Statements and Responses

Does CTA Boss Dorval Carter Use Public Transit? Records Show He Swiped Pass Once In 2021

https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/05/01/does-cta-boss-dorval-carter-use-public-transit-records-show-he-swiped-pass-once-in-2021/ 

May 1, 2023

Commuters Take Action is disappointed to hear about CTA President Dorval Carter's low utilization of public transit; however, we're not surprised. The only way President Carter could stand in front of the CTA board and deliver positive Meeting the Moment updates month after month is if he truly doesn't understand the current state of the CTA—and his lack of usage makes it clear that he does not.

The average commuter takes public transit five days a week—both ways—which means that in just two weeks, they would average 20 trips. That’s already more than President Carter managed to use the CTA in two years. Chicagoans who rely on transit use it far more than that. They take buses and trains to grocery stores, schools, social events, and community gatherings. Public transit is a vital asset that gives our city freedom to work, move, and gather.

President Carter averaged just 8.5 trips per year over the last two years, a number that shows he is utterly out of touch with the reality of regular Chicagoans who rely on the CTA. While commuters have experienced endless schedule disruptions, late arrivals, and ghost buses and trains, President Carter has been presumably driving to work each day—while taking a 33% raise. Compare that to the countless Chicagoans who have lost wages or work because they don't have a reliable way to get around.

President Carter's disregard for the people he presumably serves is so blatant that it borders on contempt. In two years, he's claimed CTA service has improved while the number of buses and trains actually running has stayed flat. Riders have continued to have their jobs and lives disrupted by the system's unreliability—all while President Carter patted himself on the back in between his eight trips per year. 

President Carter's performance has already proven he's unfit for his role. And with the news that he doesn't even utilize the system he runs, we can't help but wonder: What will it take for the CTA board and Chicago's leadership to see that he needs to be replaced?

The CTA needs a competent leader who believes in public transit—who lives and breathes it. At the very least, the CTA needs a leader who actually uses public transit. 

We are calling for Dorval Carter to resign immediately, and for our city's leaders to only consider a replacement who fully understands the challenges and unreliability of the current system, and has a vision and a plan for increasing transit service and infrastructure. What an asset it could be to have a leader who cares. 

Commuters Take Action use Blue Line cameras to showcase need for more frequent service

April 17, 2023

During the morning rush hour on Monday, April 17th, 2023, Commuters Take Action (CTAction) took over CTA’s Blue Line live video feed to show the desperate need for more frequent service on Chicago’s crucial transit line. Since March 2023, CTA has been providing a video stream of the Logan Square, California, Western (O’Hare), Damen, Division and Chicago Blue Line stations on weekdays 7-10am to “[help] customers make decisions on when is the best time to ride.” Members of CTAction made signs with the message “RUN MORE TRAINS/COMMUTERS TAKE ACTION” and pointed them at the cameras at each of the six broadcasted stations.

Ever since March 2020, the quality of service on the CTA has been deteriorating. After not acknowledging any disruptions for more than two years, the CTA unveiled their “Meeting the Moment” plan to restore service in August of 2022. Although the CTA’s updated schedules moved us closer to the truth, they also made clear that scheduled service on the blue line has been decimated. The overall number of scheduled trains is down by 21%. The busiest period of rush hour service, between 8:00 and 9:00 am, has seen a reduction from 21 trains per hour to only 10 trains per hour (at California station towards downtown and Forest park). And despite these drastic cuts, the CTA hasn’t been able to consistently deliver even on this - between March 27th and April 14th, the Blue Line has only run the full scheduled 10 trains only 6 out of 15 weekdays. Dispatching trains at consistent intervals also isn’t CTA’s strong suit - despite scheduling trains every 6 minutes, waits of 15 minutes or more during rush hour aren’t uncommon. Even after changing the Blue Line schedule three times since last summer, we rarely see scheduled service delivery above 90%. Anything less than 100% is a failed transit system.

