I've written before on what I consider to be the vital necessity of libraries in maintaining and reinforcing the foundation of modern civilization. It's something that was reinforced for me five years ago, during my February 2004 journey to the United Kingdom.
Among the attractions in the British Museum is the British Museum Reading Room, dating back to 1857. Until the late 1990s it was part of the British Library, until that organization moved out of the Museum to its own digs. History was made in this room. Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital here.
It's pretty striking, and to me, a reminder of the immense value intrinsic in places like this.
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.
If you live in Toronto, you have most likely already heard that the Toronto Transit Commission is considering a fare increase for 2010 - from $2.75 to $3 even for individual rides, and from $109 to $126 for unlimited-use monthly Metropasses. This would hit me directly, as I have been a consistent Metropass user since June 2007, and would be the second fare increase since I started relying on the TTC - the first, back in 2007, saw fares increase from $2.50 and Metropasses from $99.
You know what? I'm not that broken up about it. I can understand that the TTC is in extremely unstable financial straits, and that ensuring the maintenance and expansion of an effective transit system takes money. If the comment threads at the Toronto Star, the National Post, or Twitter are your guide, though, you would be justified in concluding that I am the only man in Toronto who feels this way. Steve Munro wrote about it yesterday, and takes issue with what seems a lot like the TTC trying to make those Metropass users, on which it is supposedly "losing money" to pay their "fair share," however they may justify it.
Despite this potential increase, which may well be rejected, the TTC is still worth the money. Whether it's for $2.75 or $3, for $109 or $126, it is all I need to get anywhere in Toronto. "Take the Car," I hear them say. Maybe, just as soon as you tell me how much you pay a month for gasoline, and parking, and insurance, and maintenance, and whether or not it makes you feel good to know that you're doing your part to spew a little extra bit of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The TTC is incredibly, unbelievably, obscenely dependent on farebox revenue compared to any other major urban transportation system in North America. The National Postcites it as 70% of its $1.4 billion operating budget. The only places where this sort of dependence is feasible is in urban major urban cores in Europe and Asia, particularly Asia, due to the presence of massive centralized populations spread over a wide area. This is greater than any other system in the North American continent - of the systems listed on Wikipedia, the only ones that are more dependent on farebox revenue than the TTC are in London, Hong Kong, Osaka, Taipei, and Tokyo. The subways of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles in the United States do not recover even half of their operating revenue from fares.
Why is this? Mike Harris is why this is. There was a time, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when even if the federal government did not stand behind the TTC, the provincial government did. The Common Sense Revolution and Harris' insatiable appetite for undemocratic "cuts" and "savings" ended that. Check the TTC's 2008 Annual Report sometime. Buried on page 15 to the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, you can find the following note: "However, between January 1, 1998 and December 31, 2003, the Province did not provide operating subsidies for public transit."
Public transit does not exist to make money. If it did, it would still be provided by private companies, as was the case a hundred years ago. They exist to provide a public service, to make it possible to get through life without being chained to a car. I recognize that there are some people who use the TTC and whose budgets are on a knife's edge, and that this increase would be disproportionately punishing. It's not fun. Still, I get the impression that most of the chatter comes instead from people who could afford the increase; they just don't *want* to.
One of the most surprising things I've learned in the course of my transit research is that, when compared to cities of its caliber in North America, Toronto operates one of the best transit systems there is. There, I've said it. I have to wonder how many of the people jawing about how much TTC service sucks have only suburban or small-city bus operators like Barrie Transit, Peterborough Transit, or Niagara Transit to compare it to.
But you say you don't want to pay that much? Well, then, they'll need to cut service. Maybe they'll go whole hog and shut down the Sheppard Line like they were saying they might have to back in 2007. They could shut down all those bus routes as well. Wait! I know how they could save money - halve the number of trains on the subway and reduce headways to bring them in line with pretty much every other city in North America. Fancy waiting ten minutes between trains on the Sheppard Line, or eight minutes elsewhere, even in rush hour? THIS IS WHAT EVERY OTHER SUBWAY SYSTEM IN NORTH AMERICA SAVE NEW YORK ALREADY HAS TO DEAL WITH.
It seems to me that people are allowing this announcement to drown out their perspective - assuming they had any, as perspectives on transit systems are not very widely held, which is one reason why I started writing the Tunnel Visions posts to begin with (covering Montreal and Chicago, and soon to include a study of the Los Angeles County Metro Rail). It's easy to paint the TTC as some greedy government organization concerned with nothing but its own profit. I see people crowing about how service sucks, or how the TTC is the worst mass transit system in the world. My answer to you is - the world includes North America.
