Three weeks ago I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Chicago Department of Administrative Hearings. I was trying to answer a simple question: does the CTA's fare enforcement program generate enough revenue to justify what it costs? I was also, if I am being honest, trying to produce something impressive enough that a Chicago newsroom might notice that an engineer in Troy, Michigan knew how to work with public data.
The DOAH produced 11,043 adjudicated fare evasion cases. The analysis showed $2,669,348 in total fines assessed - against $251 million in private security contracts. That finding, published here on April 24, was damning enough. Less than one percent return on a quarter-billion dollar enforcement apparatus.
I kept pulling the thread.
On May 4, the City of Chicago Department of Finance responded to a follow-up FOIA request with a dataset covering 67,046 transit citation cases. It shows what the enforcement system actually collected in cash - not what it assessed, not what it adjudicated, but what it actually received.
The number is $26,148.57.
What the Finance Data Shows
Assessed vs. collected - a critical distinction
The DOAH data showed what administrative law judges imposed. The Finance data shows what the city actually received. Those two numbers are very different things, and the distance between them is the story.
The Department of Finance collected $26,148.57 in cash from fare evasion enforcement across all years on record. The Department of Administrative Hearings assessed $2,669,348 in fines across 11,043 cases. The city collected less than one cent for every dollar it imposed. Against $251 million in private security contracts, fare evasion enforcement returned 0.01% of its cost in actual revenue against private security contracts alone. Part III of this investigation adds CPD enforcement costs, bringing the true ROI to 0.006%.
The collection rate was not always this low. It was always low. But it has collapsed in direct proportion to the enforcement surge. As the CTA spent more on private security and CPD Transit Section arrests climbed 331% between 2022 and 2025, the fraction of fines actually collected fell by more than half.
The collection rate by year
2025 was the peak enforcement year - 18,040 ANOVs issued, the highest on record. It was also the worst collection year on record. The more aggressively the city enforced, the less it collected. The relationship between enforcement intensity and fiscal return is not just weak. It is inverse.
The Debt Machine
What happens after the fine
95.3% of all transit citation cases in the Finance dataset - 63,862 of 67,046 - were referred to a collection firm. The city gave up on collecting through its own mechanisms and handed the debt to a third party.
Those 63,862 people did not stop owing money when the city stopped being able to collect it. The debt followed them. A $300 fare evasion fine, once referred to a collection firm, becomes $650 or more with stacked administrative fees and accruing interest. It appears on credit reports. It affects the ability to rent an apartment, secure a job that runs a credit check, or open a bank account.
The city collected $26,148.57 in cash. 63,862 people are still carrying the debt. Those are not the same outcome dressed differently. They are opposite outcomes. The city got nothing. The people got everything.
Cross-referencing the Finance dataset against the DOAH adjudication records reveals the composition of those 63,862 cases. 96.5% are default judgments - people who never appeared at their hearing. People who, had they appeared, would have faced a city that could not establish a prima facie case in one of every six contested proceedings and had to amend the charge in nearly one of every six others.
The people now carrying $650 balances to a collection firm largely never knew they had a case to make. The $300 default judgment arrived, they did not respond, and the debt machinery engaged. The city collected nothing. The debt remains.
The alternative math
For $251 million, the CTA could have given every person ever adjudicated for fare evasion a free monthly unlimited Ventra pass - all 11,043 of them - and had $249,998,309 left over. It could have given a free monthly pass to every one of the 63,862 people currently in collections for $6.7 million, saving $244 million. For the full contract cost, it could have eliminated fares entirely on the CTA for nearly five months.
These are not rhetorical numbers. They are the arithmetic of a policy choice. The CTA chose enforcement. The Finance data documents what enforcement produced: $26,148.57 in cash, 63,862 people with growing debt, and a collection rate that fell to 0.32% in the year enforcement peaked.
I did not set out to find this. I was trying to get a job. The data answered a question I almost didn't think to ask, and it keeps answering it the same way no matter how I run the numbers.
The full investigation - contracts, procurement records, board authorization gap, contractor background, and adjudication data - is at policytorque.com/cta-transit-enforcement. The live FOIA tracking dashboard is at policytorque.com/cta-enforcement-audit. Fifteen FOIAs remain active. The CTA has not yet produced board and staff communications regarding the contract authorization, the $26 million overspend, or the March 2026 renewal and April 2026 termination.
Michael Russo is the founder of PolicyTorque LLC. He is an independent policy researcher and journalist. He has no financial interest in any entity named in this article. Primary source documents are available upon request. Contact: michael@policytorque.com · 248-930-0117