CTA service is essential to keeping the city moving and ensuring Chicagoans can get to work and their loved ones. Workers commuting during rush hour don’t have the luxury to go into work later or not at all if their trains are too crowded to board. Reliable transit options are especially important now given the extensive Kennedy Expressway construction. given While CTAction appreciates the CTA’s gesture, it doesn’t help to solve anything at all. If nothing else, these cameras enable anyone to stalk and track the public, posing a safety threat. Riders on platforms echo the message shown by CTAction - run more trains. Only more frequent and reliable service can make the blue line into the kind of rapid transit that the city can be proud of once again.

Here are some recent reports we received from riders about Blue Line service:

• “Same as every day this week, it’s half an hour wait or longer until a forest park bound train shows up because most of them are UIC trains and my work is substantially further west than that. it has made me 20+ minutes late to work every single day this week.”

• “Got ghosted by a train after waiting 20 minutes, and now there’s another 25 till the next”

• “Arrived to Logan Square at 8:27am, and just missed a Forest Park bound train. The next train was listed in 13 min, with followers every 2-5 min. An unacceptable wait for rush hour, but very much the norm. Only 32 min later of watching Ghost trains disappear from the board on a completely packed train platform, did they announce trains were running with major delays due to mechanical issues at Addison.”

• “8:30am and the next train isn’t for 20 minutes. Platform is full.”

• “A fellow transit rider was pissed of by the wait and said “man, I gotta get a car” - we deserve reliable transit during rush hour and every hour of the day”

• “Dealing with a 40 minute wait when I just really need to get home from work. crying at the train station right now from frustration and exhaustion.”

• “This morning I had to wait for the second or third train to come through in order for there to be space for me to board. I was late to my work because CTA still does not run enough trains to meet rush hour demand. “

Find this statement at ctaction.org/statements, and keep up to date with Commuters Take Action at twitter.com/ctaaction. Riders can see CTA’s blue line stream at transitchicago.com/blue-line-video/.

CTA April 2023 Scorecard and Board Meeting

Commuters Take Action (CTAction) welcomes new additions to CTA’s “Meeting the Moment” scorecard. After months of lack of transparent updates on operator hiring, the CTA finally included statistics on the vital bus and rail operator staffing levels. However, being able to see these numbers doesn’t provide such an optimistic outlook. Compared to a year ago, the CTA has almost 10% less rail operators and virtually the same number of bus operators. Given the CTA’s inability to modernize the rail operator hiring and training process, we remain skeptical that this trend can be turned around. President Carter mentioned that the CTA is able to graduate rail operator classes of 20 students approximately every two months. With current attrition trends, these new operator additions would barely break even, but would not get the agency any closer to restoring full budgeted headcount.

For months, President Carter has been giving bullish updates on how service is improving thanks to aggressive hiring - however, it is now more than evident that any percentual service delivery improvements are almost entirely due to service cuts. Still missing from the report is a breakdown of how CTA’s so-called “service optimizations” have actually affected each route’s scheduled service frequency.

CTAction has also been unimpressed with the new ‘L’ schedules that came into effect on 3/26. A few weeks into effect, every line except for the orange line has had multiple days with service delivery below 90%. Since this is the fourth time CTA has re-shuffled their schedules since last summer, and given (the now known) stagnant number of rail operators, there’s no reason for CTA to be unable to publish accurate schedules. Especially on the blue line, service delivery continues to be dreadful, with train headways becoming even more inconsistent than ever. The occurrences of two bunched trains and then nothing for over 20 minutes are all too common. To keep up to date with daily ‘L’ service stats, follow https://twitter.com/ctaaction or check out http://cta.brandonmcfadden.com

Lastly, we welcome the upcoming reinstatement of the Citizens Advisory Board (CAB). It is a crucial body to assure that rider feedback is heard by CTA leadership. As it is mandated by Illinois state law, we’re still unsure how it was ever allowed to lapse, and we believe accountability for this negligence needs to be taken. Chicagoans can submit their applications for the CAB by 4/28/2023 at https://transitchicago.com/citizens-advisory-board 

CTA 'L' Schedule Changes 3/26/2023

https://www.transitchicago.com/service-changes-designed-to-provide-better-service-along-blue-line-ohare-branch-/

Effective March 26th, 2023, the CTA is updating all of the rail L schedules, with the most drastic changes on the blue line. This is the 2nd large change to rail schedules in the past 6 months, and a 3rd one for the blue line. At Commuters Take Action, we hope that the CTA can consistently deliver close to 100% of this schedule on all L routes. If this cannot be achieved, these changes are practically pointless. Up until now, we've been seeing many routes’ daily percentages in the 70's.

