Experts raise concerns about CTA after Yellow Line derailment in Rogers Park
Almost 24 hours after a derailment made a mess of the Red, Purple, and Yellow lines in Chicago, the CTA continued to investigate the cause of the incident, and experts were raising concerns about what they called a troubling pattern.
During the evening rush on Thursday, a Yellow Line train derailed in the rail yard near the Howard terminal in the Rogers Park neighborhood, prompting the CTA and firefighters to evacuate approximately 80 passengers from the train. No injuries were reported.
"Howard is a very complicated, intricate yard, with lots of traffic. So, it's a hot spot for possible derailments," said DePaul University professor and transportation expert Joe Schwieterman.
The derailment interrupted service on the Red, Purple, and Yellow lines for several hours.
Video from CBS Skywatch showed the front wheels on one car of a two-car Yellow Line train appeared to end up on a different set of tracks than the rest of the train.
"You look at this picture, you wonder if something happened with a switch, whether it was an open switch, or whether something about the speed or the wheel quality or something interacted with the rail," Schwieterman said.
It was at least the fifth derailment by a CTA train since February of 2025. Experts said this pattern is concerning and needs to be addressed.
"We've had a really bad period. I mean, the number of derailments is far more than we usually expect, even for a system of our size," Schwieterman said. "This is a pretty significant derailment. I mean, some derailments, the wheels, the axles just jump off the tracks and it can be reconfigured quickly. Here, we have a car that's kind of pushed over into the different mainline, it appears, suggesting either that there was some speed happening or something maybe gave way in the tracks."
Whether the derailment was the result of human error or a maintenance issue, Schwieterman said, "a system can't function with this many disruptions that occur."
CTA officials are still investigating what caused the derailment. A Yellow Line train crashed into a snow plow in the same rail yard in 2023, sending 16 people to the hospital.
"This is a system that's at least 80, 90 years old. It's, as is the case with any large system, the needs are aplenty and the resources are few," said P.S. Sriraj, director of the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Sriraj, who has a background in engineering and urban planning, said there are major infrastructure concerns here.
"Eventually, the infrastructure is going to give way, and it'll give way when you least expect it, and that may not have anything to do with what the agency has or has not done," he said.
The CTA did not immediately respond to requests for comment on concerns raised by Sriraj and Schwieterman.
"I think we are going to need full disclosure as to what is going on here. If the system has track conditions that have fallen below what we would consider safe, slow orders are likely going to happen around the system," Schwieterman said.
