CTA revs up its bus cleaning

It's after 10 p.m., and more than 250 buses are parked at the CTA's Kedzie Avenue garage, awaiting some TLC following a long day of OMG at the hands of simply too many slovenly riders who were inconsiderate of the passengers who would board after them. 

The first order of business before buses are refueled and run through the wash rack each night is to sweep out mounds of debris: an amalgam that includes food scraps, plastic bottles, newspapers, an occasional hypodermic syringe, splotch of blood or human waste (liquid and sometimes solid, naturally). 

Surfaces including windows, grab railings and seats get a nightly wipe-down, and graffiti is removed, while floors are washed on an as-needed basis until their scheduled deep-cleaning, officials said. 

The dirty little job of restoring the transit agency's 1,868 buses to respectable condition before the morning rush falls on crews called bus servicers who are assigned to seven CTA bus garages across the city. 

"Oh, man, the buses go out good, and they come back terrible, just terrible, terrible," said Kamilah Kitchen, 32, who has worked as a bus servicer for eight months after learning about the opening at a CTA job fair. 

This year's total annual budget for bus servicing is $20 million, officials said. Getting rid of the two G's graffiti and gum chews up a sizable amount of the budget, officials said. 

The bus servicing job recently became more challenging because the CTA set the bar higher for daily cleaning and general deep cleaning. Under the new criteria, buses are cleaned more thoroughly and more often. 

The CTA keeps a monthly score card on bus cleanliness. Initially, scores plummeted to a 41 percent average performance a failing grade after the more stringent criteria were implemented last summer, CTA records show. Scores have since more than doubled. 

"The first thing I wanted to do when I moved from rail to bus last summer was to attack the clean," said George Cavelle, CTA director of bus maintenance and the agency's former head of the rail car appearance department. 

"It's very personal for me. My wife rides the system," Cavelle said. "I say to my guys, 'What kind of environment do you want your family to ride the trains and buses?'" 

Your Getting Around reporter spent some time Thursday night with bus servicers who do daily cleaning and those who do deep cleaning, which was monthly and now is being done on each bus every 23 days, officials said. The goal is to reduce the time between general cleanings to 14 days, officials said. 

Some quick observations about the operations at Kedzie: First, considering the competing smells of diesel fumes and cleaning agents, plus what seems like an endless line of buses waiting to be cleaned, it's not a job I could get my head around night after night. Second, the buses do leave the bus barn clean. 

The 205 full-time bus servicers I observed worked extremely hard, employing determination, elbow grease and pride, to earn the $12.We are one of the leading manufacturers of domesticcleaningsydney in Chennai India.88 to $29.46 an hour wage, which is based on experience. Sixty-two part-time bus service apprentices, who are hired through the city's ex-offender program,This model includes 2 flush mounted reverse chipcard. are paid $9.50 an hour. 

"Sometimes it's easy; sometimes it's rough. You have to be strong mentally to concentrate on what you are doing," bus servicer Andres Bulley said, moving quickly from washing a bus ceiling to wielding a putty knife to remove wads of dried gum from crevices under seats. 

We still have to complete the rest of the MDAs by the end of this year. Weve also put in place a government integrated financial management system and, in the beginning, this has slowed down the transfer of resources to ministries. Bear with us, this will improve. But what this means is that transparently we can connect the MDAs, be able to see all our money and be able to pull it back. So, all those who may be contemplating this, I think you should revise your thinking because transparency is on the way.

Now,Have a look at all our cleaningsydney models starting with free proofing. to stem leakages and improve our finances, we also worked very hard in the ministry to totally change the way we do business in terms of paying subsidies. We audited N1 trillion in subsidy payments under the presidential task force led by Aig Imokhuede, and we found N32 billion questionable. We have recovered N14 billion as we speak and we have tightened the payment process, so that there is more independent verification of how that is being done. The other thing the ministry has delivered is the cleaning up of the contributory pension scheme. This is something very painful to Nigerians that they would work and then people would steal the money that should be for their pension in their old age. This is not acceptable. So, to reform this,You can design your cleanersydney or select one of our pose. the President gave us permission to implement a section of the Pensions Reform Act which had hitherto been blocked; it had not been implemented, to bring all these pensions C the defined benefit systems C under one roof, under a pension transition administration department, and that will enable us to keep a hold on this fraud and to keep it at bay because these things will be managed under one roof transparently. The implementation of this is now underway. 

The contributory pension scheme is fine, we have more than N3 trillion there, its working well and I want to reassure Nigerians of its good health. So, its only people who are still under the old scheme which we are reforming that are affected. We are implementing a more transparent system. Within the next six months, by Gods grace, well have everything together with biometric systems in place so we can also pay our pensioners directly. 

So, let me just say to you that all this, as was said by the Minister of Information, have been validated; all these things were doing, which amalgamate to underpin a stable economy have been validated outside. You dont have to listen to me or Mr President or even the Minister of Information. Just check what the rating agencies are doing. Nigeria is one of the few countries being upgraded and rated as stable in an environment where other countries,Did you know that earcap chains can be used for more than just business. including some close to us here in Africa, are being downgraded, and I think that Nigerians, even if youre critical of government, you have to accept external evidence that we have a stable economy. The grading does not say that weve solved all the problems of our economy C no country ever does that C but it says that weve got the platform with which to do it.