September 11th, 2007 4:03 pm

It’s been a Tuesday full of CTA bashing. Why stop now?

According to an article on the Chicago Tribune homepage, the CTA has been “slammed” in a report that began after a derailment and subsequent fire on the Blue Line injured more than 100 people back in 2006.

Here are some of my favorite pieces of information from the article. All are direct quotes from the article. I added nothing.

Gerald Weeks, the chief of the board’s human performance and survival factors division, said the CTA is:

…a case study in organizational accidents. 

Missing records were rather frequent:

More than 80 percent of inspection records were missing for the Blue Line, the board’s report noted. CTA tracks are supposed to be inspected twice a week, but one track inspector told a safety board investigator that he had inspected his assigned area only once in five months, the report said.

Details of the CTA outright lying in said reports:

In many other instances, investigators found that inspection reports were falsified to indicate that track was inspected when in fact it was not, the report said.

CTA the “worst [of] any U.S. transit agency”:

“The track had clearly been deteriorating for a long time. It did not happen overnight,” said Bob Chipkevich, director of the safety board’s office of railroad, pipeline and hazardous materials investigations. He said the conditions found at the CTA were the worst he has seen at any U.S. transit agency.

CTA too lazy to care about how their tracks are inspected:

…CTA employees were required to pull double-duty–working as both track maintainers and track inspectors, creating a conflict of interest.

I’m not one to typically get fired up about something like this, but who is going to take accountability for this? The entire city, especially those that ride public transportation should be outraged. Where has all the money gone that they’ve received in the past either from the government or tax payers? It obviously hasn’t gone to fix tracks or improve service. And now they want to moan and bitch about not having enough money? No wonder no one wants to give them a dime. They don’t do shit with the money they already have.

Kiss the Olympics goodbye, Chicago. I don’t really know who is to blame here, but this city doesn’t deserve to host a little league baseball game, let alone the summer Olympics.

And people wonder why Chicago is shit on when “Best U.S. Cities” are announced.

I’m also tired of people saying, “it’s public transportation, get used to it because it’s like that everywhere.” Well, when someone says

…the conditions found at the CTA were the worst… seen at any U.S. transit agency

I think it’s safe to say you’ve been proven otherwise.

Chicago: the city of a thousand excuses.

• Real Journalism , Morans