CHICAGO — Using an address at the City Club of Chicago as a rebuttal to critics, Chicago Transit Authority president Dorval Carter defended his agency as “bouncing back” from the pandemic and demanded equitable funding from the state legislature.
“The unfortunate truth is that the current system for funding transit is tantamount to transit welfare,” Dorval said Thursday.
Serving as CTA president since 2015, Carter assailed the state’s 40-year-old funding formula, which sees the CTA providing 84 percent of public transit rides in the region but receiving only 46 percent of the public funding.
Carter also noted that the CTA provides transportation to the vast majority of low-income and minority riders, while Metra and Pace serve more well-to-do suburban customers.
“So why all the fixation on governance? It’s an easy pill to swallow. And, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper. It is much easier to say the bureaucracy is the problem, let’s rearrange a few things, than to make tough decisions and to take tough votes about raising revenue,” Carter said.