Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) announced service reliability for its rail and bus systems show continued improvement in March, with fewer long waits and improved delivery of scheduled service, according to the agency’s latest interactive “Meeting the Moment” Action Plan scorecard.
There is now more information on CTA’s ongoing hiring and workforce retention efforts. The monthly scorecard will now provide improved transparency into the agency’s workforce metrics, including monthly hiring and attrition rates for the past 13 months for bus operators, as well as flaggers and rail operators, according to CTA's news release.
Through the end of February, CTA had 715 rail operator positions filled, compared to its budgeted headcount of 839 full-time positions. On the bus side, of the budgeted 3,707 full-time bus operator positions, a total of 3,220 full-time positions were filled.
The scorecard also tracks the monthly progress the agency is making to improve overall services, allowing customers to see detailed service results for their bus route or rail line.
Instances of customers experiencing long wait times for trains—intervals that are double and triple the scheduled headways—fell for the sixth straight month:
Triple headways are down to an average of 12 instances each weekday, compared to 29 pre-optimization.
Double headways are down to an average of 84 instances each weekday, compared to 158 pre-optimization.
For CTA bus riders, the results are even better with an ongoing reduction in big gaps in service since the new schedules went into effect in January. Big gaps in bus service – intervals that are double or triple their scheduled times – have already dropped by more than half, from 12.3% in December to 5.6% in March.
March 2023 saw improvements in service delivered compared to the previous month:
Bus Service Delivered: 94.9% in March 2023, compared to 94.1% in February.
Rail Service Delivered: 84.8% in March 2023, compared to 82.6% in February.
