Here's a heads up for our visitors who plan on riding buses and trains in Chicago:

Twitter is ablaze with angry tweets from 'L' riders who have discovered that the CTA has begun removing the Express Vending Machines (the little silver boxes that accept credit cards) from 'L' stations around the city.

The CTA has previously announced that the EVMs were going to go first in order to make room for more Ventra vending machines, but it never announced an exact schedule. I do not know if the airport machines have been removed. (The ones at O'Hare were out of order a large part of the time anyway.)

If you want to reload your Chicago Cards or buy Transit Cards, bring cash. And remember, no change is available. I haven't heard of them removing any of the Pass machines yet (the ones that sell 1-, 3-, and 7-day passes).

The new Ventra machines will not reload your Chicago Cards, but the cash-only Transit Card machines are supposed to be around to the end of October.