Editorial: Chicago’s Yellow Line commuters deserve better

The CTA under the leadership of Dorval R. Carter Jr. did not exactly have a banner 2023, what with delays, so-called ghost trains and safety issues on its properties. The single worst day, though, was Nov. 16 when 38 people were injured after a CTA Yellow Line train crashed into a piece of snow-moving equipment near the border of Evanston and Chicago.

That serious crash, which resulted in numerous hospitalizations, prompted an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, a model of governmental excellence and transparency. In its interim report, released Dec. 12, NTSB zeroed in on the issue of adequate braking distance, suggesting that attention had to be paid to how the CTA’s signal system interacts with the amount of time needed to stop the train in an emergency, especially when there is leaf debris or other “organic material” on the tracks.

As is typical with such incidents, the line was closed for a few days while the NTSB completed the on-site portion of its investigation. But the federal agency turned over the scene to the CTA on Nov. 20 and said it was now up to the CTA to decide when to reopen the line. The interim report did not say it was unsafe to do so. Had the NTSB felt that way, it would not have been shy about saying so. It has done so in other circumstances.

Now here we are on the second day of 2024, and the thousands of commuters who rely on the Yellow Line have heard nothing concrete about when the line is expected to reopen. All the CTA has said so far is that it is reviewing the situation.

Logic would suggest that the line could actually have reopened with reduced train speeds at the end of November, given the obvious correlation between speed and breaking distance, as noted by the NTSB. For many people, a train moving at 30 mph rather than 55 would be far preferable to taking a replacement shuttle bus.

But the Yellow Line has always been treated with less urgency than the CTA’s other arteries, perhaps because it serves suburban Skokie rather than operating in the city of Chicago.

In 2015, a small section of the embankment along Yellow Line tracks west of McCormick Boulevard collapsed, following construction at Skokie’s nearby O’Brien Water Reclamation Plant. At the time, news reports suggested this would take several weeks to repair, along with a portion of damaged track. In fact, the entire line was out of service for close to six months.

There was, for a sure, a lot of work to do but also little palpable sense of urgency, and commuters noted at the time that the CTA would have reacted a lot faster had this been the Red or Blue Line, where such a closure would have resulted in intense political pressure on the agency.

We’re already at six weeks and counting in the most recent Yellow Line incident. That’s far past the time when commuters should have been told when they can expect to take the train again.

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