How To Solve the Smoking Problem on CTA Trains

This bit of news from Block Club Chicago by Mack Liederman/Quinn Myers and the Chicago Tribune by Jake Sheridan seems like the CTA and City of Chicago are going in the right direction regarding smoking on trains. 

You can get details from the actual Executive Order from Mayor Johnson at Chicago.gov (the full text is linked there). 

Unfortunately, their "laser-focused" plan is missing the bigger picture and leaves out the simple stuff: Mismanagement of the CTA.

Instead of cutting consist length during non-peak hours to 4- and 2-cars with re-implementation of Two-Person Crews, the mayor's Executive Order will actually make the poor train operators do more work, enforce more rules and take more delays. 

The angry riders will assault the train operators. Then the police will jail the attackers (or move them to another train to smoke on). Or the "Transit Health Response Teams" will need to call the police, causing further delays.

The attackers serves time and is eventually released. But they have no job, housing or hope from the felony. So where do they go? To live and self-medicate on the trains because they have nothing to lose. 

REPEAT. 

The simple removal of unnecessary rail cars from service when it's not rush hour and giving the train operator a Conductor who can observe riders, operate doors, retrieve lost-and-found and assist with troubleshooting defects will provide cleaner, safer and more reliable service! 

Simply put, shorter trains with more uniformed CTA workers discourages vagrancy, drug dealing and smoking. Sadly, the logistics behind 2- and 4-car non-peak rail car consists and Two-Person Crews seems to be too hard for the hardly-working CTA mismanagement and our "pro-worker" politicians. 

I can hear the whining that we don't have "funding" for all this stuff. That's a simple solution too! 

Fellow union steward Chris Campisi told me that all of this—including Mayor Brandon's "Transit Health Response Teams"—can easily be funded with taxes on marijuana, cigarettes and alcohol. These noxious products are sold and consumed on our trains. So they should fund the improved service!

Politicians and know-it-all "transit advocates" need to make decisions that include the people who operate and maintain the system. Even though CTA mismanagement makes it seem acceptable to treat us like inferiors and no-nothing idiots, it's time to listen to and include CTA workers in solutions to problems.

We know how to run the system—and we can do it better than the mismanagers.