Chicago Transit Authority President Dorval Carter Jr. gets off a Yellow Line train at the Oakton station in Skokie before a news conference on Jan. 5, to mark the resumption of service on the Yellow Line. Service on that line had been suspended nearly two months, after a train crashed into a snow-removal machine on the tracks near the Howard Street station.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
City Council members are turning up the heat on embattled CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. to either resign his $376,060-a-year job or be fired by Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Nineteen alderpersons — and counting — have signed a non-binding resolution demanding Carter’s ouster. The resolution, expected to be introduced at the May 22 City Council meeting, is being championed by Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) and Matt Martin (47th), two members of Johnson’s Council leadership team.
It lays out a lengthy bill of particulars against Carter — including service reliability, hiring, security, ridership and post-pandemic recovery — to explain why nearly half the Council has decided to join Gov. J.B. Pritzker in demanding a CTA leadership change.
Vasquez called the resolution “the equivalent of a vote of no-confidence” that gives voice to disgruntled transit riders.
“The mayor’s been saying he’s evaluating, but most of Chicago agrees that train has left the station and it’s time for new leadership,” Vasquez told the Sun-Times.
The time is now to bring the leadership crisis at the CTA to a head, Vasquez said.
With federal stimulus funds drying up and a combined $730 million fiscal cliff looming, the Illinois General Assembly is considering a proposal to consolidate the Chicago area’s four mass transit agencies — the RTA, CTA, Metra and Pace — into a single super-agency with beefed-up powers.
“It’s a bit of an inflection point where we need to figure out what we’re going to do," Vasquez said.
“When you’re asking for funds from the state or federal government, folks there to issue the funds are going to wonder what the leadership looks like to have the confidence to invest that money. If we’re not bouncing back the way other cities are, it might be harder to get those funds.”
CTA spokesperson Catherine Hosinski accused Vasquez of circulating a resolution that “contains both inaccurate information and misleading claims related to crime, services and hiring efforts.”
“The fact is bus and rail services have been added, ridership is trending upward, crime rates are decreasing and service is more reliable. All evidence that CTA’s recent efforts are working,” the statement said.
“CTA continues to deliver on its commitment and is on track to have enough personnel needed to provide bus and rail service matching pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2024.”
Johnson’s communications director Ronnie Reese responded to the resolution by saying: “The mayor doesn’t comment on personnel matters."
Martin argued that frequency and reliability, “particularly on the L” is “not where it needs to be.”
“The Brown Line, which bi-sects my ward diagonally — their service has had a 30% reduction relative to 2019 levels. And while that was increasing slightly — by just like 1% over prior months — most of the other lines saw a reduction in service,” Martin said.
“There was a commitment that service would start to improve in a significant way in the spring. That hasn’t happened. It’s time to find new leadership who will be able to move us forward in ways that all of our peer cities have seen. … We’ve laid out what needs to improve. ... We’ve given current leadership many months to achieve that. And it’s time for a change.”
Ald. Bill Conway (34th) said Carter has had “a long time and many chances to get CTA service back on track and has just not done it.”
“It’s amazing that Mayor Johnson chose to replace Dr. [Allison] Arwady, who got us through the pandemic, on a Friday night with no notice while keeping President Carter at least a year in light of all the issues the CTA has had,” Conway said.
During his inaugural address, Johnson had appeared to signal an imminent leadership change at the CTA.
“Our public transit system is unreliable and unsafe — so much so that many parents refuse to let their children ride, even when the CTA could be the pathway to opportunity and enrichment,” the mayor said that day.
Since then, however, Johnson has stuck with Carter.
When Pritzker joined the chorus and said there needed to be an “evolution of the leadership in order for us to get where we need to go with CTA,” Johnson dug in his heels, responding that the mayor alone decides who runs the CTA and, if Pritzker wanted to weigh in, he should run for the job.
Martin acknowledged Johnson might be sticking with Carter because, as a former Washington D.C. bureaucrat, Carter has been instrumental in planning and securing funding for the Red Line extension.
But, Martin added: “We have a lot of dynamic leaders … who can help usher through projects both big and small. If any particular project will stand or fall based on a single person, we’ve done something wrong in government.”
