The last attempt to hold a hearing with interim CTA President Nora Leerhsen in March was also called off after the Committee on Transportation and Public Way failed to reach a quorum. 

Transportation Chair Greg Mitchell (7) kicked off the meeting about a half hour after the scheduled start time, after waiting for alderpeople to trickle in, and noted the committee was short one member to meet its seven-person quorum threshold. But he said they would go ahead with the hearing anyway, trying to allay concerns by telling the public no votes would be taken and no motions would be made.

After Leerhsen gave opening remarks, Mitchell said that the lack of quorum prevented alderpeople from asking any questions and adjourned the meeting. Afterward, he told reporters that he gave some latitude to allow the interim president to give her remarks but that allowing questions would have been a step too far. 

Mitchell said it was unlikely the meeting would be rescheduled and that he would instead move forward with the third quarter hearing. He said if committee members want it to be moved up, he would be amenable to that. 

Transportation Vice Chair Andre Vasquez (40), whose ordinance established the quarterly hearings in 2023, said he was disappointed at his colleagues for “ghosting” CTA for the second consecutive time.

“We have colleagues who want to talk about how much they care about transit,” Vasquez said. “They shouldn't be ghosting CTA.” 

In her opening remarks to the committee, Leerhsen said CTA ridership and total workforce is at its highest point in six years after the COVID-19 pandemic upended service for years, and crime on the system fell five months in a row. 

The interim president said CTA now regularly hits 1.1 million riders on an average weekday, has 400 more bus operators than it did in 2019 and is at 96 percent of its pre-pandemic rail operator staffing levels. She also said serious crime on the CTA dropped 40 percent year-over-year in May, and violent crime has dropped 77 percent on the Red Line for the same time period. 

“In a place as dynamic and vast as CTA, we must all work to ensure progress like that continues to be sustained, but make no mistake that the progress is real, and it's felt by our riders and by our employees,” Leerhsen said. 

She credited ongoing decreases in crime to new public safety efforts. 

“We have instituted not only a significant increase in officer deployment on CTA but also targeted missions across the system,” Leerhsen said. 

The interim president described the new Transit Rider Interaction Program, in which Chicago Police officers in six-to-eight-person teams “board trains and inspect cars at high-incident stations.” Leerhsen said more than 500 of these missions have been conducted since the program launched this year. 

She also said the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office Regional Transit Task Force and other efforts by the office to better coordinate and respond to transit crime cases has provided an important complement. 

The system is also getting help from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office and the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services and Department of Public Health, which both partner with CTA to fund outreach services to homeless people on the system.  

The interim president also gave the committee an update on efforts to combat smoking on trains and buses, saying that it’s a personally important issue to her as a frequent CTA rider herself. 

Since the beginning of 2025, Leerhsen said police have issued over 6,000 tickets for smoking on the CTA and are “actively engaged in addressing this issue in a way that's at higher percentages than previous years.” As a result, she said complaints of smoking have fallen. 

“I can tell you, as someone that's worked on security-related policy at CTA for over a decade, that the steep drops in crime in the past year are like nothing we have seen in that time,” she said. 

Leerhsen also celebrated better system reliability. She noted a reported 80 percent drop in complaints about bus wait times following efforts to institute greater frequency on 20 bus routes citywide and a seven-year low for major rail delays. She also said efforts to eliminate “ghost” buses have been successful, as CTA has run over 99 percent of scheduled bus service this year. 

But alderpeople were unable to ask questions about these points of progress or about any of the other updates Leerhsen touched on in her remarks because of the quorum shortfall. 

Kyle Lucas, a public transportation advocate who is executive director of Better Streets Chicago, said during the public comment period he was disappointed and that it was unacceptable for the committee to have not shown up Wednesday given their important role in the forthcoming implementation of the state’s Chicago-area transit reform legislation, but he praised Leerhsen’s leadership and results.