A TikTok series of costumed commuters desperately chasing Chicago's L trains has become the most joyful thing to happen to public transit in years.
There is a universal human experience that transcends language, culture, and geography: the desperate sprint for a train whose doors are about to close. It happens every morning in Bengaluru, Tokyo, London, and New York. The bag swings wildly, the legs pump, the face contorts into a grimace of pure determination. Sometimes you make it. Often you don't. Either way, the people already on the platform are watching.
In Chicago, someone decided this daily indignity deserved an upgrade.
The rules of Catch That Train
The concept is beautifully simple. Content creator Charlie Clerk, who goes by 'Tre' online, films people in elaborate costumes sprinting to board CTA trains before the doors close. The costumes have included the Grinch, a banana, a dinosaur, Spider-Man, and several characters that defy easy categorisation. The production values are zero. The joy is enormous.
The format works because it takes something mundane and stressful — the daily will-I-miss-my-train anxiety — and turns it into absurdist theatre. When the Grinch makes the train, fist-pumping as the doors close behind him, it is genuinely, unreasonably funny. That particular video has racked up over 70 million views.
The series has spawned imitators across the United States, but Chicago's version remains the original and the best, partly because the CTA's elevated 'L' stations provide a natural stage — the platform, the stairs, the turnstile, and the closing doors create a built-in narrative arc.
Why transit agencies are paying attention
What makes Catch That Train interesting beyond its entertainment value is the effect it has had on how young Americans talk about public transit. In a country where trains are often framed as a policy debate or an infrastructure deficit, this series treats the CTA as a stage — something worth engaging with, not just enduring.
CTA itself has embraced the trend cautiously, retweeting some of the videos while reminding riders not to block closing doors. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) in Boston and SEPTA in Philadelphia have both seen copycat versions on their systems.
Transit advocacy groups have noted, with some irony, that a TikTok series has done more to make train-riding look fun than most official marketing campaigns manage in a decade.
Could it happen in Bengaluru?
Namma Metro's stations are designed quite differently from Chicago's elevated platforms — the platform screen doors on the Purple and Green lines would make a last-second sprint less photogenic (and considerably less dangerous). The Yellow Line's elevated stations, with their open platforms, might be a better stage.
But the underlying emotion is identical. Anyone who has watched the last metro pull away from Majestic at 11 PM, or broken into a jog at Indiranagar because the platform announcement started while they were still on the escalator, knows exactly what Catch That Train is about.
Sometimes the best thing a train can do for a city is not move people from A to B, but give them a story worth telling.