As times get tougher at the CTA, Dorval Carter Jr., the agency’s embattled president, has been making himself notoriously scarce.
So, it was news when Carter made a rare public appearance last week to speak to the media, several hundred politicians, and civic and business leaders at the City Club of Chicago.
In a 45-minute speech, he laid out a glimmering vision for a future CTA, while pushing back on recent calls for a major consolidation of the area’s transit systems. The system is bouncing back from the pandemic, he argued, as he touted a “visionary” plan to transform the CTA into a “world-class” system.
To get there, he argued, the Illinois General Assembly should deliver a massive amount of new state funding.
“These are all visionary ideas that bear continued discussion and progress,” Carter declared, “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.”
How nice that Carter has a grand plan for the future.
But first, he needs to fix the problems of the present. That is, his agency’s record of unreliability, controversy and tragedy.
In the present, there is a burgeoning pile of reasons Chicagoans should wonder why this $376,000-a-year transit executive is still hanging onto his job.
Why is Carter still there?
Take, for starters, the alarming, repeat violence against CTA riders. Last Friday, a 32-year-old man was seriously injured in a stabbing on a CTA Orange Line train, according to the Chicago Police Department. Two male suspects escaped the scene at the Washington/Wells station.
The previous Saturday, three people attacked and robbed a passenger on the Red Line platform at Lake Street.
The senseless Labor Day shooting of four sleeping passengers on the Blue Line was not of Carter’s making. But it is a haunting reminder that the trains and buses of our city are unsafe. Riders who can are ditching the system, as the random violence continues.
Then there is Antia Lyons, a longtime CTA bus driver who died in summer 2023 after passing out behind the wheel of her bus. She was left unconscious for nearly an hour before help arrived, a Block Club Chicago investigation found.
Lyons, 63, had reportedly suffered a medical emergency while parked at a South Side terminal at the start of her route. She was later pronounced dead from heart complications.
“CTA supervisors neglected to check on her even though the bus never moved and subsequently failed to arrive at more than 50 scheduled stops,” Block Club reported last spring.
Also, a Block Club examination of Carter’s schedule shows he has spent more time traveling the world on CTA business than visiting CTA stations or attending staff events. “From the end of May 2023 to spring 2024, as CTA riders had to cope with frequent delays and filthy conditions, Carter spent nearly 100 days out of town at conferences,” Block Club reported last month.
Those trips took him to many places, including Pittsburgh; Orlando, Florida; Washington; Puerto Rico; Spain; New Zealand; and Australia. He was outside of Chicago 28% of the time. During the same period, Carter scheduled only nine field visits to CTA train stations and bus terminals.
If Carter were riding the CTA instead of traipsing around the world, he might notice that the service remains substandard.
I ride daily, sometimes several times a day. The schedules and bus tracker are often inaccurate. Ever see a bus go backward? It happens all the time on the CTA.
Yet, Carter remains at the helm.
“I think that there needs to be an evolution of leadership in order for us to get where we need to go with CTA,” Gov. JB Pritzker declared months ago.
We aren’t getting there. At least 29 aldermen have signed off on a resolution calling for Carter’s ouster. They have been laying into Carter for failing to meet with them or appear at City Council hearings. They blame him for persistent and widespread problems with reliability and safety.
The resolution was sent to the City Council’s Rules Committee, where legislation often goes to die.
Mayor Brandon Johnson could make Carter step down, but, inexplicably, continues to stand by him.
Carter’s defenders say the system is improving and credit his efforts to gain federal funding for the long-delayed $3.6 billion Red Line extension project on the Far South Side.
Lofty visions of “world-class” status are a lovely dream, but right now, the hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans who depend on the CTA need basic safety and reliability.
They are not getting that under Carter.
There’s a lot more under the dirty rug, I hear. I was riding and chatting with a bus operator the other day. The veteran driver confided, “You wouldn’t believe the things that go on in this system that the media doesn’t hear about!”
I asked to hear more.
No dice. That CTA employee wants to keep their job.
Should Carter keep his?
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Wednesday. Write to her at LauraLauraWashington@gmail.com.
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