One year ago, the country’s second-largest transit system made a pledge to its riders to fix delays and curb the mayhem that stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, based on the CTA’s own evaluation, its improvement plan is working: The L and buses are more reliable, crime is down, and a rider base that fell because of the pandemic is returning.
But when WBEZ asked riders recently whether they’ve seen improvements in CTA service, many say no. Of more than 460 riders who responded to the survey in September and October, the majority say their opinion of the CTA has stayed the same (49.1%) or diminished (25.9%) over the past year.
Only 20% say their opinion has improved.
The riders surveyed were among a larger pool of 2,000 who took a WBEZ survey about a year ago. We went back to the same riders to see whether they thought things have improved.
The CTA says the responses from this unscientific survey are at odds with their own research, which they say has found increased customer satisfaction.
The agency passed a new budget for 2024 that aims to restore service to something closer to pre-pandemic levels but says staffing issues remain the key roadblock to a full recovery.
“Our goal has always been to get back to 2019 service levels,” CTA spokesman Brian Steele says. “As we are able to add operators, we will add service.”
How do riders feel about service, and what do they want CTA bosses to know? Here are the three big themes they voiced and how the agency responded.
Some see little improvement
Despite efforts to bring riders back, three-quarters of regular riders who responded to the unscientific WBEZ survey say things aren’t better.
For Marjorie Kersten, 29, the biggest disappointment is continued unreliability.
Kersten, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois Chicago, says she used to rely on the CTA to get to campus because she preferred public transit to the traffic and environmental impact of driving. But lately she’s been fed up. On the first day of classes this fall, Kersten says she left for campus more than an hour early, leaving “plenty of time,” only to see her train held at each stop for several minutes without any explanation. After 30 minutes, the train was still only a handful of stops from her home. Stressed and fearing she would be late, she eventually got off the L and called an Uber.
It was too late. She arrived after class had begun.
“That was mortifying to me,” says Kersten, who has been driving to campus since. It’s “just so unreliable at this point that it’s more of a headache for me to try to use it.”
Steele says the CTA has made strides on reliability, citing agency surveys he says show increased satisfaction among riders.
“But certainly I think people’s perceptions are obviously based on their own experience,” he says. “So, if you have a day where there’s been a service delay or you’ve waited too long for a train, that impacts you personally. And that’s the situation that we don’t want to have.”
Nikolas Gamarra, a Lake View resident who commutes to the Loop five days a week, has also switched his main mode of transportation, often bicycling to work instead of taking public transit. He says he’s more reliably on time.
“In terms of what I would want to see in the CTA going forward, I really want to see increased frequency,” says Gamarra, 27, a software engineer.
Gamarra says he thinks delays are as frequent as ever, though he thinks the CTA has been more honest in acknowledging them.
Ridership up
Among the problems cited by riders last year were that service was down, and communication was poor. Transit-trackers often promised what turned out to be ghost buses and trains, which never showed up. Schedules didn’t appear to be updated to reflect staffing shortages, which led to unpredictable wait times.
Riders say communication has gotten better — with schedules seeming to align more to what’s actually coming.
But a new problem has emerged: overly crowded trains and buses, packed with riders who have been called back to offices. About 55% of riders who responded to the WBEZ survey say they regularly or occasionally can’t get on a train or bus because it’s too full.
Alton Lynum, who works in human resources, commutes to his office downtown at least three days a week. It didn’t take long to notice he’s among a resurgence of commuters. He avoids packed trains by heading to the office early, usually before 7 a.m. Going home, though, he says crowded trains seem unavoidable.
So Lynum sometimes hops on the L in the opposite direction for a stop or two, then gets off and is able to hop on a homeward-bound train before it’s too full.
“The long delays seem to be better than a year ago; however, the new issue is that it seems like the service levels haven’t kept pace with the increase demand,” Lynum, 36, writes in response to the recent WBEZ survey.
That rise in the number of riders is what CTA officials have wanted. But they say workforce shortages have limited the number of buses and L trains they can run, leading to vehicles that are too full.
Steele says it’s uncertain when the CTA will be able to return to pre-pandemic service levels and acknowledges: “We’re not where we want to be in terms of service. There’s no question about that.”
Amid a hiring push, the CTA remains short about 200 bus operators and 100 train operators and continues to lose employees to retirement or other jobs, according to Steele.
Evan Scanzera, who lives in Logan Square, thinks packed trains are more than an inconvenience.
“Tempers can get high when you’re crowded,” he says.
Getting safer, mostly
Overall, people responding to the survey say they’re feeling safer this fall — with about 66% of respondents saying they feel fairly or very safe on the CTA, compared to 52.5% a year ago.
But much of that depends on gender, what time of day people are riding and how long the wait time for the L or a bus is. With armed robberies significantly up in pockets of the city, some say they feel less safe standing outside for a bus or train to arrive. And some are scarred from things that have happened in the past.
Danielle Miles, a longtime Hyde Park resident, says she stopped taking the No. 6 bus earlier this year after a man next to her was stabbed in the face and the driver didn’t call the police. Since then, Miles, 52, has taken Metra to get to job with the City Colleges of Chicago.
When she rides the CTA on weekends, she says she doesn’t go out after dark and that she carries a “decoy purse,” in case she’s robbed.
Ana Amaya, 25, says the unpredictability of riding on CTA Red Line L trains seems to have decreased in the past year but that she still doesn’t take the train after around 7:30 p.m. because riding a bus feels safer.
The Gold Coast resident says she’d like to see train cars designated for women and children for safety reasons.
Steele says there are no plans for doing that and that it would be tough to enforce.
Mary Ann Schmelzer, 57, a nurse who lives in Skokie, says she wants to see increased safety measures but thinks things are getting better.
“I’m actually happy with how the buses are running on time,” Schmelzer says. “Now, I would say that I feel safer on the buses.”
Among those surveyed, 51.2% say they see the same number of delays as a year ago; 37.7% say they still face delays but fewer than a year ago; and 11.2% say they aren’t seeing many delays.
There also were continued complaints regarding frustrations over cleanliness and smoking. About 40% of the respondents say the CTA is “only slightly” cleaner than a year ago, 38.4% don’t think it’s cleaner, 15% say they have seen a noticeable improvement, and 6.2% say it has gotten worse.
More than 43% of those surveyed say they see about the same number of people smoking as a year ago, 30.4% see fewer people smoking, 15.6% say it’s gotten worse, and 10.3% aren’t sure.
