the CTA<\/a> safer will be critical to increasing ridership, up 11% last year after a pandemic nosedive, Johnson said.<\/p>\n\u201cWe cannot have visitors coming through O\u2019Hare and being met with smoking and even other acts of violence,\u201d he said. \u201cSame thing goes for our most vulnerable population and those who rely upon public transportation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if he would consider banning smokers from the train system, the mayor didn\u2019t shy away from the possibility of the heavy-handed response.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s come up. We\u2019re exploring every single option,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But he took a more cautious approach when asked if his crackdown would include more arrests and citations. The city issued over 6,300 smoking tickets on the CTA in 2023, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like the Police Department is not citing these individuals. It\u2019s proven to not be enough, so that\u2019s why we are taking a more holistic approach,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s executive order comes on the heels of a similar City Council push led by Ald. Bill Conway, 34th. Conway introduced a resolution calling for the CTA to \u201csnuff out smoking\u201d last month signed by a council majority.<\/p>\n
The mayor did not contact Conway before moving ahead on his own crackdown effort, Conway said Tuesday. The downtown alderman said he was \u201chappy\u201d Johnson is taking the issue seriously, but urged the mayor to work with him.<\/p>\n
Conway shared doubts about the effectiveness of Johnson\u2019s plans. In lieu of public awareness campaigns and social worker outreach, the city should focus instead on data-driven law enforcement efforts, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really need it to be done in a data-driven way,\u201d Conway said. \u201cI believe additional enforcement here will more than pay for itself in terms of ridership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally Published: July 22, 2025 at 4:49 PM CDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Brandon Johnson promised Tuesday to crack down on smoking on Chicago Transit Authority trains and buses, latching…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":85573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5404,5386,1818,1370,728,50,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-85572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-cook-county","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-local-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-politics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114901852065489717","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}