A long time ago there were streetcars on Bloor Street, riding the rails from one side of the city of Toronto to the other. That ended in the 1960s with the opening of the Bloor-Danforth subway. In 1966 it was extended east to Woodbine station in East York, and streetcar service there was reduced to a stub route that was itself erased when the subway line reached past it in 1968.
There remains half a block's worth of track on Strathmore Avenue, directly adjacent to Woodbine station, which linked the remaining Bloor Street track with the station's temporary loop. They're still there today, appearing out of nowhere and disappearing as they curve south onto Cedarvale. They're totally isolated from the remaining system today. As far as I know, it's the only remaining evidence that streetcars ever ran in this part of the city.
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.
I can never remember being a monarchist. When I was younger, politics was some vague, weird, diffuse thing that only adults understood, and on those few occasions it intersected with my interests it was only necessary for me to, say, be reassured that Operation Desert Storm would not be like the Second World War. Particularly over the last ten years, the concept of the monarchy in Canada has been so low-key that it's easy to forget that Canada is, technically speaking, a constitutional monarchy. The monarchy is wholly irrelevant to my concerns and day-to-day political life in this country.
Yet it persists, like the pattern on the wall in the hall outside that's shaped kind of like Connecticut: visually interesting, but of no real value to me. I am one of that rare breed - a Canadian republican. I would not shed tears to see Rideau Hall one day occupied by a President of Canada.
With a royal visit by Prince Charles - the man who would be king, assuming his mother does not outlive him - scheduled for next month, the role and value of the monarchy as regards Canada has been getting a bit more attention. A few days ago Conrad Black, the man who ditched his Canadian citizenship because Ottawa doesn't allow Canadians to accept titles of nobility, wrote an article for the National Postin defense of the monarchy, which he described as "a useful anachronism."
I'll agree right off the top that the monarchy is anachronistic. I see no place in the 21st century, or beyond, for a system of government that at its core is based on justifying why the son of the tribe's big man got to rule the tribe once the big man died. The pomp, pageantry, and showmanship in which the institution is wreathed only serves to distance it from the notion that it is a system of government demands blood as a prerequisite for power.
Conrad Black doesn't feel that way. He sees an "endearing originality" in the system worth protecting and doesn't look kindly on the presidential heads-of-state common in most of modern Europe, describing them as "pallid replacements of deposed royal houses" with "none of the mystique or pageantry of a monarch." Personally, when I'm looking for mystique, I do not expect government to be where I find it. Government, to me, is supposed to be a competent, capable manager of the state system. What it is is one of the reasons why I drink.
Black echoes the standard line of many monarchists I've encountered by talking up the "historic ties" between the Commonwealth states. From my perspective the Commonwealth is even more irrelevant than the monarchy itself - it's nothing more than the deflated husk of the British Empire, propped up on tentpoles because the alternative was to drop it in the rubbish bin. If not for the Commonwealth Games, I doubt the average person would even be aware of the organization.
We don't need the Commonwealth, or a shared monarchy, to work together in the international arena. Look at the United States. The Americans defined themselves by rejecting not just the monarchy but the United Kingdom altogether. Our ties to the rest of the world are not so flimsy that we need a crown to keep them from blowing away in a stiff breeze.
Nevertheless, Black did surprise me by suggesting an "update" of the monarchy would be worthwhile, further grounding the selection process of the Governor General, perhaps by converting it to a decision by the electorate. At this point, almost anything would be better than our current system, in which the GG is appointed by the Prime Minister.
I am a republican, but at the least I'm willing to compromise. It's not monarchy itself that really drives me up the wall, but the concept of a foreign monarchy. Though my blood is English, thanks both to 20th century immigrants and 18th century United Empire Loyalists, that does not change the fact that I am Canadian and that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is one country among many. A country to which we have deep historical ties, I'll grant, but another country nevertheless. I have no illusions that the monarchy's allegiance is to the Commonwealth as a whole instead of the United Kingdom first. I'm thankful that I was born here, because I would not have sworn allegiance to a foreign monarch.
If we must have a Canadian monarchy, then let us have the monarch be truly Canadian.
Ellesmere, an intermediate station on the Scarborough RT, was the least-busiest station on the Toronto subway and RT system in 2007-2008, with an average of 1,680 daily boardings. Having visited the area last week, it's not hard to understand why. The station is built directly beneath the overpass that carries Ellesmere Road above the rail and RT tracks, and there are no direct entries or exits onto Ellesmere Road itself. Nor is the road set up in such a way that local bus service can easily connect with the station.
