The courage it takes to make thousands of CTA passengers late
On Wednesday, there were at least two emergency incidences that caused CTA rail service disruptions. First, around 10:30 am, a Brown Line train hit an SUV that was trying to get around the crossing gate.
Then, at the height of the evening rush hour, northbound trains were stopped for about 40 minutes while paramedics helped a sick passenger. There is not story on that in the Tribune. That's something that happens with some frequency, though I don't know just how often.
Below is a first-person account from Toby about the woman who noticed the sick man and the courage she had to summon to inform the motorman and ultimately delay thousands of passengers. Interesting stuff. Think about it next time you're delayed by a sick passenger. And thanks for writing, Toby.
From Toby: So after an utterly exhausting work day I am standing up in the last car of a northbound Red Line train. We had just exited the underground section and was passing Fullerton when a clearly distressed woman comes from the front of the car and asks me as calmly as she could muster for me to please move away from the intercom button so that she could message the conductor.
As she struggles to get the CTA’s attention, she looks to me, about to cry, saying there is a man, in what looks to me in his mid to late 60s, in the front of the car unresponsive, deathly pale and all together not looking to be in good shape. She exchanges a few words with the conductor, is put on hold, and looks to me, shaking, saying she has no idea if she is doing the right thing. It’s the middle of rush-hour, half the city is trying to get home right now and here is this poor lady stopping a train because she thinks this guy might be bad off. I don’t envy her position in the least.
So after conversing with the CTA, she stands by me and we start to talk. She is on the verge of tears and I try my best to reassure her that she did the right thing. We finally stop at Addison and wait a painstakingly long time for the EMTs to arrive. The entire time I am reassuring this poor woman that she has done the right thing; that she was brave for doing what she did and that this person probably owes his life to you (if he indeed survived). I did not try to physically help the guy because it was already determined that he had some form of a pulse and the medics had to be close. She kept on saying, “What if he’s just drunk? I would have stopped this train for nothing.” He did not smell of alcohol and with my experiences with dealing with people with alcohol poisoning I assured her that this was not the case.
We are asked to exit the car as the medics arrive, walk to the next car down, and we wait. They did not end up pulling this guy out on a stretcher for twenty minutes so I am assuming they either had to stabilize…or they were figuring out a way to get this guy down the platform without alerting the entire crowd that he was dead. He left with the medics pumping him with a resuscitator. None of us know what his condition was leaving the train.
So in the end we were on the platform for 40 minutes I would estimate. They almost shut down that train completely and had us move to another train. Eventually, however, they told us to go back on and we finally headed north.
The nice lady I spent those 40 minutes with had to quickly scamper off the train to pick up her children from daycare (which, incidentally, she was late for and thus would have to pay a fee).
I’m not really phased by dead bodies at this point, but my interactions with this lady has really put me in a strange place tonight. It’s hard to describe. Somewhere between mellow and forlorn....but I can’t put my finger on it. I guess I’m just processing it all.
Nevertheless... to the lady I regret I never got your name... I salute you. God knows how long that guy had been on that train in that condition. It’s nice to meet a hero in a city this large. I consider you just that.
it's one of the few things i do think sucks about living in the city...the flipside about the anonymity. 'if you see something, say something?' yeah, right.
most of the time, it's a great defense mechanism. shit, if i got into a snit over every weird/unusual/freaky thing i saw in the city/on the el, i'd be a basket case.
but sometimes, you have to stand up and do the right thing.
Posted by: jocelyn | October 20, 2005 at 09:10 AM
I delayed a red line last year when two crazy guys got into it, screaming profanities and derogatory terms at one another. I had to get out of about the 5th or 6th car and run to the conductor to tell him what was going on because the intercom wasn't working. So everyone pretty much knew it was me. The conductor was a stand-up guy. He got the two guys to 'kiss and make up' and after about ten minutes the train started moving again. At Wilson, it went express to Loyola so I had to get off, along with a lot of other people. The next train after that went express too, so all in all I was about 20 minutes late getting home. Nobody gave me a hard time. It could have been bizarre entertainment or it could have escalated to a stabbing, you never know.
