CTA Board Meetings

The general reporting on the meeting is by Igor Studenkov, and the commentary on the Grand Avenue project is by John Greenfield.

Today's monthly CTA board meeting took place as Illinois lawmakers are getting ready to return to Springfield for the fall veto session, scheduled for October 14-16 and October 28-30. Let's keep our fingers crossed that they will finally pass a transit funding/reform bill, permanently saving our region from previously projected 40 percent service cuts and 3,000 layoffs.

In some ways, today's CTA board meeting wasn't as dramatic as the May one. Unlike last month, Ald. David Moore (17th) wasn't there warning the directors that they would be "backbiting snakes" if they didn't support Mayor Brandon Johnson's pick for the new agency president. That person was the City's current chief operating officer John Roberson, the alder's former chief of staff.

CTA Vice President of Security Kevin Ryan said that the artificial intelligence-assisted security cameras the transit agency started to pilot last August led to six arrests, including for a robbery in progress. 

As Streetsblog readers are well aware, the CTA, Metra, and Pace currently face a combined $770 million budget gap next year as federal COVID-era subsidies run out, but ridership is currently still only around 65 percent of 2019 levels.

At this week's final CTA board meeting of 2024, the directors approved several ordinances. Most notably, the CTA and DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business agreed to launch a pair of pilot programs to help small minority-owned small businesses win contracts with the transit agency.

Two major themes dominated September meeting of the CTA's transit board, held on Wednesday, September 11.

While it wasn't the most eventful CTA board meeting, it was certainly a busy one.

CTA service reliability issues and likely funding for the long-awaited Red Line Extension were major topics of discussion at the latest CTA board meeting.