Politics
Chicago-Area Transit Leaders Urge for More Funding, See Consolidation as the Wrong Move
Chicago-area transit agencies are facing financial trouble.
When federal COVID-19 relief money runs out in 2026, the four agencies are staring down a combined $730 million budget gap. That impending fiscal cliff has led to calls from some lawmakers and transit advocates for reform — perhaps as drastic as merging CTA, Metra, Pace, and RTA into a new regional agency.
That’s an idea the current transit agencies say is the wrong move.
Meanwhile, the Illinois Senate Transportation Committee just wrapped a series of six hearings on the future of public transit and the committee’s leaders, state Sen. Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago) and minority leader state Sen. Don DeWitte (R-St. Charles), said they support a plan to create one united organization.
“I think we can all agree that the RTA, or the MMA, as it may be called, eventually, does have to have control over all three of those service boards who, up until this point, have all operated almost in a silo,” DeWitte said on an Oct. 8 appearance on “Chicago Tonight.”
Jim Derwinski, executive director of Metra, said that despite that perception, the agencies are still able to coordinate.
“I don’t see how the three agencies aren’t working together in that space,” he said. “It’s really been a funding issue all these years about putting out that level of service.”
Leanne Redden, the executive director of the Regional Transportation Authority, has instead pitched boosting its authority to get the three transit agencies to coordinate. She said what people believe the RTA can do and what they’re allowed to do are very different.
“The actual powers do not actually exist,” she said. “In the fare policy space, we are actually specifically precluded from setting fares and creating fair policy for the three service boards. So the best we can do is kind of have some conversations and maybe make some suggestions.”
Redden says that by taking on tasks such as setting fares, standards or overseeing capital projects, the other agencies would be able to focus on their day-to-day work.
Agency leaders insist the problem with transit is a funding one.
Tom McKone, the chief financial officer of the Chicago Transit Authority, points to the funding model as one example of this.
“We provide 84% of the region’s rides, and yet we get less than half of the funding to support that,” he said. “That’s inequity that was based on the formula that was put in place in 1983 so as we’re talking about reform and we’re talking about the funding that’s needed, we really need to address the inequities that are present in that funding formula.”
The proposal to merge Chicago-area transit agencies is paired with a proposed $1.5 billion in new funding, which the RTA supports – though officials noted they’re “agnostic” as to sources for that new money. The authority is also asking lawmakers to eliminate the farebox recovery ratio, which mandates that up to 50% of operating budgets come from passenger payments.
Additional concerns come from suburban leaders who worry consolidating the agencies will also cut their representation on each of their boards. Melinda Metzger, the executive director of Pace, agreed and said Pace was created to support suburban passengers.
“We cover an area of about 3,500 square miles, we go through 274 communities and over 80% of the people live in the suburbs,” she said. “If you take that area and then say, ‘well…the appointing authority is not going to be in that suburban area,’ it would not get the proper representation. There’s a lot going on in the suburbs that we need to know about, and having big isn’t always better.”
Agency leaders say that if the General Assembly doesn’t come up with a solution to the looming fiscal cliff facing Chicago-area transit by the end of June, agencies say they will have to drop everything and immediately start planning for drastic service cuts of up to 40%.
Metzger is still hopeful legislators will support funding efforts.
“What I heard at the hearings was that everybody likes the service we provide,” she said. “They just want more of it. So I’m hoping that’s what got through to lawmakers and I think the important part is that we need the funding to do that.”
Nick Blumberg contributed to this report.
