So a bunch of friends and myself were gonna go into Chicago and see some of the museums yesterday. The plan was to meet up at one of the train stations and take the train into the city. $7 each way and no parking hassles and all that. (If Miegs Field (KCGX) was available we’d have used that, but that airport no longer exists, destroyed in the name of egalitarianism so that the city can have parkland that no one but drug dealers and trolling gay men uses). Plus we weren’t sure how much the nearby construction for the upcoming NASCAR race was gonna affect the traffic in the area. The train station is like 3 blocks from the museums.

Plus being a responsible green citizen and all that. After all, the train is electric. They just spent millions to upgrade the tracks to prevent delays and make it a better, faster experience.

But it wasn’t.

The train was well over an hour late, we finally found out via the news that there was a major delay due to an electric outage and they were replacing the electric locomotives with diesels until it was fixed. No plan for how long the delay might be.

Fuckit.

As we were leaving the train platform, the train management finally got around to announcing the delay over the PA system.

Instead we carpooled and drove. Traffic wasn’t bad, parking was a hassle (and expensive!) but we got there. Likely we’d have still been waiting had we taken he train.

But it put us an hour or more behind.

Laving Chicago during Rush Hour was a fun (not) experience. Part of the reason we had planned to take the train was to avid that traffic chaos and delays.

Are we likely to try the train again? I dunno. Probably not. Cars are much more reliable and parking isn’t that big of a deal

Public transportation puts you at the mercy of the (diverse) people running things.

We might try again simply because we all have tickets that are good until September. Might as well use ’em. Not sure if the risk is worth the $7.