Escalator accident at the Jackson Blue Line stop
A CTA Tattler reader emailed me with this account of the escalator accident at the Jackson stop of the Blue Line.
"A bad scene at the Blue Line Jackson station at about 7:50 am today.
"The escalator was jammed with tons of people and tons of people were waiting to get on. I was walking up the stairs (because a crowded escalator just looks dangerous to me). Suddenly, the escalator reversed direction and started speeding up. Some people were yelling, "BACK UP!" to the people below, and a few people were running up the moving stairs to keep from piling on the crowd below. People were crushing each other at the bottom. It was pretty ugly.
"The Trib report doesn't make it sound as bad as it looked."
Workers were doing maintenance on this escalator all last week in the mornings ... they'd have it shut down and everyone had to use the stairs. And since the Van Buren escalator is also closed, this causes a big bottleneck.
How good of a job did they do? Or are cta escalators so old it's impossible to fix them right?
Posted by: anthony b. | April 07, 2006 at 10:16 AM
I feel a fare hike coming on for 2007.
Posted by: cmama | April 07, 2006 at 10:48 AM
That is really frightening. It reminded me of an incident that happened when I was visiting Washington DC area. Their underground Metro station in Northern Virginia could only be accessed by escalators or elevator (no stairs). The down escalator, packed with a huge number of people, kept "feeding" folks onto the already crowded subway platform - almost to the point where some were being forced off the rather small platform onto the tracks.
Posted by: Lenka | April 07, 2006 at 11:14 AM
In defense of Metro -- What Lenka identified is a potentially serious problem, but it's caused by people (especially tourists) who choose to stand within 10 feet of the bottom of the escalator, rather than actually walking further down the platform. The platforms themselves are long enough to handle hundreds of passengers, just not bunched together at the foot of the escalator.
I've been riding Metro for a few months now, and really appreciate the QoS and general cleaniness of the trains/stations. As a former El rider, I'm still in disbelief of the carpeted subway cars here, and the fact that people (for the most part) do not eat/drink on the train.
Posted by: Metrorider | April 07, 2006 at 04:18 PM
I truly love the Metro in DC.
Posted by: Tim | April 07, 2006 at 09:23 PM
Wasn't it DC where someone got arrested for walking into a station while eating a candy bar?
Posted by: Cheryl | April 09, 2006 at 11:24 AM