Acting CTA President Nora Leerhsen has been holding down the fort since career bureaucrat Dorval Carter Jr.’s retirement earlier this year, but she wants the permanent job and is making a case to keep it.

That much was obvious on Wednesday when Leerhsen, who took over Feb. 1, appeared before a City Council Transportation Committee that had to compel Carter to testify when he was in charge.

Carter was criticized for being seemingly tone-deaf to rider complaints about safety and service reliability, and nearly half the 50-member City Council signed a non-binding resolution demanding his ouster.

In many respects, Leerhsen came across Tuesday as the opposite of Carter.

Unlike Carter, who seldom if ever rode the system he was tasked with leading, Leerhsen talked about having taken more than 450 rides on the CTA over the last year and visiting every one of the CTA’s seven bus garages, nine rail terminals and maintenance shops.

Leerhsen reported progress on problems that have slowed the CTA’s post-pandemic recovery, including:

• Bolstering service frequency and quality by hiring over 5,000 people over the last two years. Thanks to the hiring blitz, the CTA now has 848 more bus operators than it had during the “depths of the pandemic in 2022” while rail staffing is “at 95% of pre-pandemic levels and growing.” Nearly half of the 11,000 CTA employees now have “less than two years” on the job.

• The March roll-out of a so-called “Frequent Bus Network” that gives 20 popular routes service every ten minutes or better from early morning into the evening. The upgrade is already paying dividends with “upwards of 20% ridership growth” on the Jeffery Jump and the No. 40 Blue Island bus routes.

• Deploying supervisors in the field to monitor service delivery “in real-time,” resulting in “90% reliability” and “very significant drops in complaints” from riders.

• A drop in the number of slow zones from a peak of 30% of the rapid transit system just a few months ago to 18% last month.

• Nineteen “pop-up events” in June and July alone at CTA stations where management and staff engage with and solicit feedback from riders.

• Strategic deployment of teams of Chicago police officers working in tandem with CTA security guards on the Red Line overnight, seven days a week, since March.

• Twenty-four “anti-smoking missions” resulting in over 200 citations to crack down on one of the leading sources of rider complaints.

Leerhsen also stared down the elephant in the room: the Chicago area’s $770 million mass transit fiscal cliff.

“To put it plain and simple: public transit in our region needs to be funded or we will face drastic service cuts,” she said. ”We are actively planning for several potential scenarios that could come about. These are stark and sobering analyses for us to see and the economic and societal impact that cuts would have out our city and region are staggering.”

Ald. Bill Conway (34th), who pushed through a resolution Wednesday demanding data-driven enforcement of the CTA’s smoking ban, said he appreciated Leerhsen’s candor.

“After Carter frankly, it was a breath of fresh air,” Conway said. “I still get complaints about smoking and public safety on the CTA every day. I’d like to see a little bit more on that. But I really appreciate her rhetoric and forthright testimony.”

Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), a driving force behind demands for Carter’s ouster, said Leerhsen is “doing a great job and people can see it.”

“She’s shown what it’s like to have steady leadership that focuses on investing in workers and the customer experience,” Vasquez said.

Ald. Daniel LaSpata (1st) told Leerhsen, “I find your energy so refreshing. Your excitement for the system and for the CTA is palpable.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson allowed Carter to follow through with one of his signature achievements — securing federal funding for the Red Line extension to 130th Street, before Carter announced his retirement.

The mayor then tried and failed to convince CTA board members to appoint his chief operating officer John Roberson as Carter’s permanent replacement. Roberson ended up leaving City Hall for a job as executive vice president for the Obama Presidential Center.

The mayor also offered the job to State Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) only to have the former mayoral challenger who specializes in mass transit issues turn it down.

Leerhsen is an attorney and former public school teacher who has spent the last decade at the CTA, including a stint as Carter’s chief of staff. On Wednesday, a City Hall source gave her a “40% chance” of keeping the $396,206-a-year job she now holds.

“She’s quite good,” the source said. “People like her. That’s why it’s kind of tricky.”