(The following column by Jon Hilkevitch appeared on the Chicago Tribune website on May 26.)
CHICAGO — Mascots have always occupied a special place in transportation, perhaps because they appeal to the child in all of us and the infantile tendencies in some of us.
Anyone old enough to recall the golden days of train travel in the U.S. will remember Little Chico, the Santa Fe Railway’s young Indian mascot holding up the railroad’s logo. That stereotype has long faded into political incorrectness, while passenger rail struggles to make a comeback.
As family travel plans for summer 2008 hit the reality of record gasoline prices, Amtrak is touting the advantages of taking the train over driving with its ARTE the Engineer. He is a green, leaf-shaped character who serves as Amtrak’s environmental mascot. ARTE, who appeared at National Train Day at Union Station in Chicago this month, stands for Amtrak Recognizes the Environment.
The newest mascot on the scene is the Illinois tollway’s Captain Tollway, a cross-eyed caped crusader with a face that only the mother of Royal Canadian Mountie Dudley DoRight could love.
It’s hard to imagine Captain Tollway experiencing life in the fast lane with i-Zoom Girl, the buxom mascot for the Indiana Toll Road’s i-Zoom toll transponder system. A Hoosier hot to trot, i-Zoom Girl’s orange hair matches the orange chevrons decorating her knee-high boots.
Still, with the Memorial Day weekend officially kicking off the summer driving season, Captain Tollway is ushering in the “Know Before You Go” campaign of the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority.
Information on construction locations, real-time traffic congestion reports and help with I-PASS are available at www.illinoistollway.com by clicking on the “Traveler Tips” link at the bottom of the home page or by calling toll-free 800-TOLL-FYI.
The service is especially useful to occasional users of the tollway system but also helps regular tollway customers. For instance, the Web site reminds drivers that I-PASS is used for toll collection not only on the tollway, but also on the Chicago Skyway, the Indiana Toll Road and in 10 other states that are members of the E-ZPass toll-collection system: Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
Rhode Island and Ohio are in the process of implementing E-ZPass.
For children, Captain Tollway coloring books and crayons are available at tollway oases. The toll authority printed 5,000 coloring books in-house for a total cost, with crayons, of about $2,000, a spokeswoman said.
Meanwhile, major highway projects in the Chicago area were ushered in over the years by Jack Hammer, the mascot of the Illinois Department of Transportation. Poor Jack was last seen falling into a bottomless pothole.
The Chicago Transit Authority has also had its share of mascots.
The CTA rolled out L.E. Jack, a big-nosed character wearing a flat cap, for the 1993 opening of the Lake- Englewood- Jackson Park elevated rail route between the West and South Sides, and HoDar in the same year to commemorate the start-up of Howard-Dan Ryan branch service on the Red Line.
CTA riders who were around for the 1993 inauguration of the Orange Line may remember the Dancing Oranges, who pranced around with exposed navels.
One CTA character wasn’t even an intentional mascot. Former CTA president Frank Kruesi was dubbed the “bumblebee” because of the luminous yellow jacket that he wore almost everywhere.
Students at the Art Institute of Chicago recently participated in a nationwide competition to come up with public-service announcements promoting greater use of mass transit.
Environmentally conscious characters included Les Carbon and his girlfriend, Neda Recycle.
Les Carbon, a CTA rider, wears a size 9 shoe, in keeping with his smaller carbon footprint than the size 22 shoe of sport-utility vehicle driver Moe Waste, the public-service announcement boasts.