CTA – 47th Red

Thus place is like your uncle that stays in the suburbs but identifies with the hood. …this place is like diet hood. Not as bad as 69^th that’s for sure. Stay away from 69^th!

Two things about this station why it gets 5 stars from me:
1 Usually nice, quiet, and clean, regardless of the large number of silly hoodlums from areas south who get off to shop near 47^th/​Ashland.
2 The TVs showing BusTracker are not found at any other nearby RedLine station here on the south side. I was at this station the other day, and man oh man, the BT was right on when it came to three buses that I was planning to take to/​from the station. Lovely way to help commuters find out how far their bus is and when it’s coming.

Three things cause me to evangelize.
1. Living the car-​free lifestyle
2. Seamlessly integrating useful technology into people’s lives without adding more clutter or useless, expensive gadgets.
3. A Genoa salami sandwich on sourdough bread with brown mustard and lettuce.
For the purposes of this review, we are going to concentrate on #1 and 2. Though eating the #3 sandwich while riding the Red line somewhere interesting would be great too.
I don’t usually use the 47^th street station, riding to Garfield instead on my weekly trek down to the U of C campus. Today, flush with the pheromones of change, I took a different bus route home that took me to the 47^th street station. This station was clean, neat and extremely well lit. In front, near the bus waiting area, was a giant flat screen showing the CTA bus tracker arrival schedule for the routes that serve this station — CTA Buses #15, #24, #47, #51. Beautiful! Walking inside the station, was another flat screen TV showing Red line northbound and southbound arrivals.
Mon dieu! This is a beautiful thing for People Like Me that have not scurried down the iPhone rabbit hole just yet.
Both of these TVs worked, and were *not* splattered with effluvial swill! In my happiness at seeing this efficiency, I dared to dream that all Red line stations would be quickly outfitted with these features — yet wistfully wondered how long it would be before the screens got broken and/​or stolen.
But at any rate. .. this station is a score for the CTA.