Hyde Park Urbanist

The 171 Bus

I don't know why it's difficult to get information about the new route of the 171 Bus.  The University's website concerning the routes they subsidize, as far as I can tell, is http://facilities.uchicago.edu/transpparking/transportation/index.shtml and that page has no links (at this time) to any useful information about the Autumn changes.  A week ago, I e-mailed bus@uchicago.edu asking about the changes and where I could go for information on the web about them.  I got an autoresponse that a key person there would be out until the 24th.  It's now the 28th and I've still heard nothing.

The CTA website has no map of the September 6 changes (that I could find), but they do have this description: 

Weekday service will operate approximately every 10 minutes during rush periods and every 30 minutes middays.  Everyday, southbound service will end at 6pm and northbound service will end at 6:20pm.  Service will operate via 53rd and Lake Park instead of to 54th/South Shore Drive.

Back in the golden days of yesteryear, back in the early oughts, you could count on the University to outdo the City of Chicago for communicating with the neighborhood.  Now, even the CTA is more informative. 

The phone number for the University department that includes transportation is Facilities and their number is listed as 773-702-1700.  Y'all are welcome to report back any information you find and I'll pass it along, but I'm not phoning them.

The Herald Throws a Tantrum

In case you missed it, the demolition of Harper Court began last week when the building that once housed Dixie Kitchen met the wrecking ball.  The editor of the Hyde Park Herald (August 19 edition) griped that they'd requested information about the timetable for Harper Court, only to be rebuffed.  Hyde Park Progress sneered at the Herald's pique, claiming that the neighborhood paper is irrelevant.  Well, sure, the Herald is irrelevant, but HPProgress's gloating about that is misplaced.  Far worse, the Herald is in the way of the neighborhood getting something it needs.

The Herald's editor-- and I'm guessing that Gabriel Piemonte wrote both the editorial and the front page article-- complained that the newspaper reached out to Ann Marie Lipinski, who heads the Office of Civic Engagement, to improve dialogue between the University and the neighborhood.  She refused to give the Herald a timetable for Harper Court changes during the resulting hourlong conversation.  Then demolition began at Harper Court the next day and that really pissed off the Herald.

Hyde Park Progress used that as a launching pad for this bit of fantasy:

What didn't happen was that the University's Office of Civic Engagement gave the Herald a date and time when the bulldozers would roll in, giving our local paper everything it needed to run another loopy editorial summoning all old Harper Court die-hards to come chain themselves to fences, lamp posts, and railings in order to block demolition.

I talk to people all the time about Harper Court and I've heard exactly zero people suggest that course of action.  Almost everybody understands that the present buildings have to go.  (I'm treating Harper Theater as a separate parcel here).  This caricature of our neighbors is ridiculous and if this is their idea of satire, they should make a better effort to ensure their more rabid followers understand that.

In any case, the problem with the sudden demolition of the Dixie Kitchen building wasn't that the Herald was stiffed.  The larger issue was that Hyde Park was stiffed.  Had the work been announced, I'm sure some people would have shown up to protest.  More Hyde Parkers would have enjoyed welcoming the wrecking ball.  Maybe a lot of our neighbors are like me-- proud that Harper Court was constructed as a community effort but looking forward to a much better facility with more retail and restaurant options.  Instead of allowing for a moment of closure, even a chance for some to vent their spleen, the University retreated into its bunker mentality.

But the Herald's sins are much worse, in my opinion.  It's supposed to be a newspaper, practicing journalism with professional reporters.  Granted, it's a neighborhood newspaper and its reporters will tend to be newbies, probably poorly paid newbies.  But, for crying out loud, why do these people-- and I can vouch that Bruce Sagan (pic-right) and Gabriel Piemonte are otherwise very bright-- why are they putting brokering power before journalism?  Their job is not to engage the University on behalf of the neighborhood.  Rather, their job is to explain to the rest of us, the neighborhood and all who would help pay for paper's expenses, what the University is doing.  Their job is to tattle.

