CTA: Can't Take It

By Timmy Watson in News on Nov 11, 2006 6:45PM

Yesterday, we were stuck on the blue line for about 15 minutes. "Attention passengers, attention passengers, a train ahead of us is having a malfunction. We will be moving shortly." After the third or fourth time of hearing this the rain soaked, anxious passengers start to get a little frustrated. We overheard one young lady expressing her frustrations, "I wonder if the CTA ever gets scared there might be a mob, they should be scared of that." So we can only imagine what it was like being stuck on the red line for an hour yesterday.

At the North/Clybourn station at about 10 a.m. yesterday a loose part of a train wheel knocked part of the third rail out of alignment. According to the Tribune article, dozens of passengers decided to open the doors to their train cars and exit through the tunnel. The train operator said there was a fire, but did not tell the passengers what to do. We definitely think there should either be better guidelines or more forthright operators in those situations. The CTA is looking into the 'incident' and we hope they come away with policy regarding stranded passengers. For instance, if we can safely evacuate these passengers instead of having them wait an hour, maybe we should.