As lawmakers get back to work this week on a plan to keep mass transit running in the Chicago area, they have to know something. It’s going to take a lot more than some operating cash to save the Chicago Transit Authority.
The National Transportation Safety Board recently issued a damning post-mortem on a 2006 derailment and fire on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line. In Sunday’s Tribune, Jon Hilkevitch and Monique Garcia fleshed out in frightening detail just how bad things got at the CTA.
And while we resisted the impulse to needle Mayor Richard Daley for riding a bicycle in Paris while the CTA faced doomsday, we’ll say this: He has a crisis in his city, and it’s not going to be fixed solely by the Illinois legislature.
The Blue Line accident injured 150 passengers and traumatized hundreds more who fled the dark, smoky subway tunnel near Clark and Lake Streets. The NTSB blamed it on poor track maintenance and inspections, inadequate training and lax supervision, problems that existed for years before the train jumped the track.
NTSB investigators said the Blue Line train derailed because the track was out of alignment. Rotting rail ties and corroded or broken hardware — problems that should have been spotted during routine inspections — hastened the track’s failure. When the inevitable accident occurred, call boxes in the tunnel weren’t working, and a balky ventilation system couldn’t clear the smoke from the subway quickly. Maps in the CTA control center were out of date, causing a 22-minute delay in routing the Fire Department to the right spot.
The NTSB report points to problems that go well beyond the lack of money. Yes, the CTA was forced to pinch pennies on maintenance. But its managers also chose to turn a blind eye to the consequences of that neglect. CTA rail inspectors told the NTSB they rarely had time to do their jobs correctly. One admitted that he’d inspected his assigned stretch of track only once in five months, instead of twice weekly, as required. With crews short-staffed, track inspectors sometimes were required to fix the problems they found, which meant inspections weren’t getting done in the meantime.
Workers said problems they reported often weren’t addressed. They resorted to chalking their findings on the subway walls, to prove they’d spoken up. Supervisors insist they weren’t alerted to problems, and it’s hard to prove otherwise because hundreds of inspection documents have mysteriously disappeared.
Though CTA President Ron Huberman says those responsible for the 2006 debacle have been held accountable, the NTSB report suggests — confirms, really — that CTA managers all the way up the line were often asleep at the switch. There’s still housecleaning to be done. And that’s where the mayor comes in.
Daley hasn’t shown a lot of stomach for the systemic changes needed to make the CTA run like a real railroad. He’d rather not run afoul of labor unions or transit riders by insisting on contract concessions or fare hikes. For years he stood behind his pal, former CTA President Frank Kruesi, whose leadership led to what the NTSB called “a case study in organizational accidents” and Daley now calls “a disgrace.”
“I don’t manage the CTA,” Daley said the other day. He doesn’t. But he chooses the people who do. And if he wants to give his latest choice, Huberman, a prayer of succeeding, he has to make sure that Huberman can revolutionize the place without fear of political backlash.
We support the legislation that would provide more operating money to the CTA. The agency also needs billions to fix its creaky infrastructure. But there are some problems money can’t fix. Huberman and CTA Chairman Carole Brown know what needs to be done, but they’ll succeed only if Daley says, this time, do whatever it takes.