What kind of professional journalist expects a corporate spokesperson to tell them the unvarnished truth?  Ann Marie Lipinski's job is to spin facts in a way that reflects well on the University.  The Herald thinks it should rely on these executives instead of doing the hard work of developing sources inside the University who can explain the facts from several points of view.  How hard can that be at the University of Chicago these days?  There have been wholesale personnel changes.  The Herald can't find any former employees with a grudge?  It'd do well to get in good with the secretaries.  It's not like the current regime hires executives based on their ability to charm the help.  Even among the many new employees, I'm sure there are turf wars a smart journalist could exploit since the University is cutting staff at the same time expensive projects are going forward.

But the Herald would have to pay at least one reporter to cover the University full-time.  And there's really no other local source for that kind of coverage.  The Hyde Park Progress folks have day jobs.  I have a day job AND I work for the University in a capacity that compromises what I can say.  The Universtiy News Office is another mouthpiece for the institution.  The Maroon has shown flashes of brilliance, but its reporters will never be able to develop the institutional memory that's needed longterm.  No, the Herald is best-placed, but they've chosen to go on as an outlet for public announcements.

That's a damn shame.  You know how Bruce Sagan made his money?  I've been told that he devised the means to have papers like the New York Times published here in the Midwest.  You'd think someone with such a head for technology would have experimented with the Herald a bit.  Well-written articles on the University of Chicago, whether they reflected well or poorly on the institution, would have the chance of going semi-viral from time to time, with an international audience of former alumni and academics of many stripes.  Sagan seems like the kind of guy who could figure out how to make money that way, but the lack of permalinks for source reporting reduces the potential audience to local regulars.  And the University is concerned not with local respect, but rather with international accolades.

Instead, we get a business that wants to determine what happens in Hyde Park instead of explaining it.  Ann Marie Lipinski told the Herald what they needed to hear-- that they don't even know who to go to for information.  And the Herald threw a tantrum!  The irony of the situation is that the Herald's polemics are making it irrelevant.  If the paper engaged the University the way it should, by tattling what needs tattling, it would have far more power and Lipinski would be seeking to engage the Herald, instead of the other way around.

Colorado Democrats Hear from the Far Left

The Colorado Democratic Party headquarters was vandalized this week and arrests have been made:

Police soon announced that they had arrested 24-year old Maurice Schwenkler, who allegedly wore a shirt over his face and latex gloves during the attack, then fled on a bicycle before quickly being caught...  And according to WestWord, the Denver alternative weekly, Schwenkler's address is the former location of the Derailer Bicycle Collective, a "radical, free bike fix-it shop".  

Fleeing by bicycle is indeed a dead giveaway that the vandalism was not a right-winger.  Tea-baggers have to drive in.

What about the other attacker? Details are sketchy, but an anarchist news site, for what its worth, is reporting that a person named Ariel Attack, a "Denver-based anarchist," has been arrested in connection with the incident. A supporter writes: "At this moment, we do not know Ariel's status within the jail, especially regarding her gender classification."

Posts by a writer using the name Ariel Attack have appeared at a site called Queers Against Obama, whose tagline declares that "Obamamania is nothing more than yet another manufactured nationalist frenzy." One post is titled "Obama's War On Queer and Trans Youth."

So, the vandals were a gay anarchist and a cyclist, both of whom were pissed off at the Democratic Party?  I'll cop to sympathizing with the impulse, but I haven't been out of Hyde Park this week.  Honest.

Edward Moore "Teddy" Kennedy (1932-2009)

We understand other people best thru understanding ourselves.  And so often, what we say about others really tells us more about the battles we wage inside our heads, our own hopes & demons.  So what Teddy Kennedy said about his brother Bobby, I think, tells us how he tried to live his life over the last 30+ years:

My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

Ted Kennedy became very good at his job.  He succeeded at passing legislation because he wouldn't let the imperfect stand in the way of progress.  Yesterday's enemies were always tomorrow's potential allies.  The truth is that the Senate's already been missing him. 

And the truth is that I'm worried that we have no one able to replace you, Teddy.

RTA Projects Include Southeast Chicago Study

From the RTA list of submitted projects (.pdf):

City of Chicago

South Lakefront Corridor Transit Study: This project will study a range of transit service options in the South Lakefront Corridor, an area that extends from the Stevenson Expressway on the north to 95th Street on the south and from the Dan Ryan Expressway and Cottage Grove on the west to Lake Michigan on the east.  The City will undertake this work as a first step in identifying alternatives that would improve public transportation services for better access to jobs and other activities, and would lead to enhanced economic vitality and quality of life for the communities served.  The overall goal of the study is to recommend one or two candidate projects with the high net benefits for a more rigorous evaluation that would take place within the federal New Starts process.

