The good news is that UA 609 (DCA-ORD) was TWENTY-SIX minutes early Saturday.

The bad news is that the Blue Line on weekends is partially shut down on weekends due to construction, with shuttle buses being provided to get pax from one stop to the next -- right now, it's from Harlem to Jefferson Park stops that you are bussed.

My experience, in beautiful, dry, 60-ish weather, was that the CTA is doing a decent job of have lots of the larger buses available and moving people pretty quickly and effectively - lots of employees stationed at the 2 stops to direct people.

But - it adds a good 30 minutes to the trip, and with the general slow-downs, it was a solid 90 minutes to get to the Loop.

Despite CTA's good efforts, it won't be fun in bad weather...if you are arriving on a very cold or wet Saturday or Sunday this fall and winter, you may want check on whether they are using partial bussing, and if so, consider one of the more expensive alternatives...

http://yourcta.com/

In the middle, there's a link to Customer Alerts. That'll have the latest plans, usually updated by midweek or so for the upcoming weekend. Definitely check it if you're on the blue line on a weekend for the rest of the year (I think they skip T-giving weekend though).

Mrs JJ and I didi the Blue Line Saturday early evening and then much later that night -- at least a two hour trip. They talk about eliminating the "slow zones" between some stations, but I think they will still exists between ORD and the Rosemont stop. Agreed that there were many helpful CTA personel available and the shuttle buses seemed to run efficiently.

I have no idea if the weekend construction is the proximate cause, but when I took the blue line to ORD last week, I made it from the loop (Dearborn) to ORD in under an hour (leaving at around 6:30 PM on a Monday).

It was the first time I had made it to ORD in under an hour for quite some time.

The slow zones have been vanquished only in the downtown subway portion. Installation of the replacement railroad ties for the Kennedy Expy. portion has just started and will take most of the next year or so -- during which I'd expect lots more weekend closures, since it's a LOT of track. Glad to know that rush hour trains are back in business, though: my train ride from Wicker Park is back to 15 minutes, where it had been 30!

Late night DURING the week is an issue too. I took the train tonight. Between Damen and Grand, only the northbound tracks were in use. So we stopped at Damen for about 15 minutes waiting for a northbound train to pass. Total trip time was about 1 1/2 hours.

I was going to take the train next Monday to airport from downtown as I am sick (again) of sitting in traffic. You all are scaring me into just sticking with the car service.

If you travel during regular "business" hours, you won't find that the train is significantly, if any, longer than it historically has been. It is late nights and weekends that are problematic.

I have had a couple of 6 a.m. mileage run flights recently. We drove to the airport, since we were going for the day. Ironically, the traffic was backed up because CTA had the two left lanes blocked in either direction for the track work they were doing on the Blue Line. Damned if you do and damned if you don't!

I have an all-day ORD stopover Sat Dec 15 - was looking at taking the Blue Line to Jefferson Park and transferring to Metra NW line for the remainder of the way downtown. I love Metra (having taken it from Palatine>downtown once), only disadvantage is the once-hourly service on Saturdays (so need to be careful with timing for transfer).

Still, better than dealing with the bus transfer from Jeff Park to Harlem? Or is the transfer bus working reasonably well?

The bus detour reportedly adds 20-30 minutes to the travel time. If your travel times line up with Metra's, you could take a cab to Jeff Park (or the MD-North line from Mayfair) and Metra from there.