This week, the Chicago Transit Board appointed Dorval Carter’s Chief of Staff Nora Leerhsen to serve as the acting president for the agency, replacing the departing — and controversial — president until a permanent replacement is found.
CTA kept the news close to the vest initially. CTA spokesperson Maddie Kilgannon told reporters covering the January 15 meeting that media relations staff wasn’t told who the replacement would be ahead of time, nor was they given any indication as to when Carter would get a permanent replacement.
Carter's replacement wasn’t the only news to come out of a nearly five-hour meeting, though. The board also approved $1.69 million to improve its customer complaint process, and also extended the contracts with three suburban police departments that pay off-duty police officers to patrol most of the suburban ‘L’ stations during their off hours.
CTA presidential transition
Carter — who has been in the top spot at the CTA for the last decade and spent a total of 40 years in public transit — announced his retirement on Monday and will exit the role on January 31. Carter will be leaving the CTA to become President and CEO of the North Lawndale-based St. Anthony Hospital.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Leerhsen has been with the CTA since November 2014 and has worked her way up from a project coordinator position. She has been a chief of staff for the past six years.
The transit board approved hiring her as an acting director with a $278,703.73 annual salary. Board members did not provide any further details regarding the selection process or permanent replacement during the meeting.
In a statement issued to reporters a few hours after yesterday's meeting, Leershen provided some comments and said that she was "look[ing] forward to serving our riders and employees in this new role.”
“This is a critical time for our agency and for the future of public transit,” she said in the statement. “As acting president, I will build on our accomplishments as an agency and am confident that we are up to the task of carrying CTA successfully through this transition.”
In the initial announcement and his comments during the meeting, Carter said that he felt that after securing federal funding for the long-waited Red Line extension, taking a leadership position at a hospital where his father was a doctor for four decades was a logical next step. Neither he nor board members mentioned the growing concerns about degrading service during the pandemic, as well as public safety issues that defined the last few years of his tenure.
"This job can be very difficult, but the challenges that I faced have been [balanced] by the opportunity to work with a group of professionals who are among the best in our industry,” Carter told the board, offering praise to CTA bus drivers, train operators and employees who keep the system running behind the scenes.
He ended his speech by returning to his recurring theme — funding — not reform, was what CTA needed to live up to its full potential.
“The changes in CTA's funding formula have been kicked down the road, and its shortcomings have been exposed by COVID,” Carter said, calling out about elected officials who have been “looking for scapegoats and excuses” after “decades of inaction.”
Board chair Lester Barclay alluded to “some challenges,” but he described Carter in glowing terms as a “champion of equity” and said that his call to keep CTA schedules the same at the height of the pandemic was the right call (without mentioning that, in practice, service level fell amid a shortage of drivers and train operators). He did give Carter credit for getting the Red Line extension funded.
“Without your leadership, vision and persistence, this project would still be a deferred promise, and not an exciting reality,” he said, adding that Carter will “leave a legacy that will never be forgotten.”
Board member Roberto Requejo, who emerged as one of the most skeptical voices on the transit board, said that he appreciated Carter’s responsiveness and respect “when we sometimes challenged each other.” Board member Rosa Ortiz said that, while she didn’t always agree with Carter’s decision, she believed that Carter's “heart was in the right place," and that he "always meant to [do] the good, and the best, for the people in the city.”
Board member L. Bernard Jakes described Carter as a role model for the Black community, especially young men.
“I’m grateful that you have modeled a life for your community that encourages us and give us someone we can look at and hold up,” he said.
Customer service improvement contact
Molly Poppe, CTA’s Chief Innovations Officer, said that 18F — a government corporation that helps state and municipal agencies modernize their technology and improve service delivery — would be tapped to streamline how the transit agency handles customer complaints. The goal, Poppe said, is to create more of a two-way process, where customers know how and when their complaints are addressed.
18F's name is a reference to its office address in Washington, DC. Since it is not funded by the government, it charges for its services.
Kara Bader, CTA’s Vice President of Strategy and Innovation, explained that, under the current process, customer complaints get sent to an appropriate department, but each department has a different process for tracking complaints. That can make it harder to track the complaints and sometimes leads to duplication.
Bader said they’ve done similar service response streamlining for the State of Alaska Department of Health and Human Services. She also said that, while the private companies might steer CTA toward its preferred vendor, 18F has no such biases.
However, several board members said they were concerned that the process for 18F's updates and improvements to the complaint system and customer service is expected to take around one and a half years.
“What we need for our customers is something very quick, not something that’s going to take 18 months,” said board member Neema Jha.
Requejo wondered whether there CTA had something in the pipeline that “riders can feel excited about that will help” on short term. Poppe said that they are focusing on improving the chatbot to provide quicker responses to more immediate complaints.
Requejo also wondered whether any of the $3.3 million the board allocated toward public safety pilots back in November 2024 could be used to improve customer service. Carter responded that “the short answer is yes.”
“We certainly heard the board wanting us to do things sooner rather than later,” he said.
Ortiz said that, as a planner, she appreciated that the processes take time, but that she would also like to see some improvements happen quicker.
Barclay said, while responding to customers complaining about riders smoking is good, he noted, ideally, riders don’t want anyone smoking on the ‘L’ trains in the first place.
The item got a rare divided vote. While five board members voted in support, Jha voted against and Ortiz abstained.
Suburban police security contracts
The board also discussed extended contracts with the Evanston, Forest Park and Oak Park police departments, where off-duty officers who work security on the ‘L’ stations within their jurisdictions get paid by the CTA.
CTA has seven ‘L’ stations in Evanston (all on the Purple Line), a total of six stations in Oak Park (three on the Green Line and three on the Blue Line) and two in Forest Park (Blue Line’s Forest Park terminal and Harlem/Eisenhower station).
Requejo said he noticed that none of the police departments spent all the money that was allocated under the previous contracts and wondered whether that unused funds could be used to provide security some other way.
Kevin Ryan, CTA’s Vice President of Security, said that it was due to manpower shortages. But he noted that “the one under Evanston is almost at a normal rate,” and he believed that the other two departments will get more participation in the future.
Ryan also noted that off-duty officers are just one of the many ways to address safety at the suburban stations. On-duty officers regularly patrol the stations, and the Office of Cook County Sheriff has been patrolling areas around the Forest Park terminal.
Barclay wondered how many Chicago police officers are taking advantage of the similar contract CTA has with CPD. When told that it’s almost 100%, he wondered whether, even with the program fully staffed, CTA was getting its money’s worth, given that “we still have safety concerns.”
Jha said that this discussion shows the “very siloed approach” CTA is taking, arguing that it should be looking at it as part of a broader conversation that includes how CTA addresses customer complaints.
“This is a great time to bring the team together,” she said.
Page said that he his staff regularly meets with CTA innovation team to figure out how the chatbot can improve safety.
