Railroads of Neglect

A Blue Line train bounced off its track and derailed in a fire that sent 1,000 passengers running for their lives in July 2006. Jon Hilkevitch and Monique Garcia of the Chicago Tribune read thousands of pages of investigative files and transcribed interviews of Chicago Transit Authority workers after the accident. Their story describes the gross lack of management and oversight by the nation's second-largest transit system, including interviews with workers who say they wrote their concerns on the walls of the subway because their superiors did not want to hear about the hazardous conditions.