Honestly, I'm surprised they built it in the first place. Having built it, though, the TTC has a responsibility to maintain it. Apparently they're in the process of reconstructing the west-side stairs. I just wonder what drove them to do it, and if rehabilitating a station like Ellesmere is the best use of the TTC's limited funds. Maybe they should be fixing that dripping pipe at the southbound platform of Queen station that's been losing water for the last week and a half.
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.
For me, Halloween was always the holiday for kids. It wasn't one that was ignored when I was growing up, and if there is one thing I can say in favor of subdivisions, at least they're built in such a way that doesn't make it too problematic for kids to go from house to house looking for tricks or treats. Still, it was pretty standard. Like, I would imagine, most other dudes of my generation, I went out once as a Ninja Turtle. For Halloween 1984, I was a hobo. That's me on the left.
Still, I got older and the concept of dressing up and going out for treating and trickery lost its appeal, as it should - that part of it is for kids. That doesn't mean I didn't get involved anymore, though, be it handing out candies to the kids at the doorstep to being part of my mom's Halloween setup. For that I wore a big, heavy black robe that completely concealed me and did not move at all, to make the kids think I was just some stuffed figure. Then, when they weren't expecting it, a terrifying growl - awesome.
But that, again, was an artifact of the suburb I grew up in. When I moved to Toronto, I quickly found that things don't work the same way here - or at least in my part of it. I've never seen kids going door-to-door here. The management of my apartment building put up notices in the elevators saying specifically that children weren't to be going between apartments. For me, usually, it's just another day - the only difference this year being as that it fell on Saturday, it wouldn't interfere with my commute home. All the parties along King and Queen, you see.
The Silver Snail, easily the epicenter of the comic book/general nerd scene for the entire city of Toronto and much of the surrounding area, hosts one of those parties. My roommate went last year as Cecil Stedman from the comic series Invincible, and this year as Metalocalypse's Charles Foster Ofdensen. Early yesterday he reminded me not only of the Silver Snail's party, for which he had an invitation that would let him bring a guest along, but of an idea I'd had just after Halloween 2008 that I'd never followed up on.
A Tim Buckley costume.
For those of you who aren't aware: Tim Buckley is the man responsible for creating the webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del, and is seen by a lot of people as a total hack due to his apparent unwillingness to improve the quality of his work. He's known colloquially as "B^U" for good reason - look at it like you'd look at a smiley, and you'll see the facial expression his characters wear 95% of the time. Other people have examined Tim Buckley's issues and Ctrl+Alt+Del's failings with more depth than me - in June 2007, John Solomon of Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad took him to task, and while that weblog has been deleted a copy of the post remains, thanks to the Internet Archive.
So, I had my concept - which, I'll admit, was inspired by a photo I came across last year, so I can't take credit for the idea. My execution, though, drifted a bit from my inspiration. I had one resolution, and one resolution only: I would put precisely the same level of effort into the costume that Buckley seems to put into his comics. Anything else, I figured, would detract from the spirit of the costume.
My first stop was Shoppers Drug Mart, where I picked up a roll of masking tape and a sheet of yellow bristol board. This was to create the "yellow box" aspect of the costume - in Ctrl+Alt+Del this is the comic's "narrative voice," though it's frequently poorly used and states or restates things unnecessarily. For the mask portion, I had been on the lookout for paper bags, but the only ones I could find were far too small to fit over my head. Instead, I worked with two 10x13 inch full-page manila envelopes.
The envelopes, too, were too small to fit over my head, as I discovered when I ruined the prototype. Still, it wasn't that hard to overcome that. For the production mask, I cut it lengthwise along the seam in the back so that I could unfold it and wrap it around my head. Then, I used part of a third envelope to make a "bridge" connecting the two flaps that had been the back of the second envelope. This was secured on the outside with a great deal of Scotch tape, and on the inside with masking tape. I then prepared the front of it with "B^U" and cut a pair of vision holes.
It would've worked a lot better if I didn't wear glasses. As it was, the mask pushed my glasses further along my nose than I'm used to, and it was distinctly unpleasant. Too, my vision through the holes was extremely restricted - not only was I only able to see directly in front of me, I could only see clearly out of one eye. It was enough - barely - to get around, but not enough to have much more than basic awareness of where I was and what I was doing.
I came to realize that once we arrived at the party. I'd never been to the place where it was held, and my mental picture of it is extremely limited because of how restrictive the mask was. What's more, I felt distinctly out of place. There were people there who had put real, honest work into their costumes. What did I have but a stupid mask made out of shipping envelopes and a piece of bristol board taped to my chest?
