

More than a month after Streetsblog asked the CTA for an explanation of the the ghost train and bus problem, this week the agency finally got back to us. He said “no drivers, so those buses aren’t running.” 2 wks ago I had 2 ghost buses in a row at a.m. One example: 36 bus starts at LaSalle St. But giving customers false hope through with inaccurate arrival times seems inexcusable.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63475896/ctabusstockphoto_e1534033556170.0.jpg)
Not having enough operators for all the scheduled runs is somewhat understandable.

Particularly aggravating has been the phenomenon of “ghost” trains and buses to the now-common situation where train or bus runs appear the Train Tracker and Bus Tracker, but then disappear before they ever arrive. when you are losing dedicated transit advocates, then you might be toying with complete system collapse. This is reminding me that I probably need to leave a half hour earlier than the before times to get to the Sox game tonight. For example, mobile developer Fabio Göttlicher, recently analyzed Blue Line Train Tracker data and found that between early December 2021 and late April of this year the CTA had only been running about half of its scheduled Blue Line service. These efforts included the February approval of a new contract with the transit workers union that included raises and retroactive hazard pay for hours worked in 2020.īut long and unpredictable waits between runs continue to be a problem. The CTA has tried to address the staffing shortage by doing a better job of retaining and recruiting workers. But another major issue has been unreliable bus and train service due to pandemic-related labor shortages, which is at least as important for restoring ridership. Ever since COVID-19 reached Chicago in early 2020 and CTA ridership plummeted, transit riders have voiced concerns about rising violent crime and less sanitary conditions on the system.
