Teen's/Youth Groups on CTA buses

[MRChiCity]

Good evening and I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday.

I would like to here some inside stories from operators and passengers on how they dealt with teenagers and youth groups on board buses? Do you have to keep a extra eye on teenagers even youth groups that are accompanied by Chaperons? Thanks.

[Guest]

Good evening and I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday.

I would like to here some inside stories from operators and passengers on how they dealt with teenagers and youth groups on board buses? Do you have to keep a extra eye on teenagers even youth groups that are accompanied by Chaperons? Thanks.

This would be a question for a school bus company! They normally handle groups alongside with chaperones. But It sounds like your asking if this is referring to a "chartered" CTA bus???. CTA no longer operates this service. But I can tell you from experience dealing with school kids in my time at CTA. Anytime I had disturbances on board my bus with kids. I would deal with it either two ways, I either just called the cops to deal with them! Or as in a couple of incidents on the west side and one incident at ETHS, I deliberately rendered the bus out of service and ordered all the kids off because they were just way too out of control not to mention creating a serious safety hazard for everyone around me! And in one incident someone possibly a student from Lake View H.S. pulled the rear door emergency exit handle "cherry" on my #80 Irving Park bus while I was in motion. Pulling the "cherry" immediately engages the brakes and stops the bus. I immediately ordered everyone off the bus and told them to take the next bus! I took no b.s. from any school kids!

[Busjack]

5750 is correct that federal regulations prohibit recipients of federal capital money from running charter service, so the school buses would probably now handle it.

[artthouwill]

I think the original poster;s intent was in regard to groups ridimg CTA, not necessarily as a charter. I have seen large youth groups with adult supervision riding on CTA buses and trains, and for the most part they were well behaved. I can't say for sure if these groups were CPS students, though I highly doubt it. They seemed to be more along the lines of either private schools or some type of youth program taking children out on some sort of field trip. In that regard, this is certainly plausible so as long as the proper CTA fares are paid. That might be a little more difficult with Ventra (all of the groups I saw were either pre-Ventra or before the transit cards expired).

[MRChiCity]

While on the subject, I would like to know how common it was for kids to ring the,"stop request" bell just for the sake of ringing it? This used to happen when I would take the 422 home from New Trier High School, at one point the operator turned off the bell and if you wanted off you had to walk up to the front.