With transit advocates hopeful they’ll see shovels in the ground next year to kick off the long-awaited Red Line Extension, the Chicago Transit Authority is racing to finalize the $1.9 billion in federal funding needed to complete the 5.6-mile project before the Biden administration leaves office.

“We are in the final phases of that process,” CTA President Dorval Carter told the agency’s board of directors earlier this month. “We’re working very closely with (