Subway Evacuation
Published Apr 17th, 2008
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Tuesday morning’s subway debacle immediately brought back memories of my own evacuation from a stalled Red Line train a year earlier…
After months of unsuccessful job searching, I had just started a temp assignment at the Park Hyatt Chicago, on Michigan Avenue–which eventually became a permanent job (for a year). I had boarded the ill-fated train, having transferred from the Blue Line, at the Jackson station. Being my first day on the job, I made sure that I left myself plenty of time to arrive at the Red Line Chicago stop, so that I could get coffee at Argo and begin my assignment at 9:00am. But as so often happens with the CTA, planning means nothing and there is no amount of time cushion you can give yourself to guarantee on-time arrival.
The first mistake I made was getting into a car filled with a diabolically putrid stench. Stupid me–the dozens of people standing aboard, with their shirts pulled up over their mouth and nose should have tipped me off. Once the doors closed behind me it was too late. I would start my first day at the Park Hyatt having suppressed my gag reflex on a train about to stall for an hour beneath the Chicago River. As the train lurched from the Lake Street platform, I scanned the train car so that I might locate the source of the awful smell. It appeared to emanate from a sleeping, homeless man, who had defecated in his trousers. Little did I know that this was not to be the only evacuation I would experience on this ride.
The first subway systems I ever rode on were in Japan, Germany, Paris and London respectively. They were all pretty much equal in cleanliness, efficiency, noiselessness and comfort. Having grown up in Wisconsin, I didn’t even know Chicago had a train system. When I first moved here nearly four years ago, I was amazed at how extensive the “El” truly was. I loved that I could shuttle from Madison to O’Hare quite easily and then take the Blue Line almost to my doorstep in Wicker Park (the glorified slum I formerly lived in). What completely shocked me, however was how completely distressed and mechanically dysfunctional the whole system was. The appalling state of disrepair the Chicago train system is in would be comical if thousands of people didn’t depend on it. I can’t even begin to describe how run down, filthy, undependable and sad it is. I can only imagine what European and Japanese tourists must think as they take in the crumbling tunnel walls, the murky station atmospheres, the deafening sound made by the crude train car suspensions screeching against the primitive tracks and the completely arbitrary schedules by which the trains arrive and depart. Until I became inured to the third world feel of the Chicago CTA, I was constantly riding the train in a state of semi-bemusement mixed with stunned speechlessness. I would guess that there is a level of incompetence, corruption and mismanagement at the CTA that is impossible to comprehend and even more impossible to eradicate.
Back to my evacuation story…
So, as it frequently happens, the Red Line train I was on came to stop, with the tiresome, barely-audible announcement that the train was “momentarily delayed as we wait for signals ahead” or something on that order. Usually these delays last no more than five minutes–ten to fifteen minutes on a bad day. After about fifteen minutes, when the train shut down its interior lighting and ventilation, we all knew something much more serious was up. What that was remained a mystery to the passengers, as our conductor said nothing about the delay. So there we sat, in a dark tunnel, with no lights, not knowing when we’d ever take a breath of air that wasn’t contaminated with fecal matter.
It is moments like these when you get a small glimpse into the unsettling realm of social disorder and anarchy. I was furious that especially after 9/11, there was NO emergency drill in place, no public safety exercise instituted to inform the passengers what action they should take. We were left entirely to our own devices without even an explanation as to what was going on. After a half hour, some “naughty” passengers, undoubtedly fed up with breathing the foul air, opened the connecting doors and moved into the next train car. I immediately followed, feeling a bit of a rush from this act of deviance. As I sat down again, I started to sweat the fact that my cushion of time to get to my new job was coming to an end. Furthermore, being underneath the Chicago River, I had no cell phone signal to call my new employer to inform them of my whereabouts. This was obviously a problem for others as well. The solution was found in the cell phone of a woman fortunate enough to have the only carrier who offered service underground–U.S. Cellular. I called my temp agency, who seemed to be privy to news we unfortunate passengers were not: Apparently there was a small electrical fire on the tracks a number of stops ahead of us. This information would have been nice to know earlier being that every passenger would have evacuated the train within five minutes of it stalling rather than sitting stupidly in the dark for an hour, not knowing what to do. As we neared an hour of waiting, wondering and some panic, two thug-like characters started muttering loudly, “Fuck CTA man, I want my two dollars back!” Admittedly, in other circumstances, I would have felt a little intimidated by these hulking guys with their sagging jeans, black-hooded sweatshirts over baseball caps and gang-like postures. But in this scenario, their aggressive, anti-establishment attitudes mirrored exactly what I was feeling. They stood up, pulled the emergency knob of the doors and shouted, “Fuck this shit, we’re outta here.” With that, they climbed onto the ledge which ran along the subway wall and scaled off to the next station. I was embarrassed at my own timidity. Was this who I was–a compliant sheep? I had always fancied myself a rebel who eschewed conformity and here I was this coward who failed to take action when the circumstances beckoned. I looked around at everyone else. We all mused together at the audaciousness of our fellow thugs. I was really getting outraged though at the arrogance of the CTA to presume that we would all just