Despite CTA president Carter making promises that L service is improving in his latest board meeting report, these schedules paint a different picture. The new schedules now represent an 18% reduction of service compared to early 2020 (scheduled service was 17% in February 2023 and 12% in January 2023 versions of the schedules). Not mentioned in the press release, red, purple and yellow lines all saw about a further 10% service cut compared to last month.

On the blue line, the scheduled service was increased on the O'Hare branch, but further cut on the Forest Park branch, resulting in 38% cut compared to early 2020. As customary, the CTA isn’t eager to share the news about cutting service in their press release. The CTA notes an addition of two extra AM rush hour trains, but looking at the crucial 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM hour at the California station for Loop bound trains, there's still only 10 of them scheduled. This same one hour block used to have 21 trains pre-pandemic. To see our complete analysis of these schedule changes, visit https://www.ctaction.org/service-cuts

Much about the publishing of these new schedules feels amateurish. The CTA unveiled these less than two days before their effective date. As of evening of 3/24/2023, there were no posted notices at L stations about these changes. Riders deserve better communication so that they can adjust their trip planning accordingly. Additionally, some of the new timetables denote train times as "every 20 minutes". With such miserable intervals for rapid transit, riders deserve to be informed of specific arrival times rather than a general 20 minute window. No other agency provides such ambiguous schedules as the CTA.

Illinois State Senate Transportation Committee Special Hearing 3/14/2023

My name is Morgan Madderom and I am an organizer with Commuters Take Action. We are a collective of frustrated Chicago transit riders calling for reliable service and transparency. Since the onset of the pandemic, the Chicago Transit Authority’s service has deteriorated significantly and thousands of commuters are victims to ghost buses and late rides every day. For a long time, the agency was quiet and pushed their message retaining full service, while the reality was far from that. Only after mounting public pressure from the press and organizations like ours did the CTA admit something was wrong with their “Meeting the Moment Plan”.

This plan promised honest communication with riders, accurate schedules and transparent communication with riders. Since then, the CTA has done little to eliminate ghost buses and trains, and pursued their strategy of “optimizing” schedules. Updated L and bus schedules are closer to reality, but the CTA has never acknowledged what everyone knows - that service has been cut. Overall, buses are scheduled with 10% less service than pre-pandemic. On the L, it’s 17%. Some of the worst hit lines are the Madison bus with 23% of service eliminated. 79th street bus is down by 17% and LaSalle bus by a staggering 38%. Last month, CTA decided to further cut the blue line service, and didn’t even bother to announce this change to riders. This crucial line to the airport is now down 39% compared to pre-pandemic.

Even after reducing scheduled trains the CTA is not even able to meet the demand of these schedules, with 3 out of every 10 red line trains getting canceled. We are sympathetic to CTA’s struggles to find bus and train operators, but the agency needs to inform their riders better about how much their essential transportation has been affected. Despite these drastic cuts, President Carter gives monthly updates praising the CTA’s improvements - but riders don’t see any improvements. 

In May, Commuters Take Action will have been organizing around poor CTA service for a year. We ask that the CTA provide fair work conditions to improve retention and hiring, publish accurate schedules and a working tracker, and provide transparency every step of the way.

