Conductor From Land of Make-Believe May Take Job With CTA

By Alicia Dorr in News on Dec 8, 2006 4:27PM

Responding to the unadulterated chaos that ensued last summer when a Blue Line train derailed and forced 1,000 passengers to be evacuated, Chicago aldermen are aiming for a crackdown. Their demand?
Conductors on CTA trains.

These ticket-takers of yore with their undeniably spiffy suits were phased out from CTA service between the early '90s and 2000. The motormen, who run the trains, were given a microphone, and that was that. Now aldermen are pushing for reinstatement, for, in times of trouble, the conductor would be able to organize and instruct passengers as the motorman does his job trying to figure out where the hell all that smoke is coming from.

We could go either way on this one, we suppose. The aldermen proposed that the money for the conductors be taken out of Homeland Security money, so we don't have to get into that headache-inducing nonsense about whether it comes from operating budget, state money, or Grandpa Joe's pocket.

So let's weigh our options here: on one side you've got conductors, who have fancy hats and remind us of the time both George Carlin and Ringo Starr went absolutely nuts and played tiny conductors on a children's show. On the other side you've got Alderman "Crazy" Carothers pointing out that he has "never seen a camera yet carry someone off a train" — though we assume he's had many an opportunity to. We like the operators who make little jokes and bless us on the train over the intercom, but conductors would probably talk to us, too — we don't know, this is hard! We guess in the end, the more the merrier. Perhaps if a conductor was on the train we could tell him when someone has shit themselves and let off a terrible stink during rush hour. Eh?