Mandatory free school busing in all school districts reduces parent auto drop-off and pick up use.
Methane collection vents in the top of all rib joints, firehouses and country bars.
Whether events are inside or outside, the use of mandatory portable wind-powered electricity generators at all political election events, fundraisers or debates.
Threaten oil-producing states with U.S. forced air broadcasts of The Partridge Family, The Brady Bunch, Menudo Concerts, The Cheetah Girls, Charlie's Angels, Miami Vice, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and 24-hour repeats of all Joan Rivers Red Carpet interview specials ever recorded on several open-air TV channels.
If they resist, threaten them with Richard Simmons exercise videos, Roseanne, Maude, and our secret weapon, Barney the Purple Dinosaur.
Require gas stations to give away a free bicycle after every $3,000 of gas purchased. (10 SUV fill-ups).
Mandatory 4-day work weeks in summers with 9 hour workday max (Mondays off? We all hate them anyway).
This will reduce work commute gas consumption by 20% in summertime when they soak us for high prices anyway. Threaten to do the same thing in winter when there is no sunlight to do anything fun anyway.
Downtown Parking Garages must give 40% discounts to those who arrive with 2 passengers before 9am. They collect signed forms to use for tax rebates to offset cost.
Often, as CTA riders will tell you, riding the CTA can bring you surprises from the public, both good and bad. This is the nature of public transportation, where the public is part of the show.
I have a friend of mine who is blogging who has encouraged me to add more personal experiences to my writing here, so in the spirit of this post I will mention the time I was riding the No. 72 North Avenue bus, eastbound one day, on my way to the Red line El, though then it was called something else, when a young woman wearing only the tiniest bathing suit I had ever seen decided to sit next to me on the bus. I was 22 and it was very hot on the bus that day.
She was about 8 years older and clearly out of my league and the 2 silent miles we rode together until I sadly got off for the El were ingrained in my mind for a long, long time as a very pleasant CTA surprise indeed. There are those of you who might perhaps think I lost an opportunity that day. I refer you to Joao Gilberto's version of The Girl from Ipanema and rest my case.
For those of you who think after all of the arguing about transit funding for CTA in the region that there is nothing fun about riding or being a customer of CTA, here is some proof that at least some of CTA's customers have a sense of humor.
On Saturday, January 12, 2008 a group of about 70 people participated in "No Pants 2k8 CTA Chicago" organized by a New York group called Improv Everywhere - We Cause Scenes which has hosted similar No Pants events for a number of years in New York City. In addition to NYC, this year's event has included Chicago, Boston, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Baltimore, Toronto, Canada and Adelaide, Australia, at least so far.
The group, founded by Charlie Todd, sets up its events, or missions, through "underground operatives" organized via web postings, email, and facebook.com pages, cell phones, pagers and other methods to organize scenes which are supposed to be surprises for the general public.
So there could be more No Pants 2k8 events, in addition to the 10 already sprung before the year is out depending on response to what already has happened this year. On the other hand, the group has also sponsored many other varied missions, so who knows what its next Chicago mission will be? One can only hope that they will do something equally exciting on CTA, perhaps in nicer weather. I can't help wondering if their participation would have been greater in nicer weather.
Now before you get too excited, I should point out that all of the participants in these videos are wearing underwear. The objective of the event is not to shock observers, but to give them a laugh and a story to tell the people they know. Something to dine out on you might say. "Hey, you'll never guess what I saw on the Red Line Saturday!"
It probably won't hurt the story that most of the participants are young and good-looking either. Though anyone can participate, and that's the way it should be. If you look at the New York Video at the end, where the mission has a longer track record, you will see that the crowd is not only much larger, but much more diverse.
The first video, is the CLTV, well, coverage of the Chicago event by the local cable news outfit. I note the pun at the end that it was pretty nippy weather out there.
The second video is footage that seems to be from someone from the group, or several some-ones in the group and seems to record the journey of the train that picked up the participants station by station as the red line train they all joined proceeded back North picking them back up. During this trip, interestingly, they were joined by a few instant volunteers who got into the spirit of the event.
The group was not a rowdy group by the way. Part of the event was they all ignored each other and their own pants-less state. If anyone asked them why they were wearing no pants, they were supposed to look down and say something on the order of "Oh, I forgot!".
For and overview, here's the Today show clip talking about the national scene followed by some coverage from Boston and New York.
Here's the very funny Fox News coverage from Boston's No Pants 2k8, catch the comments by the MBTA policeman in charge of security at the end of the clip for the best laugh in the clip.
This post would not be complete without coverage from New York City where 900 people participated. This video, compiled by participants was very professionally done and has lots of priceless reactions from New Yorkers.
I can't help noticing, how clean Chicago's CTA looks after seeing this video. I think the CTA mantra of Clean, Safe, On-Time and Friendly has really paid off over the years.
