Shaping Up the CTA
Next article—why are people riding buses less often? Routes not in the right place? This is a reversal of a long pattern—more on bus, fewer on rail. Neither good nor bad, but I am curious. —sjl
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Every other major urban transit system has trains with different end points so as to provide more service where there is more demand; why doesn’t CTA already do this? (Compare D.C., Paris, London, Boston, etc.) This could be done with NO CONSTRUCTION AT ALL: just turn some trains back at the existing crossover points short of the end of the line, EXACTLY as is already done with many CTA bus routes. Your plan is clearly superior to all of CTA’s in-house plans—so it will never be taken seriously. CTA has no intention of responding to any public concerns, but pursues its own agenda regardless of all else. A flyover track for the Brown line at Clark could and SHOULD have been included in the just-completed Brown line project, when all four tracks at Belmont were rebuilt, but they didn’t think of it. Nor did they think to move the Skokie terminal out of the main Howard station when it was recently redone so that its few hundred passengers wouldn’t block departures for the Red and Purple lines. Thanks Ed for a great article; too bad it won’t do passengers any good. —Bertjt
Altering Aelita
Schaff is quoted in dismissing his lack of basic knowledge of film history when stating that he was unaware that Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1929) was created with an original orchestral score—the remark “ignorance is bliss” underscores his artistic insolence. By distorting the style and content of the films involved Schaaf has laundered the pieces and in a more venal manner taken on the dual role of uninformed editor and censor. He should at least title his reinterpretations something more befitting, possibly “Schaaf’s Drafts.” —Joe Bryl
