Sarah Freishtat

Apply for my job! The transportation beat is broad and fascinating, and can be window into the region’s most urgent issues, its challenges and successes, and its place in the country. The colleagues are the best you could ask for

www.journalismjobs.com/1690051-tran...

Friday was my last day at the Tribune, and my last story ran today. Covering this city and how people do, or don’t, get around it has been an honor, but it’s time for a new career step for me

CTA slow zones are growing, and that means longer commutes for ‘L’ riders In February, slow zones covered some 30% of the rail system, up from 13% five years earlier. It’s one more hurdle for the CTA to overcome.

CTA slow zones have grown so much in recent years that now nearly 1/3 of the “L” is speed restricted. A key culprit? Aging and deteriorating tracks.

“When you’re trying to get to work or an appointment, it can be a real setback for folks”

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/03/16/c...

Tribune files lawsuit against CTA for failing to turn over documents related to 2023 Yellow Line crash, among other FOIA requests The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, cites six FOIA requests made by a Tribune reporter over 14 months in which the CTA did not respond promptly, fully or at all.

Worth noting, CTA has been sued five times in the past year over FOIA issues www.chicagotribune.com/2025/02/28/t...

CTA Continues to Rely on Bus and Train Operator Overtime — But Fails to Provide Detailed Information Within Required Time Frame Illegally delayed responses are a chronic problem with the CTA’s FOIA office. Other news organizations and advocacy groups have also dinged the agency for its FOIA transparency failures. Despite not s...

Interesting look at CTA overtime from @ndblumberg.bsky.social, one way to see if service is tied to more staff or more hours of work

And v impt look at CTA FOIA: "The CTA has never within memory responded to a FOIA request from WTTW News within the legally required timeline"

Online: StopWatch - Exploring Bus Service in Chicago - Chi Hack Night The StopWatch analyzes a unique dataset of over 100 million real-time bus locations collected by Chi Hack Night Ghost Bus. Part of the 2024 Local Data Journalism Initiative, this project is a collabor...

Hope folks will tune in for @chihacknight.bsky.social tonight at 7pm Central where @sfreishtat.bsky.social and some folks from the Mansueto Institute will be presenting on their Stop Watch data project and reporting!

chihacknight.org/events/2025/...

Metra paid a law firm over $1.5M for an internal investigation that it won’t release, raising transparency questions Metra hired a team of outside lawyers to conduct an internal investigation, but the outcome of the 2023 investigation remains shrouded.

Truly outrageous conduct by Metra, great reporting by @sfreishtat.bsky.social: Metra paid a law firm over $1.5M for an internal investigation that it won’t release, raising transparency questions. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/02/24/m...

The United Center hasn’t been served by a Pink Line station since it opened. Could redevelopment plans change that? A new Pink Line station wouldn’t be the first at the intersection of Madison and Paulina streets.

The United Center hasn’t been served by a Pink Line station since it opened. Took a look at the prospects for a new station now, as a redevelopment proposal for the surrounding area moves forward

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/02/08/u...

On COVID relief operating funding: At least one transit agency, Metra, says they have all the relief money in hand - though not yet spent - so there’s nothing left for the federal government to disburse and it wouldn’t be affected

CTA so far says it continues to view the Red Line extension grant agreement as “a binding and legal commitment”

Mayor Brandon Johnson on the federal grant freeze this morning, from @aliceyin.bsky.social

Unclear right now how this would affect CTA, which gets federal COVID-19 relief funds to keep running trains and buses, and just signed an agreement for a huge federal grant for the Red Line extension.

Downtown bike- and bus-lane ticketing program generates more than 3,500 warnings and violations in its first weeks The program allows the city to use cameras to mail tickets to registered vehicle owners for violations in an area that covers much of downtown.

The delayed program to ticket drivers parked in downtown bike/bus lanes is up and running, and in the first weeks the city issued more than 3,500 warnings and violations.

The numbers "clearly show that bike-and-bus-lane parking violations are an issue," CDOT said.

Chicago needs the Reader ⬇️

CTA chief of staff to become interim president after Dorval Carter’s retirement The next CTA leader will face the task of helping to rebuild trust in the agency, after years of complaints about service, personal safety and conditions on buses and trains

More here: www.chicagotribune.com/2025/01/15/c...

