Your CTA?

Most of us who reside in Chicago know the customer service telephone numbers for the CTA.
Is it really customer service, or just another excuse for the CTA to spend your hard earned money? Why do take that position?

The answer is this:

• Only a small number of those at the customer service lines actually have good training which means that the CTA RIDERSHIP is MISDIRECTED at least 90% of the time.....on a daily basis!
• Most of the customer service employees and their supervisors openly state quite proudly that they are just there for a paycheck, a way to pay the rent, and have no interest in learning the city so as to properly direct callers who are planning trips or who are already in transit. Most of them have said they would rather quit than have to actually have acceptable and adequate knowledge of Chicago.
  
• So, where do your complaints go? Do they go to CTA management? NO! The customer service supervisors are so friendly with their subordinates that your complaints never make it anywhere other than the trash basket!
• There are many customer service employees who are so disgruntled with the CTA and the public that callers are often misdirected purposely.
  
• CTA drivers, train operators, and field supervisors are good for consistently misdirecting Chicago's traveling public for the same reasons stated above, plus they think the traveling public is a spectacle for which they don't have the time of day.
  

1-888-YOUR-CTA.....excuse us? Your CTA? We could only dream that this is our CTA, the traveling public's CTA even! Truth is that it's uncle frank's and king richie's CTA. Until these two retire, nothing is going to change unless everyone raises their voices without mercy!

Thanks To Our Friends In The Blogosphere

Our friends at Second City Cop and Chicago Dispatchers have been so kind as to help promote CTA SOUND-OFF by mentioning us and providing links to our place in cyberspace.

These blog authors are great men and women who have tough jobs which require tons of bravery, valor, and thick skin. CTA-SOUND-OFF is happy to say we support you!

Thanks SCC and CPDDISPATCH!

Express Bus Operations

Express routes, moreover, the "express" bus designation was advertised as a way for the CTA to serve the city residents with "faster, more reliable service". How many of us waiting for the bus have had to wait and wait at a regular stop for a "local" bus to arrive because CTA is running two to three express buses right behind each other?

What is the only other option but to walk to the nearest "express" stop which in some instances is quite a distance, and very inconvienient!

Could the answer to this be one of the following?:

1. Tons of CTA drivers who have complained to the powers that be about "personal safety" issues

2. Could it be that the CTA sided with their drivers because it co-incided with their racial agenda?

3. Could it be that the CTA was waiting until the right time to create express routes in an effort to underserve minorities / minority communities? (Remember the CTA has been called out in public for this practice in times past).

4. This also happens to co-incide as well with the CTA's agenda to run fares up like they have been trying to do, and succeeded in doing January 1st, 2006.

Is the answer all of the above? We will let you decide....comment away!

Does Priority Seating Exist?

Upon one of our authors speaking in person with a CTA Supervisor on August 29th, 2006,
the answer is "NO". That's right, apparently these wheelchair logos and the written warnings regarding priority seating are there for decoration!

CTA SOUND OFF approached this supervisor stationed at the corner of Western and Division at or around 3:45pm and complained like a reasonable person about the priority seatng always being used by those who are not disabled....even when the buses are jammed with riders.

We asked why this is allowed to happen. The supervisor's reply was exactly "We can't do anything about it. We can't make them move because they have the same right to sit there as you have" "We aren't going to ask our drivers to enforce it" We reminded the supervisor at this point that this is a violation of the law to refuse accessibility to the handicapped.

The conversation was obviously over, and CTA SOUND OFF went about their day.