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My colleague Jerome is kind of claustrophobic, and he doesn’t much enjoy traveling underground. As we stopped and the doors went through their routine of closing, opening, closing, then opening again while the canned CTA message about how improvements are under way blared, he grumbled, “Man, just get us out of this tunnel,” then alluded to the National Transportation Safety Board’s scathing recent report on last year’s Blue Line derailment. “Makes you feel really safe, doesn’t it?” he said.
Jerome approached Huberman, confirmed that it was he, and remarked that as a long-suffering rider he appreciated the CTA head checking things out for himself. Huberman’s job can’t be much fun right now, what with the failure of the state legislature to pass Julie Hamos’s transportation bill and the prospect of doomsday cuts, averted only through November. “Does it look cleaner to you?” Huberman asked.
