Dilemma

Via CTA Tattler, I have signed up for a CTA SMS update thing. And though it is generally useful for nothing other than getting anecdotal details about how the CTA can’t make it 48 hrs without collapsing in some serious way, it did prove useful surrounding the two recent CTA calamities: the Blue Line evacuation and the recent crash of a semi into the Cermak/Chinatown Red Line stop. It’s the latter that sets up this dilemma.

I left work a little late on Friday, and my phone had started buzzing with news about a truck hitting the Red Line stop. Still, I sat and read, waiting for the 174 bus. Under nearly all circumstances, I take the Green Line to Roosevelt on the way home (I’m not sure why, since it’s certainly not faster than the Red), but this time I knew I should take the Green Line, because my phone told me to.

“Red Line halted,” “Red Line trains stopping at Sox-35th” read the stream of SMSes coming into my phone. And our bus, in the meantime, had even pulled over to the side of the road to let fire engines past. The South Side was full of energy and noise, and I knew it was all because of a truck and a Red Line stop.

Once the 174 pulled up to the Green Line, I descended, alone. The entire bus was headed to the Garfield Red Line stop, where the entire bus would try to board a line that was inoperative.

So the dilemma: Should I have told the people on the bus that the fire engines screaming past us were to go help an emergency affecting the very line they were about to board? It’s the 174, so you know everyone on there is getting off at the Red Line…

Tags: being smarter than everyone, CTA, ethics, phone