Linden Purple Line L Station

The station is the end of the line for the purple line. Which means if you’re going downtown, you get a seat!
The ticket machines are not completely straight forward, seemingly two pricing tiers depending if you have their stored value «Ventra» card or if you’re looking for individual tickets. You cannot use one Ventra card for multiple people, so if you are looking for a simple round trip, you would need to purchase individual tickets — with each ticket allowing travel one way. Fortunately the attendant was kind enough to thoroughly explain to me my options. They do accept cash, coins and credit card.
On this occasion, there was a Cubs game so the queue for the two ticket machines was 10 deep, whilst waiting for my ticket a train arrived and left. Fortunately though the train went express following the last Evanston stop all the way to Sheridan (The stop just before Addison which is where Wrigley Field is located). Do not be like the people all decked in Cubs attire ready to watch their Cubs game only to get off the train at Sheridan (one stop early). It took about 40mins Linden to Addison when on express.
Oh, back to the station itself… The creepy owl looks like a bat. But I appreciate the public art!

While I appreciate the one staff member who greats reverse commuters at the turnstyle on their way to Wilmette, the *estimated train departure times combined with a cell dead zone makes for a consistently liminal experience waiting for a train. You will not know exactly when a train will depart, and you won’t be able to kill time on your phone while you wait. All that’s left to do is stare at the creepy owl meant to scare pigeons away. fyi the pigeons aren’t scared.

I hate the linden stop. Trains leave at «2 minutes» instead of «0 minutes», sometimes everyone gets on one train and the other one leaves, all the station agents yell at you when you ask which train’s the right one, like you’re supposed to know. And then sometimes the train just sits there and misses a scheduled departure… or two.
Why not just make 2 minutes into 0 minutes. Then no one’s confused.

There is plenty of parking and the overall design of the place is good. I have met some staff that really are just rude and are poor representation of CTA and the security company they use. Though i’ve met some very polite and nice staff that are very helpful to commuters who need assistance when the card machines breakdown.
I’d really like to know why the token boxes are still outside since they switched it to tokens instead of cash and you have to go inside to get it, doesn’t really make sense.
The stop itself is a good wait spot too if you’re running early. In very close walking distance is some decent spots for food or a drink or even some reading material.

My folks live in the north suburbs, and I’ll occasionally have them drop me off or pick me up here if I’m not enough of a cad to have them drive the extra hour to my place and back.
You can look at the Linden station in one of two ways. It’s the end of the line, or it’s the beginning. It’s entirely subjective, but it’s always leaned to the latter for me. This is a place to begin your journey. But even if it’s more of an ending for you, you could do a lot worse. After all, you’re in Wilmette. It ain’t O’Hare, Midway, or 95^th and the Ryan.
Once you enter the station, you’re under complete cover until wherever it is that you’ll alight the train. The entire platform is covered, and plenty of other CTA stations could learn from this. If you’re anything like me, you’ve walked out in the rain to get away from other people and to board the train where no one else dares to venture. No need for that here.
There’s a great big fake owl perched on a beam overhead, intended to spook pigeons from hanging out here. I’ve long been an advocate for real owls, hawks, and other birds of prey to reside near train stations and feast on those winged rats, but my cries to the CTA have fallen on deaf ears.
There’s a parking lot adjacent to the station, a «Park & Ride». You’re definitely not in the city anymore.

This is one of the many reasons why I really love riding the Purple Line, unique stations, every one has its own form of uniqueness it seems. However, this one takes the cake.
I came here earlier today during some joyriding, happily getting on a Purple Line train which had nothing but 5000-​series cars, which are so damn cool. Okay, while waiting for the train I took to Linden to make the return trip to the Library station to spend some time at Harold Washington Library (that is the station where I boarded), I took out some time to walk around this station, and did not see an exit where I can go out and explore some more of my surroundings. If you think that was bad, please proceed to the next paragraph.
While walking around the station, I looked up to the heavens, and in every opening, there was a freakin’ ugly owl replica that was missing legs, had messed-​up wings, and had ugly eyes! I asked a CTA employee what were those things for, and he told me-​to scare away the pigeons. That might explain why I didn’t see any pigeons, but, those things were scary-​looking enough to make me piss MY pants in fear, not only the pigeons!
I like the cleanliness and peaceful ambience of this station, but those freakin’ damn owls! Man! I pray that I won’t have any unexpected nightmares tonight or tomorrow night.