The region’s transit systems maintained heightened security measures Thursday in the wake of more bombings in London, but several CTA riders are concerned the agency is not communicating well with passengers during bomb scares.
CTA customers pointed to an incident Monday night when someone called in a bomb threat for the Red Line’s Roosevelt stop, prompting Chicago police to close the station for 45 minutes. The incident snarled the commutes of thousands of riders as Red Line trains were switched to elevated tracks, jamming those routes and leaving hundreds waiting on platforms, sweating it out on stalled trains or looking for a different route home.
Although commuters said they understood post-Sept. 11 security issues, they still thought they could have been told what was going on.
Several riders said when they asked CTA employees what was happening, many of them didn’t know. In other cases, riders said CTA employees tried to pass along information on the public address system, but the sound quality was so poor passengers couldn’t understand what they said.
While the communication issues merely exasperated a nightmarish afternoon commute, they could create a significant problem if a real attack occurred, riders said.
“I don’t begrudge the fact that they closed down the line for 45 minutes,” said Tom Hellie, who commutes daily on the train. “I’d rather have them do that and protect us. I think the only problem is they have to find a better way of communicating to passengers.” The CTA is in the process of improving its public address systems, agency spokeswoman Sheila Gregory said. The agency board last week approved a $31 million contract to upgrade rail communications, which will expand the agency’s use of fiber optics to improve audio, she added.
Gregory said CTA’s control center communicated with customer assistance and field personnel via two-way radios Monday to notify them of the Red Line subway closure, what measures they were supposed to take and how it would affect the rail routes. Customer assistance personnel were supposed to communicate that information to riders, Gregory said.
“As hard as we try, I guess on occasion we are going to have some issues,” said Gregory, who said the agency had received handfuls of communications-related complaints about Monday’s incident. “But when we do, we encourage people to report them. That’s how we really can address it.”
Monday’s incident began shortly before 4:40 p.m. when someone phoned in a bomb threat, Chicago police said. Police shut down the Roosevelt Station from 4:40 to 5:25 p.m., but no bomb was discovered, and no arrests have been made.
The call was made in the middle of rush hour, complicating matters for the CTA, which tried to minimize the disruption by switching the underground Red Line to elevated tracks used by the Orange, Green, Purple and Brown Lines.
Riders acknowledged it was a difficult time of day but said they were not given information to make intelligent choices about the best way home. Some said CTA employees still didn’t know what was going on more an hour after the threat was reported.
Hellie said he quickly determined something was amiss when he arrived at the Jackson stop on the Red Line around 4:50 p.m. The platform was packed with people, and no trains were pulling into the station, so he headed back to the street.
“Just as I was leaving, they were trying to make an announcement over the loudspeakers,” Hellie said. “But it was mostly static. No one could understand.”
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and alBerto Trevino (atrevino@tribune.com)
