CTA: Death by a Thousand Cuts

A friend related this story to me today, which gives us just one more reason to add to the pile of reasons why the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) sucks so severely. My friend was riding a CTA bus about six weeks ago when it broke down during morning rush hour. The bus sputtered to the side of the road and died. Passengers, now facing a hellish commute and the probability of being late for work, started shouting at the poor driver. To which the driver faced them and said, "Hey it's not my fault! The CTA sucks, people, and here's why." The driver then spilled the beans on a very troubling practice at the CTA maintenance garages. When a bus goes to a CTA garage for routine maintenance, an oil change is naturally included in the schedule of things to do. Anybody who has ever owned a car knows the importance of regular oil changes. The union guys in the garages get upwards of $30 per hour (that's $60,000 per year), and they are supposed to check off items as they are taken care of on each bus. Change the air filter, check. Rotate the tires, check. Change the oil, check. And so on. But here's the bad part. According to my trusted friend, the bus driver told a bus load of people (literally!) that many of those union guys hurry through the maintenance routines. Skipped the oil check? Check! It gets checked off as though it has been done, even though it was not, and the bus goes back on the street with an engine full of old, dirty, gritty oil. Then the bus engine destroys itself, breaking down gradually, as in the case of my friend, freezing up. No repairs for that. Instead, it calls for the entire engine to be replaced at a cost of approximately $30,000. And we're talking about hundreds of buses. During that horrible Wednesday afternoon thunderstorm in late-August, a coworker said she saw about six or seven buses that had broken down. But the storm didn't cause the breakdowns. These were buses whose engines had died, coincidentally during a bad storm. But these buses were not stuck or stalled in standing water. They were on roads not submerged in water. Perhaps it is time for CTA to renegotiate its contract with the maintenance guys' union. But then, CTA can't even get its act together to sign a single letter giving permission for a little grop of artists to paint pictures on its walls. CTA: Crappy Tragic Accident.