Echoes of the Crossroads

Crossposted from Livejournal

My trip to an oil boom town in North Dakota started off on a pretty nerve-wrecking note.

I feel like, at this point, “in spite of my best efforts, I managed to make my Amtrak train” has become a running joke. For every time I made it onto the station with plenty of time to spare, there are two times when I caught it pretty close, either because I didn’t leave as early as I could, or there were transit issues, or some combinations of both. But even after all of that, catching the Empire Builder today… It feels like a miracle that I did.

My plan was to do what I usually do when taking the Hiawatha train to visit my sister. Since I usually head down to Milwaukee on Friday, I take Red Line/Yellow Line/Pace Route 210 combination to the Glenview Amtrak station. It just feels silly to go down to Chicago Union Station only to go back up again on Amtrak when you live in Rogers Park. That’s not an option on the weekend, since none of the Pace bus routes serving Glenview run on weekends, so I just take the train down to Union Station and take Brown/Red line train combination up to Rogers Park.

Now, just to be clear, I left later than I planned – like, 20 minutes later. But I thought I still had time. I would take the Red ‘L’ Line up to the Howard station, take the Yellow Line to Oakton-Skokie station and transfer to Route 210, which would drop me off right next to the station. I didn’t have as much time to spare as I would’ve liked, but I thought I could make it.

I might have – if the CTA didn’t send the Red Line train I was on to the inbound platform (something they do when they need to quickly sit in the train back out). Which means that, to catch the Yellow Line train, I had to run downstairs, cross under the tracks and run up to the outbound platform. By the time I made the dash, the Yellow Line train was already out of the station.

I considered my options. According to the train tracker, the next Yellow Line train wouldn’t arrive for another 30(!) minutes, which would mean I would definitely miss the 210. Now, train tracker can’t entirely be trusted, but it wasn’t a chance I was willing to take. But I could take the Purple Line train down to Linden, transfer to Route 422 and take it to Glenview. It would arrive at 2:45 PM, giving me 41 minutes to share – if the Purple Line train arrived at Linden at  2:00 PM. In my experience, Route 422 leaves the station pretty promptly.

Anyway, the Purple Line train left Howard at 1:50 PM. I knew I would have to be really lucky to reach Linden in time. By the time the train reached Davis station, it was clear that it wasn’t going to happen. The smart thing to do would have ben to jump off there and use Backup Plan #2 – something I never tried before, and which GoogleMaps didn’t even acknowledge as a possibility, but one that, based on what I knew about Chicagoland transit, should have worked. In theory.

Empire Builder and Hiawatha use the same tracks as Metra’s Milwaukee District North line in that part of the region. If I took Dempster Pulse Arterial Rapid Transit bus from Davis Street to the closest stop to its Morton Grove station and walk to the station, I would have been able to make it in time for the 3:05 train, which would reach Glenview at 3:12 PM, with 17 minutes to spare.

But I didn’t do that. Instead…. I don’t know what possessed me to try to make it Linden anyway, just an on off chance that 422 would leave a little late, in spite of everything I knew about how that particular route worked….

This, ladies and gentlefolks, is what I mean by “in spite of my best efforts,”

Suffice to say, Purple Line arrived at Linden a little after 2:00 PM and, of course, 422 was already gone. So I took the train back to Davis, got there by 2:15 PM, caught the next Dempster Pulse bus…. which should have still allowed me to make it to Morton Grove by 3:05 PM. I’d just have a lot less time to spare, and any traffic jam, any construction-related delay, would make it more and more of a close call.

The next 25 minutes felt like some of the slowest 25 minutes in my life. Every stoplight, every time the traffic slowed, every construction-related delay felt like an eternity. But, in spite all of that, I made it to Morton Grove station at 3:50 PM.

I was about to text my mom and my sister that, once again, in spite of my best efforts, I managed to make my Amtrak train – but I stopped myself. There was one last leg of my journey. One more opportunity for things to go wrong.

I checked the Metra train tracker – and saw the arrival times shift from 3;05 PM to 3:06 PM to 3:07 PM – you get the idea. I checked the live train map and saw the train seemingly standing about five stops down. At that point, I could still make it. I comforted myself that, if the Metra train was delayed, the Amtrak train right behind was probably, too. But that didn’t stop me from nervously looking at the train tracker data.

A little after 3;00 PM, a long freight train chugged past Morton Grove. Probably the reason for the delay. I checked the train tracker and saw that my Metra train was moving.

It arrived at 3:12 PM, but it made it to Glenview at 3:19 PM. 10 minutes to spare.

Empire Builder arrived at 3:29 PM, right on schedule.

On one hand, this was, once again, proof that i knew Chicago area transit better than GoogleMaps. I wouldn’t have tried that if I just listened to it blindly, and, short of ordering a taxi, there’s no other way I could’ve made it. On the other hand – like I said, I made things harder for myself by leaving later than planned and trying to get to Linden even though I knew better.

I guess the lesson is still “trust your transit knowledge” and “give yourself more time to spare.”

And that, sometimes, I’m just lucky.