Hmmm.  What project fits that geography?  This is how something like the Gold Line gets going-- a line item in a list of transit studies.  A list of public hearings on these projects is here (.pdf).  You can leave a comment for the RTA about these projects here (e-mail). 

A lengthy article (with maps) promoting the Gold Line is here.  Arguments that transit officials should consider include:
1) Densely populated areas of southeast Chicago should enjoy rail transit equivalent to densely populated areas on the north and west sides of the city and
2) Employees in southeast Chicago suffer from longer commutes than most areas of our region and rail transit would mitigate that inequity (see map).

UofC Website Earns Applause

Appnovation Technologies listed the University of Chicago website as the best educational institution website and they make a good case: "The University of Chicago has a wonderful site that is full of life and diversity."  The revived Communications Department, headed by Vice President Julie Peterson, deserves credit, as does the Web Services department of NSIT (which I have strong ties to).

Pickets at the Del Prado

Kate Hawley in the Aug 19 Hyde Park Herald noted that "a handful of union workers" staged a picket last week against Padilla's Demolition, Inc, a company Mac Properties/Silliman Group/Antheus Capital hired to work on the Del Prado.  Padilla's is unionized, which is good, but Laborers International Union Local 6 picketed because Padilla's union workers were not being paid standard wages for the area, according to the Herald.

Hawley ends the short article by indirectly quoting Peter Cassel, director of community development for Silliman, to the effect that the issue is between Padilla's and Local 6.  That's one way of looking at it.  However, if Silliman contracted out the work to Padilla's because they were low-priced and Padilla's is low-priced because they pay substandard wages, then everyone who cares about labor has an issue with Silliman/Mac Properties/Antheus Capital, which is applicable to everything Mac contemplates doing in the future.  That's the way I look at it.

One picketing is not a huge issue, but I'm just saying...

Fare Media & the Gold Line

CTA Tattler pulled an interesting section out of the CTA press release concerning the conversion of fare media from CTA-issued cards to typical credit cards:

The farecard would be a smart card containing a computer chip that allows customers to pay a fare and also serves as a standard credit or debit card tied to a customer's bank or credit card account. A prepaid card could provide the option for customers who choose not to have the card tied to a bank account.

I'm not sure what that "prepaid card" would resemble, actually, but I assume that the CTA and/or currency exchanges could sell prepaid cards much as they do now.  The only difference would be the replacement of a magnetic strip with a smart chip, I guess.

Lifted from the comments to my Wednesday fare card article, JJ writes:

I don't feel like we'd necessarily need the Gold Line if there were universal fare. That's really my only issue with Metra--I don't want to pay a cash fare when I have a CTA card sitting in my wallet.

Just off the top of my head, I'd guess there are four chief issues regarding a trip that uses both Metra and the CTA:

1) Do the services cross paths?  The Gold Line would have zero effect on this.  It simply augments Metra/CTA service connections that already exist.  One could imagine working the Gold Line into the Central Area Action Plan by taking it under Monroe to the proposed West Loop Transportation Center, but the present connections make the Gold Line quite viable.

2) Can you use one fare medium on both Metra and the CTA?  Right now, no.  But if credit cards become the fare medium, then definitely yes.

3) Can you transfer from CTA vehicles to Metra vehicles (and vice-versa) for a quarter?  Now, no.  And the fare medium is separate from this issue. 

4) Is Metra's frequency of service enough that you wouldn't have to consult a schedule for a combined CTA/Metra trip?  During rush hours, probably.  But if the Metra trains ran every 10 minutes all day, then yes.

The twin pillars of the Gold Line are #3 and #4-- 10-minute service and 25-cent transfers.  With those enhancements, we'd have el-level train service without building any new tracks. 