sit indefinitely in a decrepit, junky, stalled train car. This was their fault, not ours. We paid our taxes, we paid our fares. Who the hell did the city think it was to just leave us like this–abandoned, in the dark–stranded. Suddenly, a fire of my own was ignited. I stood up, refusing to let Chicago rob what little dignity it hadn’t already taken from me. I pulled myself out of the train, onto the tunnel ledge and set foot towards the Grand station. My protest was contagious. I was followed by several other people and even a little, old lady in her eighties who burst out, “I’m not sitting here any longer!” I helped her up and guided her along the ledge. Of course none of us were stupid enough to risk electrocuting ourselves on the tracks, so we continued scaling along the dark grimy wall. As we passed the train conductor, he looked at us with great alarm, but acquiesced to our rebellion. Shortly thereafter we heard the muddled announcement, “You may exit the train at this time and make your way carefully to the next platform.” Finally, the CTA had given its official instructions. For the militantly obedient citizens still sitting on the train, with the unconscious homeless strewn amongst them, I imagine that announcement was received with great appreciation–Our civil disobedience was now sanctioned by an agent of the CTA. As the rest of us continued our march towards the Grand Avenue platform, it was heartwarming to witness how our fellow humans, people who might not ever speak to each other under normal circumstances, all banded together to help the old lady. The line of us had reached a large traffic signal, which blocked our slow migration to Earth’s surface. I swung around the signal and gripped it tightly as I held my arm out for her. Another passenger, held the spirited old woman, who knew exactly what she needed to do. She grabbed my hand, let go of the other person’s hand and let herself swing to the other side of the signal. There was no stopping this triumphant, Chicago battle ax, who had probably suffered through much worse, living in this city all of her life.
We eventually reached Grand and stepped up into the cold Chicago air. I’m not ashamed to say that I felt a little bit like Kate Winslet in Titanic as she crawled onto that life boat. I had yet another experience of conquering Chicago adversity under my belt and a great story to tell. The train evacuation made the news and I was proud to say that I had led my own small contingent of rebels off that infamous train.
So now, this week, a year later, it’s happened again. The exact same thing. And it was handled in exactly the same way–no directive from CTA conductors or platform employees, no understandable announcements or evacuation drills. Just a bunch of fare-paying citizens sitting in the dark, for an hour, left to their own devices. What came next was an outrage. Ron Huberman, director of the CTA, actually had the gall to criticize passengers who had the wherewithall to evacuate themselves from the defunct train. He claimed that “If those particular passengers had not self-evacuated, we could have gotten people out on trains and restored service much sooner.” He also tried to assert that the delay would have lasted only 25 minutes at the most. This begs the question: How long, exactly, are passengers supposed to sit in a dark tunnel, on a broken down train before the CTA informs them of Huberman’s imaginary PROPER procedure?” Who on Earth did he think he was to criticize passengers failed by his own system? Could I sit in my stalled car on the Eisenhower or Kennedy for 25 minutes until my cousin arrived to restore service to my car? Chicagoans are apparently regarded by city officials as cattle, whose time is worthless and whose conditions of transport need only meet the minimum standard. The National Transportation and Safety Board blasted the CTA last fall, after a derailment, due to inexcusable system-wide neglect, deferred maintenance and operational incompetence.
By the afternoon and upon getting all of the facts, Huberman relented, “In no way is the CTA pointing fingers at anyone but ourselves…” That is the attitude the CTA needs to have.
I do not understand how the CTA got to the state of total dilapidation it is currently in. The system has not expanded for over twenty years, yet ridership has increased enormously through the city’s recent trend of gentrification. Where is all of our fare money going, not to mention the federal funds it receives and the continuous drain on the state’s funding it causes? Why do station overhauls take two years when whole skyscrapers go up in the same amount of time? Why is wood still the material of choice for railroad ties? Why can’t Chicago run a proper transit system? Whatever the reason, I’ll be damned if I’ll let Ron Huberman shame me and others in the same situation for taking the initiative to look after themselves, just like we have to do for crime, potholes and all the other hardships living in a backwards city causes. My GOD! The State of Illinois had to ban smoking STATEWIDE before Chicago could bring itself to do it–the last of the major cities. Even Madison banned smoking years before Chicago. What do you expect though from a city that still doesn’t recycle?
When I first moved to Chicago, I remember commenting several times to co-workers about how awful the “El” was, but my opinions seemed to fall on deaf ears and some defensiveness. People here become unexpectedly patriotic about Chicago when you criticize any aspect of the city. I’ve learned that they’re hopelessly delusional, so I’ll say it again: The CTA is an appalling, third world system. It is astonishingly neglected and in a shocking state of disintegration. The delinquency of the city in its administration of this important public asset is an enormous slap in the face to the taxpayers of Chicago. The least the city could do is maintain the public transit system which provides people portage to and from their jobs. Imagine, in a city with the worst commute times in the nation, neglecting the only alternative it has to congested automobile transit.
Now that they’ve pointed their fingers at themselves, they’ve admitted they have a problem and can now begin the healing process.
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