Chicago 'L' - Security and Safety

Security and Safety

Operation of the CTA rail cars are secure and safe but in addition to general security issues on the CTA, there were calls to improve CTA's emergency response and communications procedures. The CTA has also had incidents where operators apparently overrode automatic train stops on red signals, such as the 1977 collision at Wabash and Lake, when 4 cars of a Lake-Dan Ryan train fell from the elevated structure, killing 11, and two minor incidents in 2001, and two more in 2008, the more serious involving a Green Line train that derailed and straddled the split in the elevated structure at the 59th Street junction between the Ashland and East 63rd Street branches, and a minor one near 95th Street on the Red line.

In 2002, 25-year-old Joseph Konopka, better known by his self-given nickname "Dr. Chaos", was arrested by Chicago Police after he was caught hoarding potassium cyanide and sodium cyanide in a Chicago Transit Authority storeroom in the Chicago 'L' Blue Line subway. Konopka had picked the original locks on several doors in the tunnels, then changed the locks so that he could access the rarely used storage rooms freely.