Next month, the seven members of the Chicago Transit Authority’s new governing board will take their seats in the agency’s West Loop boardroom. One of their first tasks will be to elect a chair.
Lester Barclay, who has served as chair of the current and soon-to-be-defunct CTA board since he was appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot five years ago, remained coy in conversations with the Tribune this month about his leadership ambitions, but made it clear he saw himself staying in the mix as the new board takes shape.
“If asked, I wouldn’t mind serving,” Barclay said when asked about the prospect of staying on as chair. “But I think that’s up to the board. I respect the process.”
The board shakeup is just one part of the broad governance reforms mandated by the state’s transit funding legislation, which consolidates power in a central governing authority and raises more than $1 billion for public transit annually. On Sept. 1, all current transit board members’ terms expire and new members will take their places, although some members have been reappointed. As the deadline approaches, transit insiders are jockeying for power within the new governance structure.
Barclay is a controversial figure in the realm of Chicago transportation politics, viewed by some as a member of the old guard in a world where lawmakers have ordered change. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson this summer appointed him to both the new CTA board and to the board of the Northern Illinois Transit Authority — the governing body that is supposed to act as a more powerful and less broke version of the Regional Transportation Authority, which will go kaput on Tuesday.
Barclay faced heat during his appointment process this summer from advocates who slammed his past criticism of transit reform, his leadership under former, embattled CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. and his ridership on the CTA, which has been less frequent than they’d like. He ultimately got himself through a City Council gauntlet and onto both the CTA and NITA boards, although his confirmation vote was split.
But when it comes to who serves as chair of the new CTA board, some advocates want to see new leadership.
“The mandate of the (transit reform legislation) is to start new, is to turn a new page and build the kind of transit system that riders want and that Chicagoans deserve,” said Kyle Lucas of the group Better Streets Chicago, a transit advocacy organization that slammed Barclay’s appointment to the NITA board earlier this summer.
“If we’re maintaining existing leadership, I think that they need to prove that they’re prepared and willing to take us to the next level,” Lucas said.
Northern Illinois Transit Authority and Chicago Transit Authority appointee Lester Barclay, the CTA board’s current chairman, answers questions about transparency from committee vice chair Ald. Andre Vasquez Jr., 40th, during a Transportation and Public Way Committee meeting in council chambers on July 14, 2026. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, who voted against Barclay’s appointment last month, echoed that sentiment.
“We’ve made a decision in Chicago and the entire state to chart a new course,” Martin told the Tribune this week.
“I do think that new leadership is needed,” Martin added. “Again, someone who has real expertise in transportation as well as someone who can stitch together a coalition of activists and experts to help chart that course for Chicago.”
Juan Sebastian Arias, the executive director of transit-oriented development group Elevated Chicago, said he did “see some value in having the next CTA board chair have some experience, and some knowledge of how the CTA operates.”
“I also see a lot of value in someone who can bring a new vision and new approach to match the opportunity that’s ahead,” he said.
The new CTA board will be less powerful than it was before state-mandated reforms that require increased oversight by NITA, but the board will still have influence over the CTA’s operations, and some say over the appointment of a president for the agency, which has been under interim leadership for a year and a half. The board members will earn salaries between $15,000 and $25,000 depending on whether they serve just on the CTA board or on the NITA board too.
Tom Kotarac, center, of the Regional Transportation Authority Board, speaks, Aug. 26, 2026, during an RTA Ad Hoc Committee on NITA Transition meeting at the Old Post Office. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
The other incoming CTA board members include returning members Michael Eaddy and Neema Jha as well as nonprofit executive Nedra Sims Fears and Columbia College Associate Vice President Ann Kalayil. They’ll be joined by RTA board members Oswaldo Alvarez and Tom Kotarac, the latter of whom has emerged as a key figure in the NITA transition, presiding over transition committee meetings.
The next chair of the Chicago Transit Board will be selected by the majority of the board and must be approved by the Illinois Senate. The chair will be selected after the more powerful NITA board selects its own leader, which is expected to happen Sept. 10.
