CITY HALL — CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. said Monday he’ll retire from the agency’s top post — leaving an urgent task for his successor to overcome a $577 million budget shortfall and restore confidence in the city’s transit system.
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The announcement comes days after the CTA secured $2 billion in federal funds — before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration — to extend the Red Line south to 130th Street. Carter’s connections in Washington were one reason he survived years of criticism from local leaders and officials — and questions about how he’s managed the system while transit riders dealt with inconsistent service, crime concerns and dirty trains and buses.
“The City of Chicago is grateful to President Dorval Carter for his decades of service with the Chicago Transit Authority,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a written statement. “His leadership reimagined the movement of our city. His stewardship of the Red Line Extension project is just one of the notable achievements in his historic career.”
The mayor’s statement did not mention how or when he would pick a new CTA leader, and his office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the CTA board plans to approve an interim president when it convenes on Wednesday, according to a meeting agenda posted online.
Carter is leaving the CTA to become president and CEO of Saint Anthony Hospital on Chicago’s West Side, where he has served on the hospital’s board for more than a decade.
Under Carter, the CTA has brought in substantial federal funding — including a lifeline pandemic-relief package — as he’s helped modernize stations across the system. Carter, the agency’s first African-American president, has moved forward with plans for a long-desired extension of the Red Line to 130th Street that will cost at least $5 billion.
“Serving as president of this great agency has been an extraordinary privilege and I am forever grateful for what has been the opportunity of a lifetime,” Carter said. “It has been an honor to work on behalf of CTA customers … and to advance our mission in a city that I love so dearly.”
But as the pandemic funds run out, the agency faces enormous fiscal challenges.
It has also struggled to deliver basic service in recent years. The CTA has grappled with a sharp decline in ridership as customers grew frustrated by elevated crime and unreliable service. Carter was largely unable to rally a demoralized and understaffed workforce, and the CTA’s post-pandemic rebound has trailed its peers in other major U.S. cities.
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Carter’s $391,108 annual salary placed him as one of the highest-paid employees in local government as of July, according to CTA records.
Carter’s retirement also comes after a series of Block Club investigations put a spotlight on how the agency’s leaders have failed riders and workers. In August, for example, Block Club detailed how Carter spent more than a quarter of his time traveling the world while visiting CTA train stations just nine times over a one-year period.
In April, Block Club revealed how veteran bus driver Antia Lyons suffered a medical emergency behind the wheel and was left unchecked by the CTA’s 24-hour control center for nearly an hour before paramedics entered her bus. She died that night.
Block Club also reported that the governing body of the CTA served as a rubber stamp for Carter and rarely questioned his leadership during its most challenging time while allowing Carter’s salary to swell by 60 percent in his eight years at the helm. In 2023, Block Club first reported that Carter and many of his executives rarely rode the system they were tasked to run.
Frustrated riders also organized a call for leadership changes, developing systems to track the unreliability of trains and holding protests outside CTA headquarters.
“Today marks a historic and long overdue change at the Chicago Transit Authority,” a spokesperson for advocacy group Commuters Take Action said in a statement. “Commuters Take Action sees a new hope for Chicago transit. Change will not happen overnight, but we are ready to see a transit agency that delivers frequent and reliable service.
“We also hope the next president works with organizations like ours and engages with the communities they serve, especially by riding the CTA regularly.”
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Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), Carter’s fiercest critic in City Council, applauded him for his public service in a social media post Monday.
“Thanks to CTA President Dorval Carter for his leadership in securing infrastructure funds, navigating through Covid, and for his leadership now in creating the opportunity for a new President who can focus on the customer experience, service reliability, safety, and creating the world class system the public deserves!” Vasquez wrote.
Carter was the longest-serving CTA president since Frank Kruesi, who headed the agency 1997-2007.
An Embattled Leader
Carter has a storied career in transportation and started at the CTA as a staff attorney in the mid-’80s. Over the next three decades, he held a series of positions with the CTA and the federal government, including serving as acting chief of staff for Anthony Foxx, then the U.S. secretary of transportation.
In 2015, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel recruited Carter to come back to Chicago and lead the CTA.
“I now have an ally who can work his Rolodex like mine, and we can actually now have a tag team to get that [federal] money,” Emanuel said at the time, according to the Sun-Times.
But the pandemic derailed the quality of CTA service, frustrating riders across the city. Transit advocates and members of the City Council grew to see Carter as aloof and unwilling to accept responsibility.
Carter was mandated to answer questions publicly at City Hall on a quarterly basis as part of an ordinance passed in October 2023 that gained steam after he no-showed several public meetings. The transit leader has routinely dodged speaking directly to local press and has never agreed to a sit-down interview with Block Club.
