note to CTA: linking to various PDFs is not the best way to help someone navigate…
I work just north of Lincoln Park. I’ll be making this trip mid-day. I imagine it would take several bus transfers, so I’m sticking with my original plan.
I believe we’ve previously established that you work at Diversey and Sheridan. A more direct route than what you’ve planned is to take the 76 Diversey bus to the Logan Square stop on the Blue Line - the bus jogs off Diversey to drop you directly at the station. My guess is the bus ride would take about as long as the 151, but you’d save the 15 minutes on the Blue Line getting from the Loop to Logan Square.
The 76 goes all the way down Diversey to LSD. I know this, because I have used it to get to a bar that’s right by that intersection (took the Blue Line to Logan Square, and hopped on a 76 from there). It was one of the ancient Flxibles back before they were retired, and a group of girls getting on remarked on how “ghetto” a bus they had stepped on.
Aha! It must stop on the south side of Diversy, heading east. No wonder I’ve never seen it (or noticed it). I go north and south on Sheridan… But I will keep it in mind, thanks.
No PDFs are involved in viewing the CTA map online. When I set it up many years ago, I insisted that it be easily viewed by people with different browsers and different Internet connections.
First, thank you. And second, good forward thinking on your part and I’m sure it’s much appreciated by all–in fact, I bet it’s taken for granted, which is a good thing. And I’m impressed and somewhat thrilled that my little thread has caught the attention of one of the wizards behind the scenes.
But fourth…
WHERE did you find that? (Well, I mean where do I find that!) I went on the CTA site and the site of the hospital where the meeting was supposed to be. The hospital map links me to a the CTA site, which has links to a bunch of PDFs. The whole time I’m doing this (before I posted this thread), I was thinking-where is an overview map? If I could only get oriented, I’d be much better off… and I couldn’t find a system map, so I started this thread.
Which is the first hit on Google. This provides links to a bunch of PDFs, if you click on the Blue Line, it takes you to the Blue Line (with PDFs for schedules), but it isolates the Blue Line. That’s all very fine and can be useful, but not for my purposes. I don’t see the ease of using it to plan a trip. I did put in my destination and my location and it <goes to do it again> …shows me the #76 bus to the Blue Line… I must have input something wrong last time. :o <feels stupid>
I also took a peek at this:
CTAstuff (second hit on Google) but I didn’t find the map there. True, I didn’t click on every link…
There were no maps at the Howard St station when I was there a few weeks ago (they may have been out of them or I may have walked right by them–but I didn’t see them and I was looking for one). The CTA people at the Howard St station couldn’t have been nicer, though. The meeting has been rescheduled for next Monday, so I will pick up a map then.
How come there are no CTA paper maps in the Metra station (Randolph)? Thank god there is a bus pass machine, but why not slap some paper maps in a display case on the side of the machine? The guy who comes to restock the machine could then restock the maps as well. Just a thought.
That gets me this: CTAmaponline
(which is the map in pieces; the Tube and the Metro maps show the entire city area… just sayin’).
I’m just giving you all a hard time. I thank you for the help and no doubt I will be back, attempting to see more of the city I’ve lived near for the past 43 years…
Mr Downtown can speak for himself, but I think what he’s going to tell you is that the Paris and London maps you’re thinking of show just the rail system, which in both towns is much more comprehensive than the “L.” (FWIW, the CTA site has a one-page rail map.) London has a separate set of maps for buses - to me they look pretty intimidating. The online CTA maps do require you to know what section of town you’re interested in, but once you get past that, the bus and rail lines are shown together in a way I find easy to understand.
Only a couple of systems anywhere in the world as large as CTA attempt to show all bus and train lines on the same map.
The CTA map is drawn for a 23 x 28-inch sheet of paper. Back in the days before everyone had broadband and big monitors, it would not be very user-friendly to make people wait while a file that large downloaded, and they would have trouble scrolling around it anyway. So I decided a good compromise would be to divide the maps into six logical chunks, and make it easy to go from one chunk to the next. Relatively few people take a trip all the way from Howard to 138th Street, but if they did it would still only take two clicks.
By 2010 standards, it’s a hopelessly rétardataire way of providing web content. Yet I still think it’s a pretty good one for an audience that may not have the biggest monitor, fastest connection, or latest browser.
It doesn’t help that Chicago (and Evanston, Skokie, and Wilmette, since we’re talking about CTA diagrams) stretches quite far north and south, but isn’t as wide, while world+dog has a widescreen monitor.
And I’m impressed and somewhat thrilled that my little thread has caught the attention of one of the wizards behind the scenes.
