Contracted security guards are being strategically deployed by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) as part of the agency’s ongoing, dynamic efforts to provide the most comfortable, safest commuting experience for customers.
To help address potential safety concerns and a recent uptick in people violating CTA’s Code of Conduct, security guards will have a more visible presence on the system during key hours of operation.
Since earlier this week, CTA security guards have been assigned to teams responsible for patrolling targeted locations during key hours of operation. This includes teams deployed to travel both the Red and Blue Line trains during the day and overnight hours. The Red and Blue Lines are CTA’s two busiest rail lines, operating 24 hours a day.
Security guards are a visible presence that can be a deterrent to improper behaviors on trains and buses, and in stations, CTA officials say. Guards will focus on a wide variety of customer engagements, including enforcing CTA’s Rules of Conduct, which prohibits activity such as smoking, taking up more than one seat, playing loud music, among other behaviors.
For more than two decades, security guards have been a key component of a larger, comprehensive strategy to provide a comfortable riding environment for customers. The CTA says it continues to work very closely with Chicago Police Department (CPD), which provides law enforcement for the CTA. Both uniformed and plainclothes officers are also deployed across the CTA system, all hours of the day.
Additionally, CTA is working to expand its partnership with social service agencies and Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services, which handles responses to homelessness and conducts outreach offering a variety of support and services.
CTA has used unarmed security guards for more than two decades, as a complement to the CPD.
