Metra, always on Time. My foot.

I used to drive to work before. Whenever I saw the trains speed by, I used to crib while sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. Hoping one day I can just take the train and avoid this headache of driving with morons on the road. By morons I mean the Corolla's, Minivan's, Cadillac's etc. Cadillac's are always driven by dead people. The average buyers age is, a couple of hundred. 

The suburban train Metra here in Chicago, has ads everywhere. With lines like, "Always on time", "Fly by Metra", etc. Making car drivers look like fools. And Corolla drivers, even bigger fools. Well obviously trains can be on time. They don't wait for cars. Don't have traffic lights every millimeter. With all these conveniences they better be on time. Or else the driver needs to be hanged.

Just over a year back I did switch to the train. I did not want to spend eight hours in traffic and give half my paycheck for parking. There was no environmental reason at all. If it were so, then I would drive down instead. Reason being, trains are more polluting per person than, if they were driving down in their big V8's. You can next time, smack anyone who tries to use the "Use public transport and save the environment" line. I think the government should pull out the trains and convert them to express roads. No Corolla's or Minivans or dead people's car's would be allowed on it. And no. No public buses either.

The train experience was not as rewarding as I thought. The first time I took the train, I arrived 5 minutes earlier to the station. And so did the train. I boarded it, patting myself on the back for coming in early. The train was actually, going the other way. Which I realised twenty minutes later, when the conductor had a puzzled look on his face. I did eventually reach work by lunch time. 

And that evening, my train was supposed to be on the left side of a certain platform. I walked up to the front of the train and thought it might be a better idea to take the car's in between as it was crowded. So I turned around, and boarded a car in between. On my left. Another huge problem with these trains is, the glasses are very darkly tinted. In the night, those windows look like mirrors. Which makes it hard to know which station or part of the world you are in.

The public announcement system is pathetic. It works only in half the cars. And doesn't let you sleep in peace. Even if it does, the snoring person next to you wont. The people on it aren't any good either. The age group is similar to a Cadillac owner. This winter, the train has been periodically late. Previously they used to announce even if it was a minute late. Now they don't bother as it has become a routine. So much for flying by Metra. In that case, the driver should have been hanged over a hundred times by now.

Apparently, the train drivers are called engineers here. Sounds so professional. Dear Engineers, I hope you guys can get your acts together and be on time, so that we engineers (the real ones) can be on time. They always claim that they are having switch problems. Well, change the bloody switch for heavens sake. And when you hear a announcement saying the equipment has not arrived yet. They are not talking about the switches they ordered, or any machine guns. They are referring to the actual train. Since when did trains come under the equipment category? I think Metra needs to reconsider all its terminology.

I realised that the trains I saw which used to speed by, were just fashionably late.