CTA President Dorval Carter speaks with reporters after addressing the City of Club of Chicago on Thursday, September 19, 2024. (Nick Blumberg / WTTW News)
The solution to the Chicago area’s public transportation woes isn’t merging CTA, Metra and Pace into a single entity — it’s finally tackling the “decades-long, discriminatory and racially charged funding policies” that have left transit agencies “fighting over scraps,” according to CTA President Dorval Carter.
In a speech to the City Club of Chicago on Thursday afternoon, he laid out an ambitious vision for the future of his agency’s bus and rail service but said it was up to the Illinois General Assembly to finally provide the CTA with the resources it needs to be a world-class system.
“The gap between what people want and deserve and what we provide isn’t getting any smaller,” Carter said.
Earlier this year, state lawmakers introduced a measure that would merge the Chicago area’s three transit boards into a single, unified entity. The bill comes as the region’s public transportation system faces a combined $730 million budget deficit in 2026, after COVID-19 relief funding that’s been filling the gap left by the drop in fare revenue runs out. Carter, along with his Metra and Pace counterparts, has been participating in a series of hearings about the importance of transit prompted by the proposed restructuring. He has pushed back strenuously at the idea that a merger would result in cost savings or improve service.
“So why all the fixation on governance?” Carter said. “It’s an easy pill to swallow, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.”
Carter told attendees that expecting dramatic improvements from a new transit agency overlooks decades of underfunding, dating back to a 1983 funding formula designed to be politically acceptable but that failed to take into account the fact that CTA ridership vastly outstrips that of Pace or Metra.
“No single public service in Chicago touches as many individuals personally every day as CTA does,” Carter said.
Carter also said that previous service cuts have hampered the CTA’s ability to attract riders, another key piece of context he thinks merger conversations overlook. In particular, he highlighted cuts that hit in 1997 and during the Great Recession, reminding attendees of past “doomsday” budgets that slashed bus and train runs and drove down ridership.
“When frequency is cut, transit becomes less useful,” Carter said, “and it’s not surprising people stop taking it.”
To draw back riders, Carter laid out a number of bold proposals, including adding more than 20 new miles of bus-only lanes each year; boosting service on more than 40 bus routes to run 24/7 with eight minutes between buses; running trains every five to six minutes 24/7 to account for changing travel patterns; and improving airport access by extending the Green Line to Midway and connecting the Brown Line to the Blue Line at Jefferson Park. He also floated additional rail stations in areas where the population has increased and a new north-south midtown connector line, noting that current “L” lines function primarily to move people in and out of downtown.
As for his message to legislators, many of whom have said there should be no new transit funding without governance reforms, Carter said, “We’re not looking for a bailout. … You’ve done visionary things in Illinois in the past. Transit should be your next big visionary act.”
Speaking to reporters after the event, Carter declined to put a price tag on the plans he laid out.
“I have been asked by all the elected officials and legislators down in Springfield to lay out a vision for what that future could be, and I just did that,” he said. “The real question now is: Is the state legislature prepared to make the decisions they need to make to make that vision a reality? That’s what I’ll be working on the rest of this year until we have a solution to this problem.”
Earlier this week, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch told the City Club he didn’t expect any action on transit funding until late in the 2025 spring session, and said he’s confident that the working group of lawmakers charged with tackling transit will come up with a solution.
“We have to let the process play out,” Welch said Tuesday. “We have to talk to all of the advocates. This is a big deal.”
While Carter acknowledged that restoring service and fixing the funding formula won’t be cheap, he said that “investing in transit benefits everyone, including those who don’t take it” — citing an Argonne National Laboratory study prepared at the CTA’s behest that found increased funding for transit yields a 13-fold return.
“I think it’s a smart investment,” Carter said, “and my job is to try to convince the legislature of the same thing.”
Contact Nick Blumberg: [email protected] | (773) 509-5434 | @ndblumberg