So I left, after not too long, It just didn't feel right. I think, here, that the idea of the costume was a lot better than its actual execution. I think that maybe next year I'll go as a civilian SG-team member or something. I know they sell the shoulder badges at Ad Astra. Nevertheless... since it is, at least, fairly off the beaten track, here's a photo of how I went out for Halloween 2009.
I'm taking a break from Public Domain Photography content today. Against my better judgement, my desperate search for content has led me to declare today Post Something Old and Embarrassing Day. Fortunately, you lucky, lucky people, I have a great heaping amount of embarrassing things to choose from, and fortunately for me, the vast majority of them will never, ever, ever see the light of day.
Back in 1999, when I was sixteen, I was mostly working on improving my writing style. At one point, however, I did take a detour to try my hand at drawing a character. I can't remember the context of the drawing at all, or even if there was ever any context to begin with. This is the result. I didn't do much more afterward. On the plus side, it does give you the opportunity to see what a coworker described as my "engineer's" handwriting. And those red spots on her arms are supposed to be bloody cuts, not rashes or something. As I recall, I used a pencil for the outline and pencil crayons for the color.
I wonder what might've happened had I kept on with it. Maybe by now I could've been beating Tim Buckley at his own game.
Back in the mid-1990s, as part of his "Common Sense Revolution," the provincial government took its responsibility for highways, assistance programs, and a constellation of other expensive things and forced it onto the cities and towns. This had the immediate impact of lightening the province's financial burden, which made it even easier for Harris to cut things elsewhere. Fifteen years later, we're seeing the consequences of that.
There's a reason you never hear of Toronto being deep in the red or dealing with the sort of punishing deficits that the provincial and federal governments currently have on the table - because Toronto is legally prohibited from running a deficit. Its budget must be balanced each and every year, and thanks to Harris and his ilk Toronto and other cities have a great deal more things to finance with a limited ability to finance them.
This has come to a head recently, with the city seriously looking at a 5% across-the-board cut in order to make some headway against a looming $500 million shortfall. There hasn't been any firm decision on what will be cut and how, yet; the other day the Toronto Zoo blatantly defied this, not only not cutting but adding 3.6% to its budget next year.
Of all the city's expenses, one of the single largest is the payroll. Apparently, budget chief Shelley Carroll has a plan to deal with this. According to the Toronto Star, she "hopes that staff reductions could be covered by attrition - not replacing people who leave."
This is patently ridiculous. The only time attrition ever works is when the volume of activity is dropping, and for a city government, there's alway something that will need doing. I can see not hiring new people, but refusing to replace ones who depart is something else entirely. Putting the responsibility for delivering city services on fewer and fewer overworked city workers is a recipe for problems, and it's not something that makes me envy a city worker today.
Despite what I may have wrote yesterday in my analysis of the system, not all of the Chicago 'L' is metal and industrial - the nature of the track supports in the Loop isn't universal. Further out from downtown, differing architectural sensibilities found their way into the system. This portion of elevated track, diagonally spanning North Broadway at West Leland Avenue, entered service a hundred years ago and carries Red Line trains between Wilson and Lawrence stations. Toronto's system isn't nearly old enough to equal this sort of antique grandeur. The long history and differing design aesthetics of the 'L' system, I think, really give it a character that newer transit systems lack.
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.
Every once in a while, Acts of Minor Treason hops out of Toronto, lands in some other city with some other light- or heavy-rail transit system, and looks at different ways of getting around on two rails, whether it's on the ground, under it, or above it all.
The past few times I've travelled to the United States, it always felt like I was entering some strange and foreign Bizzaro World where everything was exactly the same except for extremely minor surface differences that leapt out everywhere. Chicago and Toronto have a great many things in common - they're both Great Lakes cities, they were once the Second Cities of their respective countries, and they both lack the sheer metropolitan weight of grand cities like New York or London. They're accessible.
This is especially true in terms of transit. Earlier this month I spent three rainy days in Chicago evaluating its subway-equivalent, the 'L.' I say subway-equivalent because "subway" is not the proper word in the Chicago context. The 'L' struck me as being very much like the Toronto subway system, turned inside out. Not only does a majority of Chicago's system run aboveground, it literally runs aboveground - it's called the 'L' because it's primarily an elevated rail system.
Even before my arrival in Chicago, I was curious about what I think of as "the paradox of the 'L.'" Chicago is one of the great cities of North America, with a population of 2.8 million to Toronto's 2.5 million - and had had a heavy-rail transit system in place more than fifty years before the opening of the first stretch of Toronto's subway. It operates a network that comprises nearly 171 kilometers of track, a length to which the Toronto subway and RT combined amount to barely more than a third.
