The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

New El cars coming in 2019—built in Chicago

The Chicago Transit Authority has concluded a deal worth up to $1.4 bn for 850 new rail cars:

The CTA’s board Wednesday approved the largest single purchase of rapid transit cars in Chicago history, giving the contract to a Chinese rail manufacturer that has promised to build a final assembly plant on the city’s Far South Side.

CTA officials said riders will see several major improvements when the prototype 7000-series cars arrive in late 2019. There will be full-width on-board LED screens capable of giving both of automated time and stop information, and real-time transit information in the event of delays or reroutes.

When the 7000-series cars are delivered in 2024, CTA will have the newest fleet of rapid transit cars in the nation, according to Bonds. He said the average age of a CTA ‘L’ car will be 13 years. By comparison, Boston has an average fleet age of 27 years, Washington, D.C. averages 25 years, New York averages 22 years and San Francisco averages 18 years.

The first prototypes should roll onto CTA tracks in October 2019.

Working from home on the warmest day in months

Yesterday's 17.2°C temperature at O'Hare was the warmest since it was 17.8°C on November 15th. It might not get warmer than that, but who cares, because it that's plenty warm for early March. 17.8°C is Chicago's normal temperature for April 29th; the normal for March 8th is 6.1°C.

That's the good news. The better news is that working from home means Parker is working napping from home as well. And we just got back from an 80-minute, 8.1-km walk, his longest in (no surprise) even more months.

Now the bad news. We were walking from the car dealership where they are figuring out how much I'm to pay them later this week. My car has a couple of "minor" symptoms including a damaged tire (thanks, Chicago!), but it's a 7-year-old BMW. So anything that would cost $100 to fix on a Corolla will cost me $200. Can't wait for the call...

I do have some work to do today—more on that this afternoon. But I'm already at 11,000 steps, with a goal of 30,000 for the day. I've only hit that number once, last April 26th. There's a lot of day ahead of me, and it's 9,000 steps back to the car dealership. Stay tuned.

Update, 11:26: The 11am temperature at O'Hare was 19°C, the highest reading since November 5th. If we hit 23°C we'll have the warmest day since October 21st.

Recent trips

I've been out of town twice in the last 10 days. First, to New York, where I found this light at the end of a tunnel in Riverside Park:

This weekend I went to Indianapolis for a wedding, and stopped by the Indiana State Capitol:

That building is home to what may be the stupidest legislative body in the Western world. Don't even get me started.

ORD-HAV?

Both United and American want approval for non-stop flights from Chicago to Havana:

Initially, the customer pool for Chicago-to-Havana trips would be limited, given the ongoing trade embargo. The Department of the Treasury only permits travelers to fly to Cuba for a dozen reasons, including family visits, official governmental trips and humanitarian missions.

But carriers are eager to establish a beachhead in the island nation, which might eventually prove a robust destination for leisure and business travelers as well.

“It's been an untapped market for 50 years,” said John Weber, director for the Americas at British consultancy Aviation Analytics. “The interest of carriers is to get in and get established from the very beginning.”

Both airlines proposed a weekly 737-800 flight leaving Saturday morning and returning Saturday night. As soon as I can, I'll be happy to spend a week in Cuba and get full frequent-flyer miles for the trip.

Werde jetzt flügen

Hm. I'm not sure that's the best translation for "gonna fly now," but it's better than anything I had on my own...

Traveling this afternoon, back Sunday. I might have a chance to post. It's not going to be a top priority.

Freakin' NuGet

While I'm going through a boring cycle of NuGet updates, unit tests, and inexplicable app-publishing failures related to the above, I'm piling up a crapload of articles to read on my flight tomorrow:

Back to work. At least my build is succeeding now.

Too many things to read during lunch

A medium-length list this time:

And this brings me to lunch.

Millions of blue bikes

Software developer Todd Schneider has analyzed 22 million CitiBikes trips (the New York equivalent of Chicago's Divvy). He's even got some cool animations:

If you stare at the animation for a bit, you start to see some trends. My personal favorite spots to watch are the bridges that connect Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan. In the morning, beginning around 8 AM, you see a steady volume of bikes crossing from Brooklyn into Manhattan over the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges. In the middle of the day, the bridges are generally less busy, then starting around 5:30 PM, we see the blue dots streaming from Manhattan back into Brooklyn, as riders leave their Manhattan offices to head back to their Brooklyn homes.

Sure enough, in the mornings there are more rides from Brooklyn to Manhattan than vice versa, while in the evenings there are more people riding from Manhattan to Brooklyn. For what it’s worth, most Citi Bike trips start and end in Manhattan. The overall breakdown since the program’s expansion in August 2015:

  • 88% of trips start and end in Manhattan
  • 8% of trips start and end in an outer borough
  • 4% of trips travel between Manhattan and an outer borough

There are other distinct commuting patterns in the animation: the stretch of 1st Avenue heading north from 59th Street has very little Citi Bike traffic in the morning, but starting around 5 PM the volume picks up as people presumably head home from their Midtown offices to the Upper East Side.

Schneider previously analyzed 1.1 billion New York taxi trips.