Red Line emergency: evacuation improvements, but communication woes linger

This time the train outage was not the CTA's fault. But when a robbery suspect decides to jump the tracks at rush hour and kills himself, the incident still puts your emergency response systems to a crucial test.

The evacuation of passengers from stuck Red Line trains went pretty well, but overall communication to passengers still needs improvement. And it's hard to add capacity to an already maxed-out system at the height of rush hour.

Here was my experience. I got to Grand Avenue Red Line station at about 4:50. The incident happened at about 4:30. Station attendants were turning back passengers, saying the power was shut off. They talked vaguely about shuttle buses, but there was no one at street level to tell passengers about the alleged shuttles. So I headed over to the Brown Line stop at the Merchandise Mart.

When I got there, the northbound platform was packed. Two Brown Line trains arrived in about 10 minutes, but no one was able to board. So I decided to head south and travel back around the Loop. At least I got on a train. By the time my train reached the Library station at State and Van Buren, the train was pretty much at capacity. And each station along Wacker was packed wall-to-wall with desperate passengers.

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