No matter what time Rigo Osorio rides the CTA Red Line on his daily commute, he usually spots someone smoking.
“You see smoking people every time,” Osorio said as he waited for his train at the Belmont Red Line station on a recent evening. For Osorio, smoking is more than a nuisance.
“I have asthma,” he said. “But I don’t like to argue with nobody, so I just stay away.”
Osorio might keep his complaints to himself, but other CTA riders have piped up about smoking inside trains and at stations.
More than 14,000 complaints about smoking were filed to the CTA by email and through the agency’s chatbot over a 14-month period — between late April 2024, when the Chatbot first launched, and late June of this year — according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Red Line, the busiest CTA line, leads the system in smoking complaints. There were nearly 5,500 complaints about smoking sent by email and chatbot over the same period, according to the data.
In that same period, Blue Line riders filed nearly 3,500 smoking complaints, while Green Line riders filed nearly 1,800 .
Riders filed the most smoking complaints at the peak of afternoon commuting hours between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., according to an hourly analysis conducted by the Sun-Times.
Smoking complaints filed by email dropped in early 2020 and 2021 as ridership slumped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and began to rise in late 2021, peaking in 2024, according to the CTA data.
The data illustrates when and where smoking is plaguing CTA riders most. It’s also the kind of information that 34th Ward Ald. Bill Conway sought from the CTA, but he said he did not receive, when he introduced a nonbinding resolution in July imploring the system to do more to enforce its smoking ban.
“My office receives complaints about smoking on the CTA every day,” Conway said in an email. He personally has seen people smoking on the Red Line. “Riders reported to the [Regional Transit Authority] recently that smoking is their top complaint and deterrent to taking public transit.”
Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), who sits on the Committee on Transportation, said he also deals with smoking on his commute to City Hall.
“Almost every time I’ve been on, I can smell cannabis,” Vasquez said. “So it’s clear the behavior is occurring. The accountability part is the challenge.”
City Council members have grilled CTA officials on safety and service since Vasquez introduced and passed an ordinance requiring the agency’s president to attend quarterly meetings. Vasquez supported Conway’s resolution and hopes the measure will illustrate how smoking ordinances are being enforced, whether tickets are being paid and if violators are being escorted from trains.
“It’s absolutely fair to raise fines or have other punitive responses,” Vasquez said. “Because accountability is fair enough.”
The CTA uses the chatbot’s smoking complaint data to decide where its privately contracted security guards are deployed on “anti-smoking missions,” the CTA stated in an email. The CTA’s contracted, unarmed security guards inform riders of the policy but are unable to make arrests or issue tickets.
Chicago police have issued 3,486 citations for smoking on trains and buses through Sept. 20 this year, according to the CTA. In 2024, the police department issued 4,092 smoking citations. Citations can carry a $300 fine.
In about three dozen missions this year, police have arrested 33 people and issued 107 citations for smoking, a CTA spokesperson said. The CTA and police department would not provide information about how many of the arrests were made for smoking in 2023 and 2024.
The CTA said it also educates riders with “pre-recorded audio messages playing at stations and on vehicles, plus ads appearing on CTA’s rail digital displays reminding riders that smoking is illegal.”
Meanwhile, Mayor Brandon Johnson has argued that ticketing riders hasn’t worked and instead introduced his own executive order cracking down on smoking weeks after Conway’s measure. Johnson’s initiative put social workers at CTA stops and implemented anti-smoking campaigns.
On a recent weekday evening, a man could be seen smoking a hand-rolled cigarette on the platform of the Monroe Red Line subway station Downtown. Another person on the platform said she “had been sneaking a smoke on the train.”
Despite the data showing smoking complaints typically peak around the evening commute, Stella Spesia said smoking happens any time of day. Spesia works as a nurse and rides the Red and Brown Lines to work around 6:30 a.m. At least once a week she spots someone smoking on her train.
Other riders said they have noticed a decline in smoking.
“I think it’s not as frequent as it used to be,” said Red Line rider Nico Carrera. “I used to see a lot of smoking on the trains. I’ve never seen anyone get cracked down for it.”
But Igor Chrobotowicz, a student at DePaul, said the problem is few violators seem to be reprimanded.
“There just isn’t enough restrictions or people really enforcing it,” he said.
Leigh Giangreco is a freelance reporter.