Ald. Vasquez introduces ordinance to compel CTA to meet with City Council quarterly

As Chicago continues to recover from COVID-19, the CTA is still struggling to provide reliable public transportation. Adding insult to injury, On September 14 agency president Dorval Carter Jr. failed to show up for his own City Council hearing on poor service, infuriating transit advocates and alderpersons.

In an effort to hold the CTA and Carter accountable, today 40th ward alder Andre Vasquez today introduced an ordinance requiring agency officials to meet with the Council's Committee on Transportation and Public Way on a quarterly basis to discuss service levels, operations, and security. The legislation would also require the agency president to show up to these hearings if alderpersons deem that necessary.

The ordinance goes further and states that members of City Council cannot introduce, consider, or recommend any intergovernmental agreement, legislation, or order that releases funding to the CTA in the following quarter if the president and other CTA officials do not participate in any of the scheduled hearings, unless the disbursement of funds is required by state law.

Vasquez said in a statement, "In an environment where there is now a lexicon for how unreliable our public transportation is – ghost buses and ghost trains – it’s indefensible for the President of that very same system to ‘ghost’ the City Council. Public transportation is a public good – CTA and Chicago deserve a President who is invested and at the very least shows up.”

The ordinance is currently sponsored by a number of alders: Ald. Hopkins (2nd), Dowell (3rd), King (4th), Garza (10th), Cardenas (12th), Quinn (13th), O’Shea (19th), Taylor (20th),Rodriguez (22nd), Scott (24th), Sigcho Lopez (25th), Reboyras (30th), Cardona (31st), Rodriguez-Sanchez (33rd), Villegas (36th), Mitts (37th), Sposato (38th), Nugent (39th), Napolitano (41st), Reilly (42nd), Knudsen (43rd), Tunney (44th), Martin (47th), Osterman (48th), Hadden (49th), and Silverstein (50th).