To put it another way: Toronto's 32-station Yonge-University-Spadina line alone carries more passengers than the eight lines and 144 stations of the entire Chicago 'L' system combined. This hardly seems right to me. Chicago's been at it for longer than Toronto, both in operating a heavy-rail transit system and in being a metropolis. The exact answer as to why this is the case may be beyond this post, but I think an analysis of the Chicago 'L' system may be instructive in and of itself. Just because the 'L' isn't used as heavily doesn't mean that the TTC can't, or shouldn't, learn from the CTA's experience. Nor shouldn't it try to avoid the paradox of the 'L.'
A Loop-bound Purple Line train enters Sedgwick station
System
Heavy-rail service in Chicago began in 1892 with the first segment of what would become the 'L' built and run by the South Side Rapid Transit Railroad Company. As in Toronto, the early days of public transit in Chicago were dominated by private interests, but while in Toronto the railroad companies contented themselves with running streetcars, in Chicago they built their rails in the sky. Though 'L' service began with steam locomotives, it was electrified in 1898. While the Toronto Transportation Commission, forerunner of the modern TTC, was established in 1920 to put an end to wildly variant, divided fare systems within the City of Toronto, Chicago continued on with its private companies providing the public with a way to get around. Even its subways, under State Street and Dearborn Street, were begun under the aegis of private enterprise. It wasn't until 1947 that the 'L' network was unified under the control of the Chicago Transit Authority.
As I said before, the Chicago 'L' consists of eight individual lines serving a total of one hundred and forty-four stations, and while most are within Chicago's boundaries some extend into its suburbs - particulary the non-rush-hour Purple Line and the two-stop Yellow Line, or "Skokie Swift," the sole 'L' line that I did not ride during the course of my visit. The heart of the 'L' system is the central core of downtown Chicago, known as the Loop from the 'L' tracks that trace a circle above Lake Street, Wabash Avenue, Van Buren Street, and Wells Street. Seven of the eight 'L' lines extend into the Loop, bringing commuters and travellers to the heart of the city.
Unlike Toronto and Montreal, where the term "line" is interchangable with the physical infrastructure the trains travel through, the eight 'L' lines refer more to routes for individual trains, as is the case in the notoriously confusing New York City subway system. The elevated trackage in the Loop, particularly, is shared between Brown Line, Purple Line, Orange Line, Green Line, and Pink Line trains, and multiple stations north of the Loop are served by multiple lines. While this does mitigate the somewhat long headways of 'L' trains, it does require that passengers be alert and aware when they're boarding a train. This is particularly true in the Loop; while Purple Line, Pink Line, and Orange Line trains travel clockwise through it, Brown Line trains run counterclockwise, and Green Line trains can come or go from either direction. Woe to the inattentive traveller at Clark/Lake bound for Madison/Wabash, who boards a Brown Line train bound for Kimball.1
Much of the system, particularly in the built-up core of Chicago, is served by elevated rail. The State Street and Dearborn Street Subways are abbreviated underground segments that carry the Red and Blue Lines, respectively, through downtown, built to alleviate building congestion in the Loop in the 1930s. Portions of the Orange Line to Chicago Midway International Airport are at-grade along freight railroad right-of-ways, as is the "Dan Ryan" branch of the Red Line, so named because it runs in the median of the Dan Ryan Expressway, the same way Toronto's University-Spadina line runs in the median of Allen Road between Eglinton West and Wilson stations.
This section of elevated 'L' track above Wabash Avenue forms part of the Loop
Unlike the Toronto subway or the Montreal Metro, which are respectively anchored by Bloor-Yonge and Berri-UQAM stations, the nature of the Loop means that there is no one central station pulling in riders from across the city - although Clark/Lake in the Loop, bridging six lines and with a free transfer to the Red Line's Lake subway station, did see 5.2 million passengers in 2008. It wasn't until after I left Chicago that I learned one of the busiest 'L' stations is, in fact, 95/Dan Ryan, the southern terminus of the Red Line and the southernmost station in the system by a significant margin. This owes a lot to 95/Dan Ryan's nature as a commuter hub served by CTA and suburban Pace buses, similar to the TTC's Finch station, which in addition to TTC buses is served by York Region Transit, GO Transit, VIVA, and Brampton Transit buses. Even so, 95/Dan Ryan's 2008 passenger traffic of 4,372,074 is far outstripped by the weekday-only use of Bloor-Yonge station, which I calculated using TTC averages to be 51,797,400 passenger entries - and that's for the Yonge portion alone, as the TTC separates transfer stations between lines for the purposes of ridership calculation.