I hope you enjoyed these. Lots of fun. Nice to see someone out having fun on transit.
Being from Chicago and having lost friends to the Death Ryan Expressway, I very strongly support Public Transportation, especially in high-density, high population areas where well-funded, customer-oriented public transportation can make a dramatic difference in the quality of urban life and reduce the cost of moving people, commercial and industrial freight through ever constricting and congesting highway and rail corridors, especially those where air travel is already maxed out and difficult to move through in this post 9/11 era.
Transit is much safer, 10 times safer per mile than highway driving. I have nearly lost my own life to drunk drivers several times (not myself[!]) including last January when one actually struck my car going 90 on 294. My being alive has a lot to do with defensive driving skills and lots of time behind the wheel, and luck.
Chicago is an excellent example of a city where public transportation, facing incredible financial constraints as the State, County and City Governments have failed to find a stable way to effectively replace the $80+ million dollars a year of Federal operating assistance that the Chicago Transit Authority, or CTA, used to receive in the 80's (a deficit of nearly a Billion Dollars since then!!!)
Of course all public transit properties operating more than 50 buses daily lost at least some funds across the nation, but Illinois, with its upstate/downstate baby-nana-poo-poo-funding-fighting that failed to provide a really stable source of funding for public transportation operations in the state. Since CTA is a state-funded agency, operated under the six-county Regional Transit Authority, funding support should happen at all three levels. Some may not know that in addition to operating service in the city of Chicago, CTA also provides service to 22 suburbs. Many more if you include those who use Metra to come in from farther out then use CTA once in Chicago.
Why am I thinking about this? Because as our local news, WBBM, WMAQ, WLS, WTTW, WFLD, both TV and Radio where applicable and WBEZ-FM the NPR affiliate have been reporting, CTA's "doomsday" is November 4, 2007.
That's the day that CTA must implement "Draconian" cuts in service and staff to balance its budget as required by law.
At least the cuts planned are motivating. They eliminate just about all of the express bus service that brings suburbanites that don't pay extra sales tax that supports CTA to their offices downtown and puts them on regular buses with the rest of us. It also cuts a lot of the services (see list) that made CTA more efficient unfortunately including the crosstown X express routes that skipped routes and really made service on key routes more efficient.
Worse yet, the "crisis" allows Huberman the new CTA President to cut hundreds of CTA positions held by qualified, experienced individuals, and fill them with political hires in direct violation of the Shackman lawsuit agreement. IS this funny or what!
What's at stake is the customer satisfaction of those making only a million and a half rides a day.
What's the big deal, none of those people vote anyway do they? Wrong.
It's not like a lot of them could just decide to drive tomorrow and really mess up traffic? Wrong. Most CTA riders choose to ride CTA and can afford to buy another car according to Grant Funded independent research.
And CTA deserves cuts, they've been losing riders for decades! Wrong! Ever since the CTA got serious about doing real system level peer-review-able Customer Satisfaction survey and acting on what customers said, since they started noticing after the first survey in 1996 and 1997 CTA ridership has reversed the trend of decades and has been going up since then.
This is not a sign of failure, nor is it a time to cut riders and support staff. The idea is ludicrous! Between growth in congestion and Chicago's population the only sane thing to do is grow CTA.
Of course, I do have one commute option for legislators who wish to cut CTA's budget. It would work equally well from the top of the Sears Tower, the John Hancock, the Spire, or any real downtown building. Unfortunately, unless they have any really large buildings near their home it might be a ONE-WAY commute option, so I strongly suggest they try it out before voting against any CTA funding initiatives.
Feel free to email them this option by sending this page using the envelope below. Or you can email them thhe link to this page along with your own letter at the Save Transit In Chicago Website which will automatically find and send letters to your legislators.
If nothing else, at least the view will give them an overview on the problem!
After all that -- you deserve this video, if you can't see it, double click on the link above or try using the Safari web browser,
Don't be surprised if a little editing and spell-check/grammar work is done on this one, the pizza is here!
Thanks for visiting the Peter Files Blog of Comedy! Bookmark us and come back soon! Feel free to forward posts to your friends and to taunt them with your savvy nature for finding this blog first!
We strive to keep our humor and comments safe for home and work. Some of the links that appear on the sidebar may not meet our standards. If this appears on a regular basis, please let us know at "thepeterfilesblog at gmail dot com". Thank You!
Thanks for visiting the Peter Files Blog of Comedy! Bookmark us and come back soon! Feel free to forward posts to your friends and to taunt them with your savvy nature for finding this blog first!
We strive to keep our humor and comments safe for home and work. Some of the links that appear on the sidebar may not meet our standards. If this appears on a regular basis, please let us know at "thepeterfilesblog at gmail dot com". Thank You!
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