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 R

See Full Page