Dear Asses Of Chicago Commuters:
How are you doing down there? Are you cozy? Warm? Efficiently supported by a minimally-cushioned CTA train or bus seat? Oh good. What a relief.
I’m writing on behalf of the rest of the body to which you are attached. Your argument down the years, if I understand correctly, has been that your comfort should be paramount to all other concerns. Apparently you’ve been quite vocal – or perhaps guttural – about it, because the CTA agrees. It recently launched a “crowding reduction plan” aimed primarily at making sure you never have to stay upright again. You win.
The rest of your human? He or she just wants to get to work on time.
Let me break this down for you. The CTA’s big plan to guarantee you an expanse of brownish or bluish fabric during rush hour involves running more buses on already crowded surface streets. You know how sometimes you can get a little backed up? And then your human keeps on feeding his or her mouth anyway and things just get more and more uncomfortable for you? That’s what Belmont Avenue is like at 8:00 in the morning these days; it’s constipated. There’ll be a long line of barely-moving #77 buses mixed in with all the kamikaze cabs and delivery trucks. And if your human misses the tail end of that procession, he or she has to wait 10-15 minutes before the same excruciating process begins again.
Adding more trains during rush hour seems like a no-brainer, provided the track equipment works. If it doesn’t – and here’s a hint; it doesn’t – you end up with a situation similar to the one described above. Right about now, when your human is standing on a Brown Line platform waiting hopelessly for a train that won’t come, he or she is probably wishing for the kind of reassuring redundancy that the #11 Lincoln/Sedgwick bus provided. Alas, that route was given the heave-ho so you could ride in style.
I know this letter will most likely fall on deaf and dumb asses. You probably like the way your pants fit now that your human, like me, has to run three blocks from the train station to get to work on time. But I’m begging you, in the interest of your corporeal neighbors, please end this madness. Talk to all the influential asses you know at the CTA and tell them you’re willing to make this small sacrifice. I’ve already spoken to the elbows and they are totally willing to forego the extra room.
Come on, guys. It’s time for you to stand up for us.
Yours respectfully,
A Red-Assed Commuter
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Open Letter is open to letters.
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See also: The Open Letter Archive.
Posted on January 29, 2013