Customer communications

Kevin O'Neil and many others are continuing to hold our feet to the fire on improving customer communications during service disruptions. Good for them. As I said at our board meeting last week, CTA does a pretty good job of responding to major logistical challenges -- from marathons, to playoff games with uncertain end times, to launching shuttle bus service when rail service is disrupted. But we need to do a better job communicating with our customers, and that's a responsibility that starts at the top.

You can see discussions of the challenges posed by emergency communications here and here.

I will say that during Friday's incident on the Cermak Branch of the Blue Line (when an unauthorized person got on the tracks), the CTA internal communications and the instructions to CTA employees gave much more explicit direction in terms of customer communication than I have seen in the past. I'd be interested in hearing from any customers who were involved in the incident -- did you receive useful and timely information? If not, how can we improve?

Proposed fare changes

As many of you know, the proposed CTA budget recommends increasing cash fares to $2 while keeping Chicago Card fares at $1.75. Reader Sam Smith suggested that

".. the changes to the fare structure should be accompanied by the installation of new transit card/Chicago Card machines throughout the city."

This week the CTA board approved a new project to do just that -- we want to make it easier to use Chicago Cards, which speed up boarding and reduce CTA's cash processing costs. See here for more details.

Julie Hamos post

I encourage readers to check out this post from Illinois Rep. Julie Hamos addressing transit budget issues. Rep. Hamos highlights the long-term challenges facing regional transit:

...the CTA will continue to face an annual “structural” budget deficit until we change the funding formula. The 1983 formula provided for a fairly arbitrary distribution of sales tax dollars for RTA and the three transit agencies, with no relationship to transit performance or level of service. In a nutshell, the amount of sales tax dollars that are collected and distributed to the CTA have never been and never will be sufficient for CTA service – even when the economy rebounds. This is also true for Pace. The authors of the 1983 formula understood this, and expected the original formula to last only 5 years.

2006 Budget Proposal

CTA released its staff budget recommendation this week, kicking off the public budget review process. You can read a summary or the entire proposal online. I invite you to post comments and questions here. You are also invited to send comments to ctaboard@transitchicago.com or to testify at the public hearing, October 27th, 4:00 pm at CTA headquarters, 567 W. Lake, Chicago (Clinton Green Line station). Written comments can be submitted to Greg Longhini, CTA Office of the Secretary, P.O. Box 7567, Chicago, IL 60680-7567, or via fax at (312) 681-5035.