Good morning, Chicago.

One year after unveiling a broad plan to address CTA service and safety challenges, President Dorval Carter touted decreases in crime on the transit system and service that runs more closely to schedule, helping to limit the prevalence of ghost buses and trains.

In his update, Carter highlighted Chicago Police Department data showing violent crime on the CTA was down 13% through July, and overall crime was down 9%.

But the CTA still faces challenges running all of its scheduled service, agency data shows, and riders complain of wait times between buses and trains. Key to running more service is hiring and retaining more operators, but the CTA has not yet met its staffing targets for the year.

The data marks the progression of the first year of Carter’s plan to address unpredictable wait times, crime and ghost buses and trains, which show up on digital trackers but fail to arrive in real life. The agency has been plagued by complaints about service, safety and conditions since ridership plummeted at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. By spring, the average number of riders had ticked back up to about 59% of pre-pandemic levels.

Read the full story from the Tribune’s Sarah Freishtat.

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Former President Donald Trump surrendered Thursday on charges that he illegally schemed to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, a brisk 20-minute booking that yielded a historic first: a mug shot of a U.S. ex-president.

He was released on $200,000 bond and headed back to the airport for his return flight home to New Jersey, flashing a thumbs-up through the window of his sport utility vehicle as his motorcade left.

The temperature reached 100 degrees at O’Hare International Airport shortly before 3 p.m. Thursday, a temperature Chicago has not seen in more than a decade.

Bally’s Chicago has scheduled practice gaming sessions at Medinah Temple for the Illinois Gaming Board after Labor Day. If it passes muster, the first Chicago casino — an idea decades in the making — may be open for business soon thereafter.

The Chicago Water Taxi will resume service three days a week starting Sept. 5.

The fall water taxi will run during rush hour, with trips every 15 minutes from 6:30 to 9:15 a.m. and again from 3:15 to 5:30 p.m. The first trip of the morning will leave from Ogilvie and the last trip will depart from Michigan Avenue.

The city is averaging 11.0 hospitalizations per day, up from 7.86 the week before and 1.4 in mid-July, city data released Thursday shows. Similarly, laboratory-confirmed cases have jumped to 119, up from 98 the week prior and 30 in mid-July. The indicators both remain at “low” risk levels, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The third preseason game will be the starters’ final tuneup before the season opener Sept. 10 against the Green Bay Packers, and it also will be the final job audition for those trying to make the roster when the Bears make cuts Tuesday. Here are four things to watch.

The visual exterior of Neill Blomkamp’s racing simulator video game adaptation “Gran Turismo” mimics that of a race car itself: shiny, colorful and chrome. There’s a real surface appeal to this movie, which is based on the remarkable true story of Jann Mardenborough, a gamer and fan of the “Gran Turismo” driving game (billed as the most accurate driving game simulator), who won a Nissan-sponsored driving academy and has since gone on to become a successful race car driver himself — on real tracks, not virtual ones.

The 2023 edition of Noir City Chicago, the annual celebration of mean streets and what the French call “malchance,” gathers a week’s worth of cinematic crime, passion, punishment and extreme shadows for screenings of 18 films, mostly on 35mm film, at the Music Box Theatre.

Cultural and maybe literal gridlock is coming to the Chicago area this weekend, including with lots of live music and the Great American Dog Show at McCormick Place.