"I could not be more excited to start the next chapter ofmy life, and want you all the know that it has been the honor of a lifetime to serve as CTA president. And it is humbling to remember that this journey began when I was a little boy on the South Side of Chicago," Carter says

^perhaps not surprising that Carter is highlighting the Red Line extension at what's expected to be his final board meeting. He announced his retirement days after locking in crucial federal funding for the project, which has long been near and dear to him

Carter talks at his final meeting about the Red Line extension, long impt to him

"It took focus, it took time and most important it required funding...We believe people of the Far South Side deserved the same access to transit, jobs and opportunities as the the rest of the city”

Today, at what is expected to be CTA President Dorval Carter’s last board meeting, the board approved agency chief of staff Nora Leerhsen to be the interim president.

Appointment of a permanent president still rests with Mayor Brandon Johnson

Can Chicago make its streets safe for students to walk and bike to school? At least 2,860 youth pedestrians and cyclists have been hit by cars in Chicago since 2021, according to city data.

Can Chicago make its streets safe for students to walk and bike to school? A look at pedestrian and cyclist safety for students

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/01/13/c...

CTA’s announcement 👇

Ahead of CTA fiscal cliff, Mayor Brandon Johnson warns Springfield not to hold Chicago hostage for ‘political gain’ The CTA Red Line extension funding announcement doubled as an endorsement of CTA President Dorval Carter’s job performance.

And days after Mayor Brandon Johnson gave Carter his pointed endorsement, saying “Any attempt to hold hostage the people of Chicago for anyone’s political gain, we’re certainly not going to acquiesce to those levels of constraints”

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/01/10/a...

CTA to lock in federal funding for Red Line extension before Trump takes office A large, nearly $2 billion federal grant, key to moving the $5.3 billion project forward, had been promised to the CTA but the formal agreement not yet signed.

This comes days after Carter formally locked in the remainder of the money needed to advance the Red Line extension, a project that has been very near and dear to his heart

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/01/06/c...

CTA President Dorval Carter to step down Carter’s resignation comes as a debate brews in Springfield about whether to combine the CTA with Metra, Pace and the Regional Transportation Authority.

🚨CTA President Dorval Carter is resigning.

He's been in the hot seat for years. Now the reform debate is expected to heat up in Springfield this year, with lawmakers calling to combine CTA and other agencies. W/ @royalpratt.bsky.social @aliceyin.bsky.social
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/01/13/c...

Debate over the future of CTA, Metra, Pace, RTA to heat up in Springfield this year The clock is ticking on a financial cliff looming for the Chicago area’s four transit agencies, and along with it efforts in Springfield to address the way transit is overseen and funded.

Coming this spring in Springfield: a transit reform and funding debate that’s likely to get contentious, with competing legislative proposals and a projected multibillion-dollar budget deficit to complicate things

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/01/12/c...

America’s oldest Black town is in Illinois — and it’s dying. But the fight has begun to save it. America’s oldest Black town is Brooklyn, Illinois. Once an Underground Railroad stop, it’s now dying. A race is on to save it.

Brooklyn, Illinois, is the oldest majority-Black town in America. And it’s dying.
Take a look inside the fight to save the historic community.

Also! There's a lot of ways to look at service, but we chose by neighborhood. One benefit of this:

The street grid means sometimes you can choose between a few routes to get where you want to go. Looking at neighborhoods takes into account the quality of service in an area, not just one route

We analyzed schedules, to figure out CTA's intentions for buses. We also looked at how buses were actually running (thanks to @chihacknight.bsky.social's Ghost Buses project!)

There is a ton of info here. And stay tuned for more as this updates

--> ctastopwatch.miurban-dashboards.org <--

I've wanted to look into buses for years. More people ride buses than trains! They go more places!

But there are *a lot* of routes, and the city is vast. The Western route alone is over 20 miles.

Enter @dsi-uchicago.bsky.social, which made amazing use of available data to make sense of it all

CTA says bus service is back to prepandemic levels. A new analysis shows which neighborhoods were slowest to get service back. Some neighborhoods were slower to get service back than others — and many that fared worst have high unemployment and low incomes.

These neighborhoods have been slowest to get bus service back from pandemic cuts - including many that are exactly the kinds of places where CTA's own study found the benefits of transit are clearest

I teamed up with U of C's Mansueto Institute to take a deeper look at buses. Here's what we found 👇

CTA says bus service is back to prepandemic levels. A new analysis shows which neighborhoods were slowest to get service back. Some neighborhoods were slower to get service back than others — and many that fared worst have high unemployment and low incomes.

CTA was slower to restore bus service post-pandemic in some of the neighborhoods where it's needed the most, @chicagotribune.com/U of C report finds. Via @sfreishtat.bsky.social
www.chicagotribune.com/2024/12/30/c...