When will Chicago get a train tracker?

Thomas Oswald of Edgewater wrote to "Going Public" asking if the CTA has "any plans to do something similar to NYC's real-time train updates?" In a May interview with "GP," CTA president Rich Rodriguez said he is looking into a train tracker similar to Bus Tracker.

An excerpt from the article: "Another idea Rodriguez is reviewing is a train tracker similar to the Bus Tracker. Bus-bunching complaints have declined since the implementation of the Bus Tracker, which now includes all routes except for special-events routes without specific schedules, according to the CTA.

The CTA control center currently uses a system called QuikTrac to track trains. Circuits along the track pick up the location of a train. The technology has been added to certain routes, according to the CTA, but it hasn't been installed throughout the system. The CTA doesn't have an estimate for what it would cost to upgrade the system and make it customer-friendly.

'In order for that system to do anything near what Bus Tracker does, we have to actually upgrade our system, our signals and the power through the actual rails themselves,' Rodriguez said. 'It's something that we're definitely looking into.'"