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At the council hearings, Carter was ripped by riders and grilled by alderpeople. But Carter fiercely defended himself, declaring that the criticism was about more than his record.
“I have been turned into a caricature. I have been turned into something that is less than a human being,” he said at the May hearing. “As an African-American man, this city has a history of attacking and trying to bring down your African-American leaders. I know that because I’ve been here and I’ve seen it.”
Still, Carter’s seat grew sizzling hot.
Editorial boards at the Sun-Times, Tribune and Crain’s all called for a new CTA president. Gov. JB Pritzker stopped just short of saying he thought Carter should be fired — while offering his view that the agency needed “an evolution of leadership.”
And consistent rider complaints since the pandemic ignited the ire of City Council members, reaching a boiling point when a majority of alderpeople signed on to a resolution that called for Carter’s firing or immediate resignation last spring. But allies of Carter kicked the resolution to a committee where measures are often sent to die.
Through it all, Mayor Brandon Johnson deflected questions about the CTA’s future and stuck by Carter. He bristled at the comments from Pritzker in particular, saying it was his was his “job to determine the leadership of the CTA.” He added, “If people want to be mayor, they should run for it.”
Late Arrivals At ‘Meeting The Moment’
In 2022, the CTA launched the Meeting the Moment plan, touted as Carter’s attempt to earn the trust of riders by publishing performance metrics online. The plan established five major issues the agency looked to improve on following the pandemic, including reliability and safety.
Carter pointed to Meeting the Moment at board meetings to showcase improvements. But transit activists repeatedly called the plan a failure.
Chicago’s transit system has seen incremental improvements more recently.
Pre-pandemic bus service on 29 routes was added back in March, and the CTA extended a well-used No. 9 Ashland route in August. Carter added back some scheduled weekday train service in July for the first time since the pandemic.
Violent crime on the CTA — including robberies, homicides and assaults and batteries — dipped in 2023 after spikes during the pandemic, but it remains above pre-pandemic levels, according to an analysis by the Tribune.
Carter tried to patch up safety issues by giving millions in “emergency” contracts to private security firms and K-9 units. But unarmed guards told Block Club they often feel unsafe and unhelpful. Some CTA employees have said they face the brunt of unruly and violent behavior.
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Concerns swirling about the CTA’s safety infrastructure and homelessness crisis came to a head after a gunman, seemingly unprovoked, shot and killed four people sleeping on Blue Line train cars Sept. 2. The shooting garnered national attention and brought Carter to make a rare public appearance at a press conference.
Local transit activists have called for the CTA to bring back two-person train crews, but Carter said his agency will continue to rely on police to handle a “very complex” crime issue that’s beyond the scope of the transit agency’s work.
In August, CTA leaders touted a new AI-based detection technology that will notify law enforcement if a weapon is brandished on the transit system. Block Club reported that Carter met with ZeroEyes last summer and the CTA won’t answer questions about how the company scored the $200,000 no-bid contract.
CTA officials said it would start running a train schedule with pre-pandemic service levels in November and a bus schedule of that caliber in December, but transit advocates and workers worried it would take more time for the CTA to fully deliver on those schedules regularly.
CTA has 4,000 bus operators, more than its pre-pandemic headcount, and 827 rail operations employees, around 50 below its pre-pandemic headcount, according to the latest agency data released in November.
Red Line Legacy Project And A Fiscal Cliff
Carter leaves the CTA with a blueprint for a major transit expansion and a fiscal cliff that threatens to cut transit service by another 40 percent.
Carter has sought to forge a reputation as a builder, drumming up funds for large-scale “modernization” projects, including longtime plans to extend the Red Line four stops south to 130th Street, fulfilling decades of promises by local leaders to make the city more accessible to South Siders.
In August, the CTA board approved a contract for the builders of the Red Line extension as the project’s budget ballooned to over $5 billion.
At a corresponding board meeting that month, Carter took a victory lap, triumphantly holding up a station sign for the Red Line’s proposed 130th Street terminal as the room broke out in applause.
“The special skills that I have is not in fixing a broken bus, not in renting a train, not in rebuilding track. The special skill I have is in getting money,” Carter said. “I knew if I put my mind to it, I could bring to the Far South Side of Chicago something I’ve been hearing about since I was a kid.”
Carter has also overseen a multibillion-dollar “modernization” project of the Red and Purple Lines that is renovating tracks and stations across the North Side.
Some regional planners and state lawmakers have called for the CTA, Metra and Pace to merge into one agency. CTA’s farebox revenues, limited by fewer riders on the system, is not able to replace federal pandemic-relief funding set to soon run dry, officials have said.
Carter and his fellow transit leaders have pleaded to state lawmakers that a lackluster funding model — and not their leadership — is to blame for the impending financial woes.
Block Club’s Quinn Myers contributed to this report.
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