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Permalink Reply by Crazy David 84 Furlongs on February 5, 2013 at 11:11am

The CTA is also unpredictable.   I know that if I ride door to door (with all of the time involved with locking and unlocking the Bicycle) its something under an hour (unless the weather is truly extreme...) .  If I drive it ranges from 20 minutes to an hour and a half (with the normal time being a little over an hour).    If I take the CTA it ranges from 40 minutes to two hours, with the norm being right about an hour.   If I walked, about 2.5 hours and that doesn't vary with the weather.  In very bad weather I normally walk and have for years.  (I used to walk from downtown to the North Side (Wrigleyville) on almost every day that I did not ride  a bicycle... thus always in the snow...)    The Car variance depends in part on the weather, but that's not the only factor.  Other factors such as Cub Game Traffic and Road Construction and Street closings enter into the equation.  The CTA?  Who knows.  

The Bicycle is the only "reliable" source of transportation in that the time is predictable.   The Car has the potential to be the fastest, but is often the slowest, and the CTA is simply unpredictable.  

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Permalink Reply by Rich S on February 5, 2013 at 11:25am

"Yet many drivers are not about to give up their cars, despite the costs and impositions on their lifestyles."

Trapped in their cages. 

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on February 8, 2013 at 8:31am

That's certainly been my experience.  The orange line is generally in decent condition and has been fairly reliable and fast for me when I've used it.  The blue line has gotten much better on the northwest side since repairs of recent years (although I don't ride it regularly to many trips to gauge the reliability of travel times). Across the west side, the blue line is terrible and very unreliable.  The red line on the south side is very slow and travel times are extremely unreliable if you're going more than a mile or two.  North side is a bit better, but it depends on timing (rush hour vs. off-peak construction).

Until CTA has done a LOT more switch/signal replacement at key junctions (such as corners of the Loop, where we've had some MAJOR delays lately), the El is still likely to have reliability issues at junctions. Don't even get me started about the buses.

Cameron 7.5 mi said:

I've found that CTA predictability varies a lot by neighborhood.

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