CTAction: Free CTA service on New Year’s Eve “not quite as bad as last year,” still not great

Update 1/3/24, noon: I asked the CTA for a statement about recent New Year's Eve and New Year's Day service for this article yesterday afternoon. While they didn't immediately reply, after publication they asked how Commuters Take Action's Brandon McFadden defined "on-time" service in the graphs he provided to Streetsblog.

McFadden responded to Streetsblog: "It’s all based on the scheduled intervals according to the [CTA's General Transit Feed Specification] package. If the scheduled interval is 10 minutes, I give a 25 percent buffer in each direction – so to be "on-time," the headway (or interval) in minutes of each arrival has to be between 7.5 and 12.5 minutes. Since it is by percentage, the longer the scheduled interval, the bigger the buffer." 

"For comparison sake, Washington DC's WMATA did 99 percent Service Delivery and 65 percent On-Time Performance (systemwide) on both New Years Eve and New Years Day using the same constraints," McFadden added.

That suggests that our nation's capital, a city not exactly known for honesty and transparency, left Chicago in the dust when it came to reliable and accurate transit schedules.  

As Streetsblog discussed last Friday while Chicago was gearing up for New Year's Eve, the CTA was offering free rides for the big night. But their free bus and train service was awful on NYE the previous year, when only 44 percent of scheduled Blue Line runs actually showed up. At the time, the transit agency blamed the long waits for buses and trains on workforces shortages, with a spokesperson stating there were "a higher-than-usual number of unplanned absences" compared to recent months.

This year Streetsblog didn't want Chicagoans to avoid public transportation after the big ball fell in New York City (or the big pierogi dropped in Whiting, Indiana) in favor of cars just because last year's CTA service was a mess. So we asked the transit agency what it had planned in order to avoid another fiasco after 2024 hit.

The CTA Media Department wasn't particularly hopeful when I contacted them last week. "We unfortunately have no way of predicting when an employee will call in sick," a spokesperson said. But they had taken a few precautions (their language):

• Scheduling added trips for bus routes serving Navy Pier, as well as the most heavily traveled rail lines – Red, Blue and Brown
• Issuing reminders to personnel of the importance of reporting for their scheduled shifts (and on-time)
• Promoting over-time pay opportunities
• Actively recruiting eligible personnel to take on additional shifts for the New Year’s holiday

However, the grassroots transit advocacy group Commuters Take Action (CTAction) said they were "cautiously optimistic that things will be better [for NYE] this year." But they added that the transit agency should be upfront with customers if any problems arose.

According to some Twitter users, there were, in fact, major delays Sunday night through Monday morning. Here's an example of a disappointed post.

But Commuters Take Action data blackbelt Brandon McFadden said CTA statistics show that overall bus and train service wasn't terrible on New Year's Eve this year. However, he said New Year's Day service was nothing to brag about.

"Service yesterday was okay the first half of the day [on Sunday, New Year's Eve] and rough in the evening, but not quite as bad as last year," McFadden wrote me around 3:30 p.m. Monday afternoon. "Today however is at 68 percent of systemwide rail service and trending down."

Here are some graphs McFadden put together to show the CTA's recent overall New Year's Eve / Day performance.

See more graphs about the quality of service on the various 'L' lines on NYE and NYD at the bottom of this post.

So while scheduled runs often didn't show up on time on New Year's Eve / Day, this year, most of them eventually materialized. That's more than one could say a year ago.

I haven't heard back from the CTA today, but I'll add their statement about New Year's Eve performance if they send one. But an agency spokesperson ended last week's somewhat gloomy statement about NYE with an optimistic note about this year's staffing strategy.

"Further strengthening the rail operations workforce is a key focus in 2024, as we plan to double the number of rail operator training slots – from 100 in 2023 to 200 in 2024," the spokesperson said. "The first CTA hiring event of 2024 will focus on filling flagger positions, the entry-level position required for anyone interested in becoming a rail operator. Additional details of the January 26th hiring event will be outlined in the coming days."

So, fingers crossed, the non-disgraceful CTA performance over the past couple of days is an encouraging sign. Hopefully in 2024 Chicago transit service will be getting a little better all the time.

Update 1/3/24, 11:45 AM: How did the various various 'L' lines perform on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day? Brandon McFadden recently provided the following graphs.

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