CTA March 2023 Scorecard

https://www.transitchicago.com/-cta-continues-to-improve-schedules-for-more-reliable-service-in-february/ and https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/Meeting_the_Moment_March_2023.pdf 

Commuters Take Action Response:

Commuters Take Action (CTAction) is once again disappointed in CTA's lack of contextualization in their "Meeting the Moment" updates. In these monthly press releases, CTA praises itself for the continued improvements it's been making. While the need for more accurate schedules has been a core ask of CTAction since its inception, the CTA also needs up to be upfront about how it's achieving better service reliability percentages - by cutting scheduled service. CTA highlights that in February, rail service went up from 80.6% to 82.6%. However, they fail to mention that as of February 1st, they quietly cut down the blue line schedule, which is now down 39% compared to pre-pandemic. We welcome more realistic schedules, but changes need to be communicated to riders. The service on all other lines (except for the pink) actually went down by a few percent in February, as can be seen CTA's own interactive scorecard. In total number of train trips run each day, there's been no upward trend between June 2022 and today; the 'L' continues to hover around 1100 trips on average (this can be seen at cta.brandonmcfadden.com). Nowhere in their press releases does CTA tell riders how much they've cut each bus or rail route, instead they insist on using the ambiguous term "optimizations". If CTA was committed to honest dialogue with riders, they wouldn't hide the fact that buses have been cut by 10% and 'L' by 17%. Instead, CTAction had to do their own analysis, which can be seen at ctaction.org/service-cuts. CTAction submitted a public comment at this month's Chicago Transit Board meeting, but unfortunately president Carter was quick to dismiss our observations and pressed on with his narrative where CTA is doing a stellar job of improving service. At this point, we'd consider it a miracle to hear the words "we cut service" from anyone at the CTA leadership.

CTA February 2023 Scorecard

https://www.transitchicago.com/meetingthemoment/scorecard/ and https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/Meeting_the_Moment_February_2023.pdf

Commuters Take Action Response:

Commuters Take Action welcomes the new additions to CTA's February "Meeting the Moment" scorecard. The increased detail of data in regards to service delivered on both bus and rail lines is a welcome step towards more transparency. Riders can now see the history of service on a route-by-route basis.

The bus service improvement from 83% to 93% is commendable, however it should be noted that this is as a result of new reduced schedules, not because more buses were dispatched. CTA's new bus scheduled overall cut service by 10%, with many busy routes seeing cuts of about 20% (see ctaction.org/service-cuts).

To CTAction, the most alarming change is the 2/1/2023 adjustment of blue line schedules. This was mentioned by president Carter during the February 8th CTA Board meeting but not publicized otherwise. This change results in blue line service being cut by 39% compared to pre-pandemic. Rush hour service is cut by more than 50% and weekend wait times have increased from 6 minutes to 15 minutes. The blue line now has the worst weekend interval (along with the yellow line), despite being the 2nd busiest and serving O'Hare International airport. Despite these major cuts, CTA still fails to follow this new schedule - for example, Monday February 6th only saw 84% of trains. We continue to receive daily reports of overcrowding on the blue line from our riders. We welcome a more realistic schedule, but we are disappointed by CTA's absolute lack of efforts to communicate this change. Lastly, we'd like to see a plan to return the blue line to full service by the CTA.

In regards to hiring updates, we wish the CTA best of luck with its ambitious 700 bus operator hiring goal for 2023. What's still missing from the scorecard is a glimpse into net operator gains/losses (i.e. attrition). Additionally, rail operator hiring updates are still missing from the presented statistics.

CTA New Year's Eve Service

Commuters Take Action Response:

For 2022 New Year's Eve celebrations, CTA advertised increased service on red, blue and yellow lines. But just as a seasoned Chicago transit rider would expect, the actual delivered service was far worse than advertised. Shown above is blue line arrival data for the California station between midnight (12:00am) and 5:59am on 1/1/2023. The "Scheduled" column reflect the number of regularly scheduled trains on a Sunday early morning and doesn't even account for the advertised extra service. "Actual Arrivals"  column show how many trains really showed up at the station for each 1-hour block. At least 42 trains should've showed up in total for both directions, but only 19 did in reality - with some gaps of over an hour between trains.

While we are somewhat sympathetic to the CTA's worker shortage; we are deeply disappointed at the continued inaccurate communications issued by CTA staff. The announcement that should have been issued that scheduled service will be significantly reduced. The CTA is continuing to post such misinformation on a regular basis, and at this point we must call it what it is - negligence and absolute disregard to CTA riders.

CTA Response:

We have reached out to the CTA media department for a response, but were ghosted. However, Brian Steele gave a typical non-answer on the topic in a Chicago Streetsblog article.