As for Clark/Lake, possibly the most complex station on the entire 'L' network, touching every line except for the Yellow? Ridership figures for August 2009 show that on an average weekday, 18,599 people entered turnstiles there. The nine stations of the Loop put together saw 70,666 entrances on the average weekday, a 6.2% drop from August 2008. I can only imagine that this is because gas was not quite as expensive this year as it was last year. There are nine stations in Toronto that have individually greater entrance numbers.
Nevertheless, the 'L' brings transit access to a sufficiently large area that it's possible to live car-free in Chicago, or spend three days wandering around there without having to step into a taxicab or rental car. Rapid transit service extends to both O'Hare International Airport, via the Blue Line, and Chicago Midway International Airport, via the Orange Line. Midway is barely more than half an hour away from the Loop, which is good considering that international travellers have to check in a minimum of two hours before departure there.
An Orange Line train waits for travellers at Midway station
As of this writing, regular CTA fares are a uniform $2.25 on the 'L' and buses, though discounted fares are available for students and people with disabilities, while members of the United States Armed Forces and senior citizens can ride for free. The issue of free rides for seniors is a rather charged one presently, as it's seen to contribute much to the CTA's current budget deficit. For my part, I got around with an unlimited-use three-day pass which I bought from a vending machine at Midway station for $14. It's best that I did, because the system as a whole seems set up to discourage the use of money over passes or fare cards. As in Toronto, there's no change given for overpaid fares, but in Toronto you can access the entire system with cash. During the course of my observations, I didn't see a single point of access into an 'L' station that would allow a passenger to pay with cash. The three-day pass I got was simple to use - I feed it into one slot on the turnstile, and retrieve it once it's ejected from another - though I really had to yank it out of the machines. They keep a firm grip, they do.
Stations
Stairs to the Green and Brown Line platform of State/Lake station
The first thing you need to know, hopefully so that you sound like less of a knownothing tourist, is that when a slash appears in an 'L' station name, it means "and." Thus, State/Lake is pronounced "State and Lake." Now then...
Being a primarily elevated rail system, it's no surprise that Chicago 'L' stations differ significantly from their Toronto or Montreal counterparts. While those two cities generally have station buildings on the surface - in Toronto, downtown is the only place where this isn't the case - this isn't always the case in Chicago. For some 'L' stations, their only real footprints are the entry staircases. Other stations, such as Wilson on the Red Line, reflect the era in which they were built with an ornate stone kiosk surmounted by tracks, while many underground stations along the State Street and Dearborn Street Subways invert this; from the surface, they're also nothing but staircases, but heading down. Of all the stations I visited on the 'L,' Logan Square on the Blue Line was the only one with an aesthetic similar to the average Toronto subway station.
To be perfectly honest, a number of the elevated stations I visited struck me as being the Theme Park Versions of a public transit system - they seemed to me like the sort of structures that wouldn't be entirely out of place in Frontierland. They had a generally old-timey feel to me, something which is specifically emphasized at Quincy station, echoing the dawn of the 20th century. Both inside and outside the Loop, many elevated station platforms are just planked wood framed in steel. They're not particularly friendly as far as inclement weather goes, either, something I had no shortage of opportunities to discover, considering that it rained every day I was in Chicago.2 While there are roofs, they don't cover the entire platform. Sometimes they don't even cover the platform around the stairs. To me, it added to the somewhat gritty and industrial feeling that permeated the 'L' - stations that aren't refined, but purely functional. Rosedale and Davisville are the Toronto stations most reminiscent of this 'L' standard, and they are both far more enclosed than any elevated station I explored.
I don't even want to imagine what it would be like waiting for an 'L' train in the winter. Very few, if any, of the elevated stations I visited had anything as luxurious as walls. This was even true of the stations along the Dan Ryan branch of the Red Line, with cars speeding along the expressway a matter of feet away from the edge of the rails. On some days it might be invigorating. Others... not so much.
A view of the platform in Clark/Division station
Chicago's underground stations, far more comfortable in inclement weather, are fascinating in themselves. The ones I visited, in the State Street Subway along the Red Line, predate the Toronto subway by barely more than a decade - the State Street Subway opened in 1943, while service began along the original Yonge subway in 1954 - yet their architecture and design aesthetic seems closer to the nineteenth century than the mid-twentieth.
This may be partially due to the design. Though Toronto's highly reflective Vitrolite glass tiles have been removed or covered over in all stations that had them except Eglinton, the tunnel walls are frequently nothing but naked concrete. This is mitigated somewhat in side-platform stations like North/Clybourn, where the platform walls are tiled over, but in center-platform stations such as Clark/Division or Grand, it's a bit unwelcoming. Furthermore, there seemed to be a lot less lighting in the stations than their Toronto counterparts. Still - aside from the font, the appearance of the station name etched into the tiled walls really reminded me of home.
