CTA

Embattled CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. announces retirement

Carter oversaw massive investments in CTA infrastructure, but also faced fierce criticism over rider safety, service reliability

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Embattled CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. has announced his retirement from the agency, capping off a tenure full of huge projects and fierce criticism.

Carter made the announcement Monday, saying that his retirement will become official at the end of this month. It comes just days after funding was finally locked in for a substantial extension of the CTA Red Line on the South Side, and comes months after his resignation was demanded by a majority of the members of Chicago’s City Council.

Carter called his tenure “an extraordinary privilege” in a statement published by the city.

“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,” said Carter. “It has been an honor to work on behalf of CTA customers s and to advance our mission in a city that I love so dearly.”

According to the press release, Carter will take over as president and CEO of Chicago’s St. Anthony Hospital when he retires from the CTA.

A funding agreement has been reached for the long-proposed extension of the CTA Red Line, which will now run to 130th Street. NBC Chicago’s Regina Waldroup reports.

According to that release, Carter began working for the CTA in Sept. 1984 as an attorney, with jobs at the Department of Transportation and Federal Transit Administration before he was appointed president of the CTA in 2015 by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Carter was praised by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for his work in bringing a wide variety of projects to fruition, including a massive expansion of the CTA’s Red Line on the South Side of the city, bringing train service all the way to 130th Street.

“The City of Chicago is grateful to President Dorval Carter for his decades of service with the Chicago Transit Authority,” Johnson said in a 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.”

Carter also faced a tsunami of criticism for his handling of the agency over the years, with riders and public officials alike blasting him on a variety of fronts. Concerns about service reliability and rider safety were atop the list, with activist groups and some City Council members also criticizing him for rarely using CTA trains and buses for transportation.

More than 50 people protested right in front of CTA headquarters on Friday evening, calling out the transit agency and demanding more service, better reliability, and new leadership, NBC Chicago's Vi Nguyen reports.

In May 2024, a majority of City Council members signed onto a resolution introduced by Alds. Andre Vasquez and Matt Martin calling for Carter to step down.

“Be it resolved that we, the City Council of the City of Chicago…do hereby call upon Dorval Carter to resign his position as president of the Chicago Transit Authority, and be it further resolved that, absent such a resignation, we the city Council of the City of Chicago, call upon Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. J.B. Pritzker to name a new CTA president and publicly call upon the CTA Board to appoint them,” the resolution read.

The leadership within City Council cited poor working conditions, rider complaints and service issues in their resolution.

Earlier in 2024, Pritzker had called for an “evolution of leadership” at CTA, but came short of calling for Carter to be fired if he chose not to resign his post.

With Carter now departing his position, the next head of the CTA will be faced with several substantial battles. The long-dreaded “fiscal cliff,” which will see the CTA lose COVID-era funding that has helped keep its budget intact during the pandemic, will finally arrive in 2026, with officials warning of serious service cuts if more funding isn’t appropriated.

Some lawmakers have also floated the idea of merging CTA with Metra and Pace to form one cohesive agency, giving a new CTA leader another battle to fight amid the struggle for funding.

Johnson will be tasked with appointing Carter’s replacement as president of the agency. A timeline for that decision has not yet been released.

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