Credit Cards to Board the Bus?
(Chicago Sun Times) — Joel Jackson and his young daughter Bridget, wearing a polar bear T-shirt, boarded a CTA bus near Chicago Union Station at 11:45 a.m., expecting to arrive at Lincoln Park Zoo at 12:10 p.m.
That’s the weekday timetable provided by the Regional Transportation Authority trip-planner on the CTA Web site. Twenty-five minutes to travel three miles from the downtown train station to the zoo seemed reasonable, Jackson said. The trip-planner, goroo.com, also indicated it would take 17 minutes to bicycle and 79 minutes to walk the route. But the Jacksons’ bus trip took an hour. The worst part: Their No. 156 LaSalle bus idled at its stop on West Jackson Boulevard for 15 minutes because of a crush of passengers who filled the 40-foot vehicle to standing room-only before it made its next stop.