The station name at Clark/Division, formerly with ampersand!
I never encountered strong smells of any sort in the underground stations, which was thankful, but in some cases I didn't encounter much of anything. At one point, while waiting on the platform at Grand station in the early afternoon, the hairs on the back of my neck went up when I realized that aside from the other people present, there was no ambient noise of any kind. Granted, it could be a result of the renovations which were ongoing at the time of my visit, but I still found it rather disturbing. All in all, if I was looking for a place to film a Sinister Subway, I'd head to the State Street Subway.
For a more in-depth look at Chicago underground stations, I refer you to the videos of YouTube user artistmac. I've embedded one where he walks through Lake station on the Red Line - hopefully this will bring it more to life. If the surroundings seem vaguely familiar, it may be because this is the same entrance, albeit redesigned, that Larry and Balki emerged from in the opening of the 1980s sitcom Perfect Strangers. It is, thankfully, a lot brighter than I found Clark/Division to be.
Equipment
Wikipedia tells me that the CTA's trains are "streetcar-derived," and that Toronto had considered the use of similar vehicles for its own subway while it was still under construction. Rush hour would have been significantly more cramped had the TTC tilted that way. Chicago's trains, to me, occupy a strange middle ground, between the narrowness of the ICTS trains on the Scarborough RT and the comparative spaciousness of modern Toronto subway cars. My first impression of the 3200-series cars, which form the backbone of 'L' service today, was that they felt intermediate between Montreal and Toronto rolling stock - that in terms of size and seating arrangements, which on the Orange Line includes single seats, they were "almost like big streetcars." As it turns out, they are just slightly smaller than, and ultimately most individually comparable to, the CLRVs that anchor Toronto's present streetcar service. At sufficiently low speeds, they even sounded like streetcars to me.
As in Toronto and Montreal, the Chicago 'L' has an automated announcement system, and while in the former two cities it's used solely to announce next-stop information, in Chicago it's played to the hilt. The announcer, who first struck me as reminiscent of a past voice of the Walt Disney World Monorail System, frequently makes public service announcements. One of the first I heard informed me that "soliciting and gambling" are prohibited on all CTA vehicles. Barely fifteen minutes out from Midway Airport this struck me as rather odd - sure, I can understand that something like that would be against the rules, but has gambling on the 'L' been so out of control that the CTA needs to specifically speak against it?
It jumps the gun, too. Chicago trains have door chimes just like Toronto ones, although not the same tone, and they frequently went off while passengers were still alighting, let alone while people were still boarding from the platform. At least when the door-closing chimes sound after two seconds at Sheppard Line stations, at least I know they mean it. Take this video I recorded of a trip from Clark/Lake to Chicago/Franklin, during which the announcement that "Merchandise Mart is next" helpfully came while the train was actually inMerchandise Mart station.
On the whole, trains in Chicago are smaller than trains in Toronto. Though eight-car trains can be brought into service during rush hour, in my experience off-peak service included nothing more lengthy than four-car trains, and apparently the Yellow Line to Skokie gets by with two-car trains. Contrast that to Toronto, where six cars are the standard and four-car trains are used only on the Sheppard Line, which itself has higher ridership than three of the eight 'L' lines (Purple, Pink, and Yellow, if you must know).
Left: A Chicago 'L' train at Southport station. Right: A Toronto subway train departing Rosedale station, the most 'L'-like of any station in Toronto except for, you know, not being elevated
Like the Montreal Metro and the Scarborough RT, Chicago 'L' trains run with a one-person crew, with the operator also serving as the guard when the train is at a station, watching out to make sure the doors don't close on anyone. It's fortunate, too, because if the announcements are any indication, if it was left up to automatics no train would dwell at a station for longer than two seconds.
Ease of Access and Ease of Use
I used to take it for granted that I could end up on a subway platform and never have to wait more than five minutes to start heading where I was going, regardless of whether it was the middle of rush hour or ten minutes to midnight on Sunday night. My travels and my researches both have demonstrated that Toronto appears to be an outlier when it comes to headways (that is, time separation between trains). The 5-6 minute separation between trains on the Sheppard Line and Scarborough RT is the longest you'll find in the Toronto system - but in Chicago, outside of rush hours, it's rare you'll find a headway that equals that. From 7:14 AM to 1:20 PM on weekdays, the scheduled frequency of northbound Blue Line trains is 7-10 minutes, and between 10:54 AM and 1:20 PM you'll have to wait fully 10 minutes between southbound trains.
I never knew how good I had it here.
