After a long, often rocky ride, CTA President Dorval Carter to retire

Embattled CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. was moved to tears on Friday after signing the agreement that will lock in nearly $2 billion in federal funding for the southern extension of the Red Line.

Now we know why Carter was so emotional.

It was his swan song after a decadelong reign marred by concerns about CTA safety, service reliability and what some saw as Carter’s tone-deaf failure to respond to riders and their elected representatives.

After months of pressure for Mayor Brandon Johnson to fire him, Carter announced he would retire Jan. 31 from the job he called an “extraordinary privilege” and the “opportunity of a lifetime.”

City Hall sources said the mayor was “not troubled” by the announcement and likely forced the issue after allowing Carter the dignity of delivering his baby, the Red Line extension, after 50 years of broken CTA promises to the Far South Side.

Securing that money was crucial before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House. A Trump-led Department of Transportation is not expected to be as friendly to mass transit funding.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file

Nobody joined Carter in shedding tears.

Nearly half the City Council had demanded Carter’s ouster. Gov. JB Pritzker also wanted a change in leadership, as did key lawmakers whose support is critical if the CTA is to have any chance of getting new money from Springfield to avoid a $740 million mass transit funding cliff.

“There will be no revenue adjustment without reform. We cannot keep doing it the way that we’re doing it,” said state Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago.

“Hopefully, the new president of the CTA … understands they have to be able to work with Springfield hand-in-hand and not be recalcitrant and say, ‘We’ve done everything right. We just need more money.’ That’s not the truth. It’s not the answer. And it’s not gonna fly.”

Carter also spent time in senior leadership roles at the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Administration. Those Washington connections likely helped him endure despite a rocky relationship with the City Council.

The CTA’s $376,060-a-year president had to be forced to testify before the Council after repeatedly sending underlings to respond to their questions about ghost buses and other service and safety issues.

Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) championed the resolution that compelled Carter’s quarterly testimony before the Council.

He also led that charge for Carter’s ouster. The nonbinding resolution calling on Johnson to fire Carter included a lengthy bill of particulars, including service reliability, hiring, security and post-pandemic ridership.

Sun-Times file

Time for ‘a new direction’ at CTA

Vasquez welcomed Carter’s decision to retire, calling it an opportunity to “take us in a new direction” by attracting the “kind of manager who is focused on the service part of the job” and is an “avid user” of the system he leads.

“He was not the kind of manager focused on the service part of the job. What’s the customer experience like? What is the reliability? What’s the safety?” Vasquez said.

“He was good on the infrastructure part of the job, securing funds from D.C. But as it relates to the all-important questions — Do the workers feel invested in? Do customers feel like service is getting better? Are their concerns being heard? — I don’t think he was checking those boxes.”

Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st), chair of the Council’s Transportation Committee, was “excited for fresh leadership” at the mass transit agency after a decadelong Carter era that “fell short on accessibility and vision.”

He pointed to the hearing last May, at which a defiant Carter lashed out at Council members demanding his ouster, calling it part of Chicago’s sordid “history of attacking and trying to bring down” African American leaders.

“A lot has been made of the racial politics of this,” La Spata said.

“For my constituents, that was never what it was about. It was about the reliability of service, expansion of service, engagement with bus rapid transit, engagement with the media and social media,” La Spata added.

“I don’t know why that was so challenging for President Carter. But this is news that will be broadly and positively received by my constituents.”

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

CTA job about more than getting the money

For all of his strength as a former federal bureaucrat whose contacts helped shake the federal money tree, La Spata said Carter will be best remembered by his transit-dependent constituents as “inaccessible” and “unwilling to listen and take seriously concerns people were bringing up.”

Running the CTA is about “so much more” than just getting federal funds, La Spata said. “It’s about vision and courage and accessibility and accountability.”

Buckner acknowledged Carter “understood how to get money” and that “saved him for a very long time.” But that’s never been good enough, he said.

“We want someone who can bring in federal and state dollars, but can also understand the customer experience and also understands operations and how to literally run the trains on time. That’s the job,” Buckner said.

“There have to be people who have the ability to do all of those things at one time.”

For Johnson, the leadership change at CTA has been a long time coming.

Johnson campaigned on a promise to overhaul the CTA and provide free rides to elderly riders, people with disabilities and Chicago Public Schools students, plus discounted fares for low-income residents. In his inaugural address, he denounced the CTA as “unreliable and unsafe.”

But after taking office, the mayor changed his tune and started defending Carter’s tenure by touting the strides made to boost CTA hiring, restore service and reduce mass transit crime.

Then, when nearly half the Council demanded Carter’s ouster last year, Johnson ignored it.

Carter ‘understood there was room for improvement’

Senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee was asked Monday whether Johnson pressured Carter to retire. Lee said only that Carter and Johnson have been in “constant communication about the challenges and opportunities” at the transit agency.

“There are issues that have been raised that we’ve been working on improving. Dorval understood there was room for improvement in a host of areas,” Lee said.

“There are also some positive dimensions since the mayor has been in office,” Lee said. “Those conversations have been ongoing. Delivering the federal money was crucial. Now, with this retirement, there’s an opportunity for the next phase of leadership.”

Lee noted transit systems in every major U.S. city faced challenges in restoring ridership, staffing, on-time performance, safety and cleanliness since the pandemic.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file

“That’s what the new leadership needs to focus on. Customer service and customer relations. There’s a lot of positives that have happened with CTA. But there’s a lot of room for improvement coming out of COVID,” Lee said.

“All of the major transit agencies in the region are dealing with funding issues. There’s conversations in Springfield. So there’s a lot that’s gonna change in public transit moving forward. A lot that should change vis-à-vis funding. The CTA system is at a disadvantage in some ways based on the funding formula.”

With Carter retiring and no longer available to serve as the mayor’s political foil, Johnson will wear the jacket for the CTA’s problems.

Insider or outsider?

The mayor also faces a critical decision.

He must decide what type of candidate is best. An outsider may have transit experience, but wouldn’t know how to navigate the shark-infested waters of Chicago and Illinois politics. A homegrown replacement, on the other hand, may not have run a big-city mass transit agency, but could relate to riders and handle the customer service elements of the job.

Robert Belcaster and Robert Paaswell are among the outsiders chosen by previous Chicago mayors. Both failed as CTA president.

Buckner did not address the insider-outsider question. His only hope is that the replacement is, as he put it, “more George Jetson than Fred Flintstone.”

“In this post-pandemic world, we’ve got to create new ways to create a world-class system for a world-class city. Travel patterns aren’t the same. Commuting patterns aren’t the same. We don’t have the same realities we had pre-2020,” Buckner said.

“President Carter had all the right intentions. But he didn’t really understand the enormity of the moment. He was probably operating off a foregone era of how transit used to work.”

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times