CHICAGO (WBBM) - If you are impatient to know when the next bus or ‘L’ train will arrive, soon you will be able to get a text message from the CTA – or by digital display, PDA update or on the CTA’s Web site.
It’s just one of a number of innovations the transit agency plans in the coming year to better inform riders before they leave their homes and offices, while they are on board and during emergency situations.
Many were disclosed months ago, but CTA President Ron Huberman said his goal is a complete overhaul of the way the agency tells the public not only what’s gone wrong, why and what it means for riders, but what they can expect every day as well.
Some are high-tech, some low-tech.
Beginning immediately, riders can sign up for twice-weekly e-mail updates that will tell them about planned service disruptions. The real-time information on delays and disruptions, customizable to a rider’s specific travel times and needs, will become available over the next year.
Click here to sign up for 
Those with PDAs can already use www.ctabustracker.com, which by Oct. 20 will be rolled out to 49 percent of the transit agency’s bus lines. Huberman said each stop will be equipped with a five-digit number cell phone users can punch into a text message, and receive a text message back telling them how far away the next bus or train is.
Huberman said disruptions over the past year, including both planned construction and an incident in which a train broke down underground, causing a massive rush hour disruption, underscored the need to improve communications.
Not all of the innovations are high-tech. Huberman said he has formed two teams of headquarters employees who will be dispatched by van with up-to-the-moment information to strategic locations any time a major, unplanned service disruption occurs. He said sandwich board-style signs with disruption information will greet riders as they enter ‘L’ stations as well as high-tech 55-inch flat-screen TV displays.
Motormen on ‘L’ trains will be making more detailed announcements when problems occur, sometimes using information on palm cards and sometimes information from the CTA Control Center. Brochures will be placed in each ‘L’ station to outline emergency evacuation procedures. A toll-free phone line capable of fielding hundreds of calls will be updated every five minutes when disruptions occur.
A cornerstone of the effort will be a revamped Web site that will include on its home page real-time information on travel on each of its ‘L’ lines, which riders will be able to double-click for more detailed information. Huberman said it will be updated every five minutes, when necessary.
Huberman said some of the ideas came from riders, and said some came from a “best practices” study of other major transit agencies worldwide. He said the home page ‘L’ service updates are already done in Boston and London, and said a similar phone line is already in use on Sydney’s rapid transit system.
Although Huberman said he expects a quantum leap in the timeliness and quality of information provided to riders, he said there will be virtually no cost to the cash-strapped agency. He said the e-mail and text message emergency alerts will merely make wider use of computer programs reserved until now for internal use.
On the Net:
www.transitchicago.com
www.ctabustracker.com
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