Last Thursday, both on my way to work and back, the train conductor announced multiple times that they would start checking the tickets on Monday.
Since the beginning of the lockdown, conductors stopped checking the tickets, although in the beginning, they were still going through the trains. And then they stopped completely. Tickets were on sale, and I purchased my monthly all that time. But everybody knew that tickets were not checked.
Although it was announced multiple times on the previous days, and on the train this morning, it turned out there were plenty of people who didn’t get the message, quite literally!
As I learned later from the brief conversation with one of the attendants, today was the first day Metra staff was back on the job. I didn’t connect it in the morning when I saw that Palatine train station was finally open. I was hoping they will open soon because it was getting colder every day, and they finally did. But it was a part of one big “back to work” thing. So my hypothesis that they didn’t realize how many people are commuting.
They still didn’t have conductors walking the trains, that the idea was that they would check the tickets before boarding at after getting off the trains at Ogilvie. To make things easier:), they closed a couple of exits.
And so that’s how it looked! As I said, many people didn’t get the message, so they stood at the bottom of the stairs trying either to find their ticket on the app or to buy it.
Hello, six feet apart!
In the morning, I was hoping that they won’t do it again tomorrow. In reality, nobody was checking at the platform when I was boarding the train back. We’ll see what will happen tomorrow morning 🙂
Hettie's Reflections 