My fantasy is that passengers would band together and oust shell-gamers, profanity-screamers, hooligans who threaten passengers, etc., from the train.
Posted by: mike | October 20, 2005 at 11:07 AM
If a person is pale, and unresponsive...its pretty sad if one has to "wonder if I'm doing the right thing", to bring the incident to someones attention.
Posted by: BR | October 20, 2005 at 11:35 AM
Okay, I want to talk about the idiot in the SUV. I commute from one of those stations on the ground, and I see someone driving around the gates and almost getting creamed weekly. I honestly don't care if they get themselves killed--it's their own stupidity, after all. But I don't want to witness it. Nor do I want the train derailing and slamming into the station, or the buildings next to the tracks, or me while I'm waiting for the train to pass and the gates go up.
Posted by: Cheryl | October 20, 2005 at 11:55 AM
On a related note, I was on a blue line train going south around Monroe and they made an announcement that red line trains would be delayed around 10 min. due to an illness around Addison.
So the CTA appears to be trying to communicate (or at least this driver)
Posted by: Fraslin | October 20, 2005 at 12:09 PM
I was on the train that hit the SUV. Just as we were pulling out of the Rockwell station, the car lurched to a stop, like they do sometimes when they stop for someone running up the stairs to the train.
I didn't feel any impact, and then we were waiting a few minutes. I was getting nervous because it is surface line, and I knew we stopped just a the point where the road crosses, so I was hoping we hadn't just run over someone. Well eventually the conductor comes through and tells us all to get off the train, and we all go forward to the exit area.
And there it is, the SUV smashed against the front of the train, pushed maybe 7 feet, and with the headlights still on. The driver is out and walking around, and someone apparently made a comment to him, to which he replied "You are going to yell at me when I almost got killed!!??!" Well, yes, dumbass...
To be fair, this isn't a clearcut case of a driver being a total idiot, because in truth there was a slight extenuating circumstance. There were a bunch of CTA workers excavating something right next to the gate, and they had put cones up around and across about 60% of the gate, so the driver may have thought that the gate was down due to construction, and not that a train was coming.
Either way the dude is a bonehead, just saying not as much a bonehead as you might think. Reality is more complex than it usually presents itself as, especially if one was not there.
Posted by: Mark Howard | October 20, 2005 at 04:28 PM
Here's an interesting video report on mass transit from CNN, just in case you missed it.
(Click on the green watch box's link, page right to watch the video.)
http://search.cnn.com/pages/search.jsp?query=%22mass%20transit%22
Posted by: deepkid | October 20, 2005 at 08:59 PM
Woops, here's a clickable link:
Mass Transit Blues
Posted by: deepkid | October 20, 2005 at 09:00 PM
Mark Howard said:
"You are going to yell at me when I almost got killed!!??!" Well, yes, dumbass...
That really brightened up my day.....
Posted by: cmama | October 21, 2005 at 09:33 AM
Quite a story indeed. I too wish riders would band together and take some action when they see something on the CTA. My suggestion is that the CTA does not need to shut down their system for almost an hour for a medical emergency. Once the paramedics are there and the person is ON THE PLATFORM then it's up to the city and the Securitas personnel to take care of the rest.
Posted by: SavgPncL | October 26, 2005 at 11:17 AM
If it was the last car of run 817 last thusday then that was the car I was in and I was right next to the guy. The car was packed. The sad part is that we couldn't even see to the other end of the car where the emergency button was and no one was listening between fullerton and addison. (Can you say IPOD?) The train finally stopped at addison. I got off there and notified the slack jawed customer attendant that there was probably a dead guy in the last car. She actually sprinted up the escalator Given her size, it surprised the heck out of me. I'm pretty sure the guy was dead as someone took his pulse on the arm and neck and said he didn't have any.
The most interesting part (besides people poking him to see if he was alive) was when someone asked if they knew where he got on, an indian guy behind me said that CTA personnel actually put him on the train at 35th and sox park with him leaning on their shoulder. I wonder if he was dead then or it happened on the train....
Posted by: Kevin | October 27, 2005 at 06:57 PM