State Sen. Ram Villivalam, a Chicago Democrat and key architect of the transit reform legislation, said he hadn’t been pitched by anyone hoping to become chair of either the CTA or NITA boards.
Villivalam said lawmakers “have made it clear that we’re looking for leadership that will hold the agencies accountable to providing safe, reliable, accessible and integrated” transit service.
Barclay, whom transit advocates have repeatedly hammered for riding the CTA infrequently, invited the Tribune to ride the Green Line last week on the city’s South Side, including through the Englewood neighborhood where he grew up. Barclay, a family law attorney by trade and the consul of Jamaica in Chicago, cast himself as a supporter of development near public transit, pointing out vacant lots that abutted the train’s route. “When I was a kid,” he said, “all this was commerce.”
Barclay maintained he’s on board with transit reform despite a Tribune op-ed he wrote last fall in which he questioned the increased power NITA officials have over CTA decision-making. “This funding victory comes with a price for the city of Chicago and the CTA,” he wrote at the time.
“I love the fact that we’re talking about regional coordination. I think that’s good for the citizens of our city and this region,” Barclay told the Tribune this month. “But I expressed concerns about how we were going to go about that.”
Asked whether he was concerned about the suburbs and collar counties having too much of a say over issues affecting the CTA, Barclay said that “remains to be seen.”
During the appointment process, activists hammered Barclay for riding the CTA infrequently. Transit advocate Nik Hunder, who files public records requests for ridership numbers on CTA employee and board members’ company Ventra cards, fired at Barclay during the public comment portion of one appointment hearing, saying Barclay swiped onto the system only 49 times last year.
Barclay offered an explanation to the Tribune that was similar to one given in the past by the CTA on behalf of former CTA president Carter — who faced similar criticism — saying he is sometimes recognized as the board chair and ushered through the fare gates. Barclay also said he sometimes uses his own personal Ventra card.
He maintained he rode the CTA around once a week.
“I don’t think it’s unfair,” Barclay said, about whether he thought activists’ focus on the metric was justified, but added that he didn’t think they were seeing the “total picture,” noting his legal clients pay him by the hour, including for his transportation time. “I don’t have the luxury of always waiting to get to Maywood Courthouse on public transportation and bill that to my client,” he said.
Barclay equivocated when asked if his work on the board would change if he rode the CTA more frequently.
“I could see things that I didn’t see the next day, or I could see … the same things that I saw the day before. I think it’s situational,” he said.
Barclay said he had taken Metra once since he was named to the NITA board, and had not taken Pace.
He pushed back against the implication from some critics that he doesn’t have transit experience, pointing to years he spent working as outside counsel for the CTA, during which he worked on labor arbitration issues, as well as stints in summer jobs at the CTA in the late 1970s.
Barclay has helmed the board under two CTA presidents — first under Carter, who faced widespread public discontent over unreliable CTA service in the pandemic and post-pandemic years, and now under Carter’s former chief of staff, Nora Leerhsen, who took over the agency when Carter stepped down under pressure in early 2025. Barclay has defended the board’s leadership under Carter, saying it held CTA leadership accountable. Leerhsen has become popular with transit advocates but hasn’t received a nod from the mayor to take the job on permanently.
Lester Barclay, Chicago Transit Board chairman, and Nora Leerhsen, CTA acting president, listen Aug. 26, 2026, during a meeting of the RTA Ad Hoc Committee on NITA Transition at the Old Post Office. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
In the past, only CTA board approval was needed to fill the president’s seat. Now, the approval of the NITA board is required too, and the NITA board chair and executive director must be included in the search process.
“I’ve heard names outside the state, I’ve heard names inside the state,” Barclay said when asked about potential candidates for permanent CTA leadership. “I just wait until the process yields itself to the direction that we should go in,” he said.
“It’s Chicago,” Barclay added. “Anything can happen.”