But each of the four items contribute and each of us places a different value on each of the items.  Like JJ, a single fare medium is pretty important to me.  I'd probably use Metra a lot more if I could use my credit card, even if service were unchanged.  Certainly during rush hours.  Since I have to go past a Metra station to catch the #6 bus, anytime I saw riders gathered on the platform during the day I might figure I'd be better off catching the train.  (Photo credit)

The difference between $1.75 and 25 cents for a Metra/CTA transfer is relatively unimportant to me because I figure I'd generally save 10 minutes taking the train.  I net more than $9 per hour at my job and $9 divided by 6 (60 minutes divided by 10 minutes) gives me that break-even point.  But that $1.50 difference is very important to some people.  Even with me, it's a matter of principle.  It's mostly an accident of history that Metra runs the South Chicago lines.  Northsiders get rail transit without the added expense, so why shouldn't I?

Again, different folks value each of those four items differently.  Thing is, rail transit thrives on volume.  Fixed costs are high and marginal costs per rider are low, relative to buses.  Satisfy the folks who care about #1 and #2 and #3 and then it's much easier to justify #4-- the 10-minute service.  The Gold Line's package of improvements will produce great synergy.

Drezner on the Zombie Threat

You can banish the thinker from the UofC-- in Dan Drezner's case, by denying him tenure-- but you can't stop him from thinking like a Maroon.  Yes, we'll long regret losing a foreign policy expert who embodies the UofC approach so darned well.  Let's talk zombies.

Some Canadians embarked on a mathematical exercise concerning how best to handle a zombie outbreak.  They came to the stunning conclusion that it would need to be dealt with early and severely.  Alex Massie complained about their methodology and its lack of relevance to a real-world zombie catastrophe.  That's well & good, I suppose, but hardly a matter for a former Maroon.  No, the real question, which only Drezner has so far had the foresight to address, is how the different schools of foreign policy thought would approach the issue:

A structural realist would argue that, because of the uneven distribution of capabilities, some governments will be better placed to repulse the zombies than others. Furthermore, anyone who has seen Land of the Dead knows that zombies are not deterred by the stopping power of water. So that's the bad news. The good news is that these same realists would argue that there is no inherent difference between human states and zombie states.  Regardless of individual traits or domestic instiutions, human and zombie actors alike are subject to the same powerful constraint of anarchy...

A liberal institutionalist would argue that zombies represent a classic externality problem of... dying and then existing in an undead state and trying to cause others to do the same. Clearly, the zombie issue would cross borders and affect all states -- so the benefits from policy coordination would be pretty massive...

(N)eoconservatives would argue, zombies hate us for our freedom not to eat other humans' brains.  While the threat might be existential, accomodation or recognition are not options.  Instead, neocons would quickly gear up an aggressive response to ensure human hegemony.  However, the response would likely be to invade and occupy the central state in the zombie-affected area.  After creating a human outpost in that place, humans in neighboring zombie-affected countries would be inspired to rise up and overthrow their own zombie overlords.  Alas, while this could happen, a more likely outcone would be that, after the initial "Mission Accomplished" banner had been raised, a fresh wave of zombies would rise up, enmeshing the initial landing force -- which went in too light and was drawn down too quickly -- in a protracted, bloody stalemate. 

Right.  No expense of lives or dollars or civil rights is too large a price to pay as long as we don't have to fight them in America.

CTA Studies Credit Card Fare Instruments

Good news on the fare-collecting front.  The CTA has taken another step in the process to move toward using personal credit cards to pay fares.  WBBM:

Later this month, it will take that step, seeking proposals for a study that will determine possible procedures, management and cost of the program. Once it has that study in hand, CTA intends to seek bids to implement the change.

Chair Carole Brown said she hopes that added convenience will mean more riders and lower costs.

The hope is that a bank or credit card processor will partner with the CTA and pay for installing the new fare equipment.  The financial companies have found that riders tend to keep transit-friendly cards at hand and use them more often than other cards the rider might have.  The CTA believes the processing fees charged by the financial companies will be less of a burden on the agency than administering their own cards.

The best news is that Pace and Metra will follow suit, according to WBBM:

Pace and Metra are already on board, and have agreed to adopt whatever system CTA selects, with implementation in mid-2012, making the credit card a de facto "universal fare card," a long-sought regional transit goal.

This development is especially helpful for neighborhoods like ours which are serviced by Metra and either the CTA or Pace.  Even where there's no coordination of services, the ability to use one fare instrument on Metra to Randolph Station and then the Red Line north is more convenient.  This would also take away one of Metra's objections to the Gold Line-- the cost of putting in special fare equipment that takes CTA cards.