Anyone who has ever ridden the CTA on a regular basis knows the looming dread of the North Park Garage bus. There is no worse feeling on a 5 degree Chicago morning than peeking out from behind your saliva dampened scarf, spotting a distant bus on the horizon, carefully removing your transit card from your wallet with frozen fingers, and slowly picking your way to the curb through snowy footprints - only to have that bus fly by you, oblivious to your pain, flashing its NORTH PARK GARAGE title for all to see. The North Park Garage Bus Fakeout is one of the all-time transportation slaps in the face, far worse than its flamboyant brother, the Yellow Cab Hiding Passenger Fakeout, often referred to as The Shadow Passenger. Occasionally you'll even have a cruel bus driver that will slow down a bit as he nears the stop, only to slam on the gas as you jostle for position at the curb, street debris drifting up into your startled eyes. I don't know the exact role of these buses - evidently they are deemed extraneous and are on their way to a CTA home base. I do know, however, that they stand as a show of power from the CTA itself, a reminder that your timely arrival to work is solely up to them, and they can be as capricious with that responsibility as they so choose.
BaeRating as an Event That Can Happen to You: F
BaeRating as an Impressive Sign of CTA Power: A
2 comments:
My least favorite fakeout: The southbound 22 Clark that inexplicably turns left on Rogers and does another loop through the Howard bus terminal. It's really horrible to see your bus get into a left turn lane.
Another show of CTA power: The maddening rush hour ratio of Forest Park:54th/Cermak blue line trains. It's at least 4:1. Great for Forest Parkians, shitty for me.
Interesting. Tamalehawk would have gone with Forest Parkers. Parkian sounds like a Slavic defector from some "24" fan-fic.
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