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The CTA Language Barrier

By Jeannie Walters and Peggy Entrop
November 11, 2008

Vox calls on the Chicago Transit Authority to improve their customer experience by providing multilingual traveler information online.

Ron Huberman, President of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) stresses that his “focus for the coming year continues to be making the CTA customer experience the best that it can possibly be.” Unfortunately, his efforts to improve the CTA’s customer communications and online tools have been directed toward only English-speaking riders. If Huberman and the CTA truly want to impact the customer experience, they need to improve relationships with all their customers, including residents and global tourists who primarily speak more than 26 languages common in Chicago.

While CTA online information is becoming easier to access in English, it is simply non-existent even in Spanish, the primary language spoken in more than 450,000 Chicago homes. Recent census data shows that the Hispanic population is the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. The CTA has the third largest transit system in the U.S., and ridership continues to increase – with both English and Spanish speakers. From January to June 2008, 8.8 million more bus riders and 1.9 million more people used the CTA than during the same period in 2007. Offering Spanish language resources will not only help Huberman’s CTA truly connect and build trust with its customer base, it will build trust with the other 1.2 million English speaking Latinos in the Chicago area who have Spanish speaking friends and family.

This language barrier is not a new problem. In 2006, Chicagocareless.com reported that in preparation for the Kedzie Brown Line Station closure, the CTA failed to provide any informational flyers, brochures, or on-board and station posters in any language other than English. The Chicago Tribune reported that more than 40% of Kedzie stop riders primarily spoke Spanish, many of whom were unaware of the closure until the day it happened. Since that incident, the CTA has made only a limited effort to post certain print communications in multiple languages, but their online presence has remained strictly English-only, falling significantly behind the rising standard of service around the nation. Just compare Chicago to San Francisco; the Bay Area Transit Authority has almost half the number of daily riders as the CTA, but their website features 7 additional language choices!

It’s time for the CTA to step up to the current industry standard and provide equal information to all their customers. It would be a relatively simple step with significant dividends toward creating a more consistent customer experience and would encourage foreign visitors to use public transportation. Customer Service representatives assure customers they are “exploring translation options similar to those offered by other transit agencies,” but no specific commitment is being made to providing these services. Currently preparing itself for Olympic consideration, it would benefit the city to reach out to non-English speakers. The CTA has plans to launch a new website sometime before the end of the year, but the question remains: will they continue to ignore the needs of many of their riders?

Side-by-side Comparison: The 5 Largest US Transit Systems (as of Q2 2008)

System	City Served	Daily Ridership	Number of Languages on Website	Snapshot of Homepage	Summary
Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA)	New York City	8,054,000	35		Google Translation service is provided, offering pages to be displayed in one of 35 languages.  It is simple to use and prominently featured on their homepage.
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metrorail)	Washington D.C.	1,036,200	7		7 language links are subtly located at the bottom of the page.  The multi-lingual presence on their website is not as robust as New York, but it is still a significant feature.
Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)	Chicago	650,700	1		Translations are not provided in any language.
Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA)	Boston	515,200	15		15 languages are provided, with links placed at both the top and bottom of the page.
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)	San Francisco	385,200	8		Similar to the Washington DC website layout, translation options are linked to by flag representations at the bottom of the page.

Jeannie Walters is President of Vox, Inc., a customer experience research and consulting firm. Contact her through the feedback form on our Contact Us page. Copyright 2008 Vox, Inc. All rights reserved.