Blue Line incident

As most (if not all) of you know, yesterday evening the last car of a northbound, 8-car Blue Line train derailed in the subway between Clark/Lake and Grand. Customers were escorted out of the subway tunnel through an emergency exit with the assistance of a CTA rail operator. The incident is now being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). As you can see here and here, their process is incredibly detailed and thorough, and I am confident that the details of what happened will be thoroughly investigated and reported.

I want to take a moment to express our concern for all of those CTA customers involved in the incident, especially those who are still undergoing medical treatment. You are, of course, in our thoughts and prayers. I also want to thank CTA employees, police officers, firefighters, and medical personnel who responded so quickly and professionally with emergency assistance. I particularly want to highlight the CTA employees who worked throughout the night in very challenging conditions to restore service. For everyone who had a much more difficult commute home last night, we appreciate your patience and understanding. We apologize.

As Eric Zorn notes, customer communication is critical in these situations. I have said before that CTA needs to do better at customer communications, and this is an opportunity to learn. For those of you who were involved in the incident or affected by service delays, what worked? What can we do better?