As a commuter student who lives in Chicago, I've always driven myself to class and enjoyed the luxury of leaving my house about 20 minutes before start time. Sadly, recent circumstances have prevented me from being able to drive my car until mid-December, so I've been a CTA trekkie for the last few weeks. While Dominican University is public transportation accessible, it's still not the easiest journey.
I take the Pink Line and backtrack toward the loop to connect to the Green Line at Ashland. Then I take the Green Line to Harlem, which takes about 18 minutes.
From there, the 90 Harlem North Bus goes to Harlem and Division, and I hopefully can catch the shuttle leaving from the Priory at :45 or :15 of the hour.
Usually it works out, but sometimes the pink-green connection takes over 10 minutes. Or you wait for the Harlem north buses for 15 minutes. Or you miss the Priory-Main Campus shuttle...which is the most important connection to make lest you have a 20-minute, 8-block walk to the Main Campus. All these little things add annoying delays. To travel the 10 miles from my house to school, I have an hour commute vs. a 20-minute one. It certainly requires a different level of planning, but if only the Dominican shuttle would run to Harlem and Lake during the day as well, it would make a huge difference for commuter students.
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I lived the same life. My family only had one car and I couldn't afford one so it was the CTA for me. I took the Orange Line from Midway to the Loop and then the Green Line to Harlem & Lake. From there, I took a Pace bus either right to DU's gates or to Division. The Priory was not DU's property at that time so it was walk if you missed the bus that went down Division.
ReplyDeleteAh, what a commute! I guess I have it a *little* better than you did...I very RARELY see the Pace bus that runs down Division St., maybe I should acquire its schedule...
ReplyDeleteIt's the 305...which when I was going to Dominican only ran in the morning until about 10am and then from 3pm to about 7pm. It was meant for the Trinity students mostly...talk about awkward when I would be the only guy on a bus full of HS girls...
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