Not all CTA emergency buttons work in emergencies

“Excuse me, excuse me!” said a young woman as she squirmed in her seat aboard a Blue Line train in Chicago on a cold evening last January. The hands of a stranger groped her inner thighs until the woman sitting next to her slapped his hands away and instructed her, “Let’s move now!”

The two women, one a reporter for Good Day DePaul, (GDD) weaved their way down the crowded aisle to push the passenger intercom button at the far end of the train car. Their call on the emergency system, which is supposed to inform the conductor there is a problem on board, received no response.

Less than a week later, the same GDD reporter who had observed the incident on the train, stood at a Blue Line station and observed a man screaming threats of killing someone on the platform. The young woman pushed the closest emergency button, which ordinarily sounds an alarm to alert a CTA attendant. Once again, the button triggered no response.

When the woman informed the upstairs attendants about the man screaming and that she had pushed the button for help, the attendants responded saying that the alert system can’t be heard from the booth. One attendant, whose identity is also being concealed for protection, stated the button had been “broke(n) (for) a long time.”

As a follow up to the story reported originally by Good Day DePaul, the DePaulia has learned this summer through FOIA responses that the “CTA [did] not report annual numbers for defective emergency call buttons at CTA rail stations and platforms or defective passenger intercom buttons on its trains” from 2006 to February 2012.

Documents released by the CTA confirm that the amount of work orders for repair on Blue Line personal intercom units increased by 440 percent between 2008 and 2011.

The CTA does check for broken personal intercom units on trains through daily and weekly inspections according to Lambrini Lukidis, CTA Media Representative.

Data released by the CTA also illustrated that repair times ranged from less than a day to nearly six months. “In past cases it’s a matter of simply re-booting software and in other cases repairs could take longer,” said Lukidis.

Though the CTA says it does not have electronic data for defective emergency call buttons on platforms in years prior to 2010, records do report 77 orders for repair were made between 2011 and March 2012.

In an effort to improve security, the CTA announced “a fast-track initiative” to install 1,800 surveillance cameras at 78 stations in June 2011. The initiative was completed in November 2011, six weeks ahead of its scheduled completion date.

The cameras have assisted police with 144 arrests associated with crime incidents and have contributed to the “prosecution and conviction of at least eight (8) individuals,” according to a statement in response to FOIA requests.

The data also confirmed that as of April 2012, Green Line Stations are the only locations that had working monitor screens making camera footage visible to CTA attendants.

But crime “can happen anywhere,” said Samantha Montcalm, a downtown college student and frequent CTA rider who was sexually assaulted at the Blue Line Jackson station. Though she reacted quickly and a few other people on the platform noticed, there was no response by CTA personnel.

“An emergency button didn’t even come into my mind at the moment,” she says recalling herself trembling as she proceeded to board the next train. “If someone would have seen that maybe they would have gotten the guy,” said Montcalm who was surprised that CTA attendants cannot see the video captured by security cameras.

Several video surveillance monitors have been removed in recent months since April when the original report by Good Day DePaul revealed a number of the monitors at Blue Line stations had blank screens.

The CTA stated it has not kept records of work orders requesting maintenance of camera monitors. “Because the system was being installed by contractors during 2011, any repair work on the cameras and monitors were performed under warranty, and no work orders were generated during the time period requested,” said the CTA in response to requests for information.

Though most CTA attendants cannot see video footage taken by surveillance cameras, personnel at a central Control Center watch the video in real time. Cameras do not have the capability of picking up audio so are only effective for crime incidents that are visible and may exclude some forms of assaults, threats, or harassment.


A 2009 study conducted by the Roger’s Park Young Women Action Team (YWAT) in Chicago found that 52 percent of respondents have been sexually harassed and 13 percent have been sexually assaulted on the CTA.

Forty-four percent have witnessed an incident of sexual harassment or assault, but 78 percent of those did not get involved or try to stop the incident.

The majority of respondents surveyed felt that improved safety amenities including intercoms and emergency systems would help reduce crime incidents.

A request for information regarding how many employees watch the surveillance monitors and how many screens they are responsible for monitoring at the Control Center was denied.

The CTA stated it is exempt from having to give out such information under a section of the Freedom of Information Act that relates to “security measures that are designed to identify, prevent or respond to potential attacks upon a community’s population or systems…”

In 2010, before many of the new cameras had been installed, FOIA data from the Chicago Police Department received by the Chicago Sun-Times showed robberies had increased by 77 percent between 2006 and 2009.

(A version of this story aired on Good Day DePaul, February 13, and has since been updated).