Nor are there any fare-paid transfers, that I could find, from trains to buses. Stations in the Loop don't have room for terminals, but there's not much attention given to that elsewhere in the system. Most boarding zones I found were simple curbside stops, and even where there's allowance at a station for buses to stop, as at Logan Square or Midway, the bus loading zone is on the far side of the turnstiles. This is a significant contrast to Toronto, where passengers can climb directly from the subway platforms to bus loading area while remaining inside the fare-paid zone. I have, however, come to the conclusion that Toronto is effectively unique in this regard; I don't know of any other transit agency that's designed its stations to enable this.
If you're lugging a bike along with you, the CTA is willing to help. Much like the TTC, it's begun installing bicycle racks on its buses, and bicycles are allowed on 'L' trains - two per car, with a sticker saying as much on each and every car - except from 7 to 9 AM and 4 to 6 PM on weekdays, mirroring Toronto's prohibition on bringing them aboard when rush hour commuters are busy cramming the cars, as well as all Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, but not July 3rd. I have no idea why this is. I've never been in the United States on July 4th, but I guess maybe there are a lot of people going back and forth the day before.
Some stations on the 'L' aren't exactly friendly to transfers. This may well be a result of the system's origins as lines established and run by competing private companies. While the consolidation of Clark/Lake station in 1992 permitted free transfers between the elevated platform and the underground Blue Line platform, in other cases stations that one might think were connected are entirely separate. The Red Line, in particular, is entirely disconnected from the rest of the system within the Loop; though the names are similar, Lake station on the Red Line and the elevated State/Lake station are entirely separate, and passengers must exit the Red Line fare-paid area and pay another fare at State/Lake in order to proceed.
The layout of some stations can also be confusing for the uninitiated, owing to the degree of interlining in the Loop. At State/Lake, access to the Green and Brown Lines is by staircases on one side of Lake Street, while the Orange, Purple, and Pink lines must be accessed from the other side. It's a system that demands forethought and knowing exactly how you want to get where you're going. What really makes it irritating is that some stations like State/Lake have no platform crossovers within the fare-paid area. This means that if you pass through the turnstiles only to find you're on the wrong platform and try to go around to the right one, since you used your card only minutes before you'll be locked out and unable to proceed.3
Sometimes, you just have to be a local. While the 'L' signage is good, it isn't perfect. There was one notable occasion when it wasn't until I reached the platform that I found signage telling me I was at Library-State/Van Buren station. I don't have the same complaint with the trains; given the degree of interlining, they have no choice but to have good signage. Rollsigns indicating the train's destination are present not just at either end of the train, as they are in Toronto and Montreal, but on both sides of the train as well, and are color-coded to indicate what line the train's running. It's fairly straightforward, too - with the exception of the Yellow Line, which forever shuttles between Howard and Skokie stations, all trains are bound either for their terminus or the Loop. There, it's just a matter of knowing whether you're on a clockwise or counterclockwise train that makes the difference.
Orange Line rollsigns are clearly visible on this train, stopped in the elevated portion of Roosevelt station
Conclusion
I haven't been able to unravel the paradox of the 'L.' It's something which is most definitely beyond the scope of a simple analysis such as this, and all I have is conjecture. Chicago's been a metropolis for a lot longer than Toronto, so it could be that it had a far greater opportunity to go all-out when the age of suburbanization started, and lost a greater share of CTA riders than did Toronto. Nevertheless, the TTC remains a system used heavily by the city's middle-class, and I never got the impression that things were different on the 'L.' It might also be that because the CTA is a far more bus-oriented system than the TTC, it's more convenient for people to take buses rather than trains from point A to point B. I suppose that, in the end, it's just a bit strange for me to see a system that appears far vaster and more comprehensive than Toronto's, but which is used less.
It'd be better for everyone if more people did ride it. I've written before about the CTA's recent "budget doomsday," and apparently it has a reputation for doing that sort of thing on a regular basis. Apparently it's come up with a new idea; right now the CTA is negotiating with Apple for 10-year advertising rights in and first naming rights to North/Clybourn station, which struck me as an Art Deco North York Centre station, in exchange for $4 million to fix it up. That's a whole argument in and of itself, but I really don't think it's the sort of recourse a public transit operator should be eager to take.
I'd appreciate feedback from any Chicagoans who might have a better handle on the situation - I'm sure there's a great deal of aspects to the system that I didn't pick upon from the limited length of my experience.
1 Not me. Fortunately. 2 I'm not bitter. Really. 3 This one actually did happen to me. Fortunately, the extraordinarily close stop spacing in the Loop meant I only had to walk two minutes to Madison/Wabash.
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.
