After decades of riding CTA, here’s what I learned about staying safe

A Red Line train travels towards the 95the Street station on the South Side, Aug. 2. (Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times)

I was born and raised in the city’s then mostly white ethnic 10th Ward, and from 1978 through mid-2015, I was a near-daily rider on the CTA.

Starting in the fall of 1978, I attended the old Loop College — now Harold Washington College — on East Lake Street, just off Michigan Avenue. To get to class, I’d start my pre-dawn commute by catching the #30 South Chicago bus, then transferring to the #106 East 103rd bus to get to the Red Line at 95th Street. At day’s end, my pockets were filled with change, paper transfers and tokens.