It's time for the fifth installment of our series "Streetsblog Chicago versus smoking on the CTA." This is an effort to find all-inclusive solutions (not simply more policing) to the aggravating problem of smoking and vaping inside railcars. Take a look at part one for an intro to my perspective on the issue. It's common knowledge that smoking on the 'L' is a major hazard for people with disabilities, seniors, and young kids. It's also unhealthy and annoying for the rest of us, and it causes people to instead other modes like driving and ride-hail, contributing to crashes, pollution, and congestion.
Streetsblog readers will recall that last month, encouraged by SBC reader survey results, I did some "guerrilla urbanism" by visiting every Red Line station from Roseland to Rogers Park and posting hot dog-themed anti-smoking flyers. These seemed generally well-received – even a security guard, whom I thought was going to bust me for breaking the CTA's official post-no-bills rule, instead said, "Thanks for doing that."
Earlier this month, I gave it another go on the Blue Line, which travels between O'Hare and west-suburban Forest Park, with a detour through the Loop. Like its Red sibling, it's a 24-hour route where it's common for people experiencing homelessness, addiction, and/or mental illness to seek shelter through night, and it has a high rate of smoking.
Rather than demonizing smokers, my idea for the flyer campaign was to humorously spread the word that smoking inside rail 'L' cars is widely understood to violate the social contract. Inspired by Pittsburgh Regional Transit's Rider Etiquette campaign featuring a grumpy gherkin breaking the rules, I opted for PSAs featuring misbehaving anthropomorphic food items.
As you can see from the frankfurter-themed flyer above, my own drawing style is an example of naïve art. This time I decided to go with something more sophisticated, by recruiting SBC's in-house illustrator Jonathan for the job. I asked him to depict a person with a character with a slice of New York-style, triangle cut pizza for a face, smoking a cig on the 'L', to the dismay of other passengers. Here's what he came up with. I was pleased: His rendering was anything but cheesy, at least figuratively.
As with the wiener cycle, I covered the Blue Line in a few stages. On the evening of Sunday, March 1, I bicycled from SBC HQ in Uptown to Montrose Station, locked up my bike, and covered all the stops south to Division Station. I stopping for a bite along the way at Sweet Rice Chicago, a pan-Asian cafe at 1904 N. Western Ave., conveniently located directly below Western (and Armitage) Station in Logan Square.
On Friday, March 6, later at night, I pedaled to Jefferson Park Station, locked up, and posted PSAs at the stations on the way to O'Hare. There, I was planning to hang out at the Gaslight Club in the lobby of the airport Hilton. Counter-intuitively, this trapped-in-amber piano bar is one of my favorite drinking establishments in the entire city. No, I'm not gaslighting you. Sadly, it was already closed when I got there, so I wet my whistle at the airport-style tavern at the other end of the lobby before heading back to Jeff Park.
On Monday, March 9, it was a lovely Fool's Spring day with weather in the 60s F. I wrapped up the mission by riding Divvy to the Blue Line's Chicago Station, heading southeast to Downtown, and then west to the Forest Park terminus. Once there, I hoped to pick up one of the walking tacos at the in-station snack shop Streetsblog contributor J. Niimi wrote about in his Holiday Train travelogue. Unfortunately they were out of nacho cheese, so I picked up one of their many interesting-looking bags of potato chips and bottles of tropical punch and rode the Forest Park Branch back to the Red Line.
Interestingly, I didn't encounter that much smoking on the many Blue Line runs I took for this project. Someone lit a cigarette on the train I boarded at Illinois Medical District Station on the Near West Side. On another run towards Austin Station in the autonomous neighborhood, a couple walked through the train, each smoking cigs. But that was about it.
That's not to say I didn't see some troubling stuff on the West Side. Opioid use is tragically common along the Eisenhower Expressway corridor in Chicago, which police call the "Heroin Highway." On my way back into the city, a man entered my car with both feet and lower legs swaddled in rags, which seemed to indicate that was where he'd been injecting himself.
Another incident was tragicomic. As I was waiting on the 'L' to leave Forest Park, an elderly bearded man indignantly stormed into the car with his pants at his ankles. A female station maintenance worker, also older, yelled at him as she followed him to the train. Apparently, she caught him using the platform as a toilet. The employee radioed security, and a K-9 patrol guard stoically escorted the man out of the station.
But otherwise, my journeys were fairly uneventful. Here's a gallery of the flyers, in geographic order from ORD to Forest Park. All photos are by yours truly.
At California, I noticed a CTA anti-smoking PSA on a screen, which I hadn't noticed before. When I later asked CTA Media about it, a spokesperson said, "I believe you're referring to these ads which CTA introduced both on digital rail station signs systemwide and in physical car cards on trains and buses last March."
Investigate part four, in which I conduct an interview with a smoker, here.
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