Shots fired at OTC - UP Service suspended

not many details yet, but here's the story

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?sectio ... id=4835445

"Chicago Fire Department and police are on the scene of a shooting at the METRA Ogilvie Transit Center in downtown Chicago. At least one person has been shot."

now saying 2 people have been shot. Sounds like the shooting was in the Citibank tower rather than the station itself, but it also sounds like the main entrance at least has been evacuted

Friday, December 8, 2006

METRA/UNION PACIFIC NORTH, NORTHWEST AND WEST LINE TRAIN DELAYS
ALL TRAIN SERVICE FOR METRA/UNION PACIFIC NORTH, NORTHWEST AND WEST LINE TRAINS TRAVELING OUTBOUND TO KENOSHA, HARVARD, MCHENRY AND ELBURN AND INBOUND TRAINS TRAVELING TO CHICAGO OGILVIE TRANSPORTATION CENTER ARE CURRENTLY HALTED DUE TO POLICE ACTIVITY AT THE DOWNTOWN STATION. TRAINS WILL BE DELAYED FOR AN UNDETERMINED AMOUNT OF TIME. WE ARE ASKING PASSENGERS TO SEEK ALTERNATE TRANSPORTATION THIS EVENING.

i was just passing by between 2:30 and 2:45

Isn't there a connection between CNW and MILW tracks somewhere near CUS and CPT? Does that mean some UP district trains could be staged from CUS-north side? It seems like a disaster to cancel a significant amount of UP trains, as that's how half of the North and Northwest suburbs get home.

I think there's double slip switches over by Tower A-2 (Western Ave), where the UP-W crosses the MILW-W/NW and NCS districts.

Couldn't they have just short-turned each line's trains at the first outlying station for each line? Each of those coincidentally has a CTA station nearby, which would delay commuters because of the transfer times, but not as much as simply shutting down the whole downtown terminal. And I wonder who actually made the call for shutting OTC down completely. Could have been a CPD move, but it also seems like something UP would do in its recent streak of bad customer service. EricL and I were talking about it last night and he put it pretty well that "Grain, coal, and automobiles don't know any better when the train isn't moving," and maybe UP is thinking its Metra riders are no different.

Tadman wrote:Isn't there a connection between CNW and MILW tracks somewhere near CUS and CPT? Does that mean some UP district trains could be staged from CUS-north side? It seems like a disaster to cancel a significant amount of UP trains, as that's how half of the North and Northwest suburbs get home.

A-2 interlocking is equipped with double-slip switches that can enable trains from UP/W to be staged from CUS's north side, and this would've been the only line where this could be done feasibly. You'd be stretching the capacity a bit, both at CUS and along the triple-tracked stretch between there and A-2, but it's doable, and trains probably could've ran on, or close to their regular schedules. Wouldn't work as well for the other two UP lines; UP/NW could theoretically detour via NCS to Deval, but there's no CN-UP connection there. And for extreme logistical reasons, UP/N would be exempt from this detour arrangement as well; although the trackage connects in a roundabout way, at least one reverse move would be required, and too many stations would be bypassed.

Getting the word out about these detours to regular OTC commuters would've been a mighty challenge, and guaranteed to create more confusion in an already chaotic situation. Metra was fortunate that the situation was resolved shortly after 5pm, and Metra's "load and go" decision probably was the best move; since the regular schedules had long been shot to hell. All they could do by that time was just bite the bullet, and catch up later...

byte wrote:And I wonder who actually made the call for shutting OTC down completely. Could have been a CPD move, but it also seems like something UP would do in its recent streak of bad customer service.

Given the circumstances, it seems a little unfair to criticize the shutdown and claim that anybody was wrong for doing so, be it Metra, UP, CPD, building management, or anybody else. I don't know about everybody else, but to me, having my outbound delayed an hour and a half is a minor inconvenience when CPD is trying to lockdown a multiple-homicide situation.

And yeah, I have to back the load-and-go rather than some re-routings that would be understood mainly by rail enthusiasts and not at all by average commuters.

byte wrote:Couldn't they have just short-turned each line's trains at the first outlying station for each line? Each of those coincidentally has a CTA station nearby, which would delay commuters because of the transfer times, but not as much as simply shutting down the whole downtown terminal. And I wonder who actually made the call for shutting OTC down completely. Could have been a CPD move, but it also seems like something UP would do in its recent streak of bad customer service. EricL and I were talking about it last night and he put it pretty well that "Grain, coal, and automobiles don't know any better when the train isn't moving," and maybe UP is thinking its Metra riders are no different.

At the time this happened (IIRC around 3:15), I'd guess most equipment was out of position, probably a the western ave yard waiting moves back into OTC to get crew and load up.

Since a large portion of the crew was in Lockdown at OTC, they couldn't go anywhere

Similarly, I suspect moves to Union Station by UP trains would have required qualified Pilots as the regular UP engineers would not have been qualified on the MD lines to Union Station, and would not be allowed to take trains in there.

Also, add to that the fact the Conducters et all were still locked down inside OTC means even if they had got trains to Union, there wouldn't have been enough crew to work them

all in all, not much option for them but to do what they did. Fortunately, the shutdown was lifted by about 5pm