CTA President Dorval Carter outlined an ambitious vision for growing train lines and bus routes in Chicago — if the state legislature comes through with needed cash for the agency.
It was a bold concept from Carter as political discontent with his leadership has mounted, outlined at a lunch for the city’s business and political elite Thursday at City Club of Chicago. Carter framed it as his attempt to lay out a vision for the future of public transit, which state lawmakers have asked for as they grapple with a looming fiscal cliff once pandemic aid dries up in 2026 and a pending bill to wrest control of the embattled agency from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and consolidate it with the region’s other three transit agencies.
A revamped bus network with eight-minute frequencies on dozens of routes, five- to six-minute waits between trains at all times, more bus lanes and bus rapid transit systems, new train stations and extending rail lines could be Chicago’s, as long as the CTA has the support of the Illinois General Assembly, he said.
“These are all visionary ideas that bear continued discussion and progress, but they must be done by a transit agency that is not cut off at the knees, or suggested as pie in the sky, just because there is a belief that there’s not enough return on investment.”
Carter declined to put a price tag on how much additional funding he was seeking for the CTA from the state. Instead, he sought to put the ball in state lawmakers’ court to take action on the future of transit.
“Let’s be clear, what I laid out here is going to cost a lot of money,” he said. “But the question that the state legislature needs to grapple with is, what kind of commitments do they want to make to get to where we want to be.”
Even as Carter outlined a grand vision for the future, his transit agency has struggled in recent years to provide frequent, reliable and safe service. He has become the target of critics who have called for his resignation or firing, citing an unacceptable post-pandemic recovery they say has hobbled public transit in the nation’s third-largest city.
As pressure has mounted against Carter and lawmakers have weighed consolidating the CTA with the region’s other transit agencies, Carter has at times pushed back against his critics, blasting calls for him to be fired as racist and unfair, and sought to curry favor with key government officials. His talk Thursday was largely a reiteration of messaging he has pushed in recent months that focus should be on how transit is funded instead of governed.
He maintained the CTA was on the right track in its post-pandemic recovery, but said the funding foundation even before the pandemic was flawed. The CTA provides 84% of transit service in the region, but receives 46% of the funding, he said, making his case that investing in transit would provide a good return for the entire region.
Carter pointed to flaws in a four-decade old state transit funding formula that he called “discriminatory and racially charged” and that is “tantamount to transit welfare.” He characterized it as an effort by politicians in 1983 to sell the funding to city and suburban residents, nodding to a modern-day fight brewing in Springfield over transit governance and funding that is poised to have suburban and city interests vying for influence.
But he reiterated his sharp pushback against the idea to consolidate the region’s four transit agencies.
“It’s an easy pill to swallow, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper,” he said. “It’s much easier to say that bureaucracy is the problem, let’s rearrange a few things, than to make tough decisions and take tough votes about raising revenue. It is much easier to present governance as a solution to transit’s challenges than taking a hard look at policy decisions made in the past.”