I noticed in another thread today that someone had experienced a 40 minute delay with the Airport Transit System (ATS = the train that takes you between terminals).

Back in October I was waiting for a friend at ORD. They were delayed several hours, so I though I would hop on the ATS and head over to terminal 5 for a drink. (I believe that is the only place you can buy alcohol outside security.) ATS was stopped dead at the terminal 1 station. The train cars were completely full and it was quite a warm night, so everyone inside looked miserable. Obviously, I did not head to terminal 5, but I did check back 40 min later and the same train car was still there.

I am wondering if the ATS is starting to have reliability problems, which would not be good, as I use it coming from economy parking frequently. Has anyone else had this experience?

I was having a conversation with someone about this on Tuesday when it was not running. I have been very fortunate in the past 10 years of travel out of ORD, and other than a period a couple years ago when they were doing scheduled maintenance over a weeklong period (late night --> early morning hours...and unfortunately I had a few late & early flights during that time), I've only had a few times when the ATS was not running.