Six months after the CTA unveiled a plan to address service and safety, challenges remain as it still runs far fewer trains than scheduled on its two busiest lines, and the agency continues to face bus and train operator shortages.
CTA Blue Line passengers crowded into an O'Hare-bound train wait for departure from the Clark/Lake station during the afternoon rush on Feb. 7, 2023.
But challenges remain. The CTA is still running far fewer trains than scheduled on its two busiest lines, and the agency, like other transit systems around the country,. Even as public transit ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels, some riders, like Carl, contend with crowded trains, particularly on the Blue Line. Concerns about safety and nuisance violations like smoking persist.
and bus schedules that include changes to listed wait times. The agency has also been upgrading some trackers to address concerns about ghost buses.Madderom applauded the CTA’s attempt to make the schedules more accurate. But she says riders continue to be ghosted by buses or trains that don’t show up, and she’s frustrated that, by her group’s calculations, the changes have meant cuts to the overall number of trains and buses scheduled to run each week.
On trains, unexpectedly long wait times that are double the scheduled length happen dozens of times a day across the system, but the number of instances is going down, according to CTA data. The Brown, Orange, Green and Pink lines are running between 87% and 95% of scheduled service on weekdays, compared with a systemwide average of 95% before the pandemic.
A late January hiring fair had the highest attendance of any in recent years, Carter said recently, but the agency still has dozens of rail operator vacancies and hundreds of open bus driver positions. Keith Hill, president of the union that represents bus drivers, applauded the recent hiring and retention incentives for employees, but said the CTA could streamline the hiring process and eliminate requirements unrelated to driving, like a written entrance exam with questions on other topics, to help it move faster.
At the end of January and beginning of February, average wait times during morning rush hour on the Blue Line were between 9 and 9.5 minutes, which marked an improvement over earlier weeks, Steele said. Oscar Smith, who takes the Green Line to the Purple Line to get to work, also said he continues to see a lot of smoking on the train.
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