Lots of nagging questions about the trains and buses of Chicago’s CTA system:
– On the trains, why is a piercing, high-pitched beep in the operator’s vestibule emitted just before and during braking? Why not a more pleasant sound?
– Why, around the 47th street stop of the Red Line, do the tracks tilt? Was it a design flaw? Could the train ever tip?
– Why does the operator guy on the weekday southbound “nine fifteen” run in the morning always click the microphone button - seemingly testing to see if it works - at every stop? He also seems to cycle through announcements just for fun.
– If “rapid transit” is supposed to be rapid, why do the buses, especially the 36 and 151, seem to move at a snail’s pace in order to make their time quotas? I understand that they want to be on schedule, but isn’t it kind of contradictory to the point of mass transit?
– Has the tunnel leading from the Green Line to the Red Line just before Roosevelt ever been utilized?
– On the trains, why is a piercing, high-pitched beep in the operator’s vestibule emitted just before and during braking? Why not a more pleasant sound?
Is it the sound of the brakes?
– Why, around the 47th street stop of the Red Line, do the tracks tilt? Was it a design flaw? Could the train ever tip?
I don’t know about the 47th street stop, but around Belmont the track tips, and (20?) years ago a train fell off the tracks there. Now they go around that bend more slowly.
The beeping sound is an alarm meaning the motorman is going too fast. So you have causality reversed – he brakes because of the noise, not vice versa. As to why its not a more pleasant sound, well, its an alarm; if it was pleasant he’d never slow down!
The beeping sound is an alarm meaning the motorman is going too fast. So you have causality reversed – he brakes because of the noise, not vice versa. As to why its not a more pleasant sound, well, its an alarm; if it was pleasant he’d never slow down!