2.5 miles in one hour
So, I leave work yesterday thinking I’ll catch the last express bus from the Sears Tower to the South Loop. I made it to the bus stop with time to spare, but I ended up waiting nearly 15 minutes because the bus was running late. A minor annoyance, but I figured that I shouldn’t expect too much from the CTA. We started making our way east on Jackson. Traffic was a little slow, but nothing out of the ordinary for late rush hour traffic in the loop. Then, as we neared Michigan Avenue we slowed to a crawl and eventually stopped altogether. Michigan Avenue was all jammed up and the police officers standing in the middle of the intersection, directing traffic, were helpless to make traffic move any faster. People in their cars were getting irate and started honking their horns. We finally turned onto Michigan Avenue and headed south at a glacial pace. Traffic was bottlenecked into a single lane somewhere around Balbo. Things finally got back to normal once we passed Roosevelt. I got off the bus and it was almost an hour since I left my office. I’ve commuted from the loop to the North Shore in less time. Anyway, the point is that it took me about 45 minutes to travel less than 2.5 miles, plus the 15 minutes I had to wait for the oh so prompt CTA. I ended up being nearly an hour late for an engagement I had later that evening.
I turns out that JPMorgan Chase was having their JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge race, at the time. So, many thanks to them for snarling traffic and making my commute home take more than twice as long as usual. Oh well, at least JPMorgan Chase is donating money to the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago and other charities. So, I suppose some good did come of it.
