Daley: CTA Needs To Do Better

By Margaret Lyons in News on Apr 21, 2008 5:41PM

At a news conference this morning, Mayor Daley criticized the CTA's response to last week's Blue Line clusterfrak, particularly the agency's hour-long delay before contacting the Office of Emergency Management and Communications. "I'm not trying to blame anyone. I'm just saying we all can do a better job," he said. When he's right he's right.

Ron Huberman agrees that the CTA can improve, saying that the "human element" is the biggest challenge and that last week's mess was a "series of a cascading events."

Huberman says that in the next few weeks, the CTA will be giving all Red and Blue Line operators cell phones, which will serve as back-up should the radio system fail like it did last week, and requiring additional communications training for its operators; there's also $14 million going towards improving emergency exits. [S-T, CBS 2]