The red line trains are going to be shut down south of Roosevelt! The red line is one of the main train lines in Chicago. The red line will be running on Green Line tracks for a couple months or until the construction has been finished. What will we do? Well, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has finally upgraded the bus/train tracker because of this major shutdown.
The upgrades that they have are as follows:
- CTA riders can now know the duration of their trip from where they are now to their destination.
- People can now search for stops that are near them. This will help if you are lost. Once you get on a CTA train, it is almost impossible to get lost once you get back to the loop or somewhere you are familiar with.
- You can now type in your stop instead of having to scroll down the long list that was available. I remember when I was trying to look for the Adams and Wabash stop for the orange line and I was looking under the A’s, and it was not there. I had to scroll down the list about three times just to spot it.
- People can now watch the trains move from their stop on their desktops when they are tracking their train to see where the train is at at that current time.
- There will be “better schedule information: This will help riders who travel during off-peak hours and start their trips near the end of lines.”
Of course, the customers can still know when the train or bus will be coming to their stops once they check. CTA tried to make it more convenient for their customers.To be honest, I do not think the upgrade for watching the trains on the desktop was really necessary. That idea sounds really cool, but if I want to track the bus or train, I just really want to know what time it will get to the stop so I can start walking to the train station and get there in time.
I really like the upgrade for knowing the whole duration time for a certain trip. I just wonder if this duration time includes transfer time. For example, I want to go to O’hare airport. I have to take the orange line and transfer to the blue line, will this tracker help me determine my overall duration for this trip including my transfer time to the blue line?
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