Least safe stations

Which CTA stations would you say are the least safe late at night or any other time?

My friend who works for CTA says the stations on the green line south of 35th-Bronzeville-IIT and the red line south of Sox-35th is a rough area of Chicago and doesn't recommend riding there.

Yeah pretty much towards the old 63rd Street EL towards Englewood/Jackson Park which is as bad as the South Bronx, NY, but I think Howard-Wilmette is pretty safe and so is Lake on the Green Line and O' Hare on the Blue Line

Robert Paniagua wrote:Which CTA stations would you say are the least safe late at night or any other time?........Yeah pretty much towards the old 63rd Street EL towards Englewood/Jackson Park which is as bad as the South Bronx, NY, but I think Howard-Wilmette is pretty safe and so is Lake on the Green Line and O' Hare on the Blue Line

My take is that the original question makes no sense whatsoever. Or is the questioner planning on starting a crime spree and wants to skew the demographics. Plus some additional facts are in error. First, in Chicago it's "L", not El. Second, more crimes happen on Green and Blue lines west of the Loop, not south of the Loop. Plus I believe the number one station in statistics is Jackson/State, Jackson Dearborn, and that's DOWNTOWN...in the Loop. Third, take a walk along Howard ST at night and tell me how safe you "feel." And given the recent criminal activities headlined in all the media in Lakeview and Lincoln Park, don't the residents of those areas usually say they "feel safe" or is it "safer"?

But maybe the original poster was just planning some night photography. My advice...don't flash those cameras anywhere in the city at night.

David Harrison

Every CTA station has an employee in the booth there whenever it's open, be it an actual station agent or one of those sub-contracted Securitas guards. In the past I've taken revenue trains south of 35th to both the 95th street terminal of the Red Line and both 63rd st terminals of the Green line. Sure, I got some funny looks but no one bothered me. The situation might have been different had I left the station and started milling around neighborhoods that were unfamiliar to me, but the stations are pretty safe.

But maybe the original poster was just planning some night photography. My advice...don't flash those cameras anywhere in the city at night.

Yeah, that's what I was going to do, just to avoid unsafe areas David. I was going especially in the Brown Line (during my next time in Chicago)

RP: I will second Byte and mention that I felt a little out of place in certain areas back in my 1973-1988 Chicago
visiting days - I remember learning about Chicago and the CTA because my Uncle was a CTA motorman from 1958-1986 and my desire was to explore Chicago using the CTA.

The places I recall to be on guard were(Names-NOT color lines)were:

The Englewood and Jackson Park lines S of 35th Street-this line travels thru Chicago's toughest South Side neighborhoods-43/Indiana I remember being the heart of the South Side Ghetto then.

The Lake line west of Halsted and east of Austin(in the vicinity of the Oak Park line) went thru some of the toughest West Side neighborhoods but ended up at Lake/Harlem in the center of Oak Park with the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District nearby. That contrast between the West Side and Oak Park W of Austin always amazed me.

I also noticed the Dan Ryan line mentioned-it was in the center of that expressway(I-94)but it also goes thru some tough South Side neighborhoods also S of Sox-35th Station. On its way towards 95/State you pass thru remnants of the Robert Taylor Homes in the 47th street vicinity-once one of Chicago's toughest housing projects.

One thing I learned about Chicago and the CTA back then was about its unwritten code of racial polarization from neighborhood to neighborhood and on some lines mentioned - I never had a problem myself in my travels but I occasionally would be the only white person on a bus or train meaning as my Uncle stressed that the POTENTIAL for trouble was there.

From reading about Chicago as it is today it seems that this racial polarization has toned down somewhat but just be careful-go out and explore and just use your inner and common sense-if it doesn't feel right to be in a certain place you are more then likely right.

Memories and insight by MACTRAXX

The areas on the south side don't have as much crime as they used to because the Robert Taylor housing projects are pretty much gone from that service area, which is roughly wedged between the Red and Green lines. This isn't to say that everyone living in them was a criminal but just that there are less people using the service in general, so of course there's going to be less crime. I would hypothesize (though I don't have actual ridership numbers in front of me) that the Green line took a harder hit, as it lost owl service some time ago, there are long gaps between stations with no visible community demand to fill them, and trains pretty much top out at six cars (the East 63rd branch isn't even capable of holding 8-car trains and I've never heard any proposal to fix this).

The Green Line's situation was worsened (in my opinion, of course...) by the Rev. Arthur Brazier and The Woodlawn Organization (T. W. O.), who led the charge in the mid-90s demanding that a good chunk of the East-63rd branch be torn down, to spur on development (how that would work is not clear to me). Years later there's not a whole lot going on over there, with lots and lots of vacant land that T. W. O. probably hoped would be built on. If Chicago gets the olympics (much of which will be staged in nearby Washington Park), that'll probably gentrify the heck out of the cottage grove neighborhood and price most of its residents right out of their homes. Here's roughly how I think it'll boil down:

1.) If Chicago does get the games, developers will come in and put up new residential housing and rehabilitate any vacant buildings they can get their hands on, make a fortune leasing them during the games.

2.) The developers will then sign long term leases or sell their property outright after the games. The majority of those renting/buying will have higher income than Woodlawn's current residents. Higher income residents will be the most likely to move in here, because they can afford automobiles - which they will need, because service on the Green line isn't that great and a good chunk of it was torn down.

3.) Property values in the area will increase in general, and places like Starbucks will start popping up on 63rd street, to cater to the new higher-income residents (probably either "yuppies" or college students at the nearby U of C). 63rd street will once again be a "bustling corridor."

4.) Landlords who didn't get bought out before the Olympics will realize that they, too, can get more for their property and will price existing Woodlawn residents out of their homes. At the same time, some low-income homeowners will be priced out of them due to increasing property taxes.

5.) Sometime down the road the Cottage Grove/Woodlawn area will wind up looking like Wicker Park. Around this time, new residents will start grumbling about how the CTA service is inadequate, which will result in a push to extend it back eastward...

I think it's pretty much intevitable that that section of the south side will improve. It's just a shame it'll displace most of the current residents in the process, mostly because an overly-vocal few proclaimed that the "L" wasn't good for them.

Byte's reply reminds me of what I heard happened in the Bronx when the last segment of the 3rd Ave EL was torn down in 1973 or so. The thought was the neighborhood would improve with the street in sunlight, but the opposite happened.