Acting president reports sharp drops in CTA crime as agency layers police hours with new social-service pilots

Acting President delivered an update to the Chicago Transit Authority Board on May 13, saying CTA has increased law-enforcement hours systemwide and is adding social-service pilots to address safety concerns while working to improve rider perceptions.

The acting president told the board that CTA “committed a 75% increase in law enforcement hours” in March and has already filled that commitment in partnership with the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County Sheriff’s police. He cited Chicago Police Department figures showing that, in March, “serious crime across the system fell 47% when compared to the same time last year,” and said violent crime decreased roughly 30–33% in March and April year‑over‑year.

Why this matters: the agency is pairing an expanded law‑enforcement presence with a new set of non‑police responses aimed at the same problems. The president said CTA has budgeted nearly $13 million this year for outreach and social‑service support and that pilots for violence intervention specialists and crisis intervention specialists will begin on the system by the end of the summer.

Board members asked for clarity about how CTA will measure the pilots’ effectiveness and how different response teams will coordinate. Director Edie and others said they welcomed the attention to alternative responses but cautioned against relying primarily on policing to sustain security gains. “Statistics do not tell the whole story,” one director said; another asked how the authority will make sure that officer deployments are sustained through the summer when city-wide demands can fluctuate.

CTA staff said the pilots will be procured through Innovation Studio to shorten procurement timelines and to solicit community-based responses; the contract with MIT and a subaward relationship with UIC (discussed during the contracts review) were cited as examples of partnerships the agency is using to bring research and evaluation capacity to operations. Staff told the board that pilots are intentionally limited in scale so the agency can gather data, evaluate effectiveness and plan any systemwide rollout.

On data and accountability: board members requested a clear dashboard and one-page briefings showing pilot metrics, costs and a timeline from pilot to potential systemwide implementation. Staff committed to returning metrics and to explaining how information from providers will be collected and used in future board briefings.

Next steps: CTA will present contract awards for the violence- and crisis‑intervention pilots to the board in coming months and expects to begin deployments this summer. The agency also said it will publish rider surveys and other qualitative data collection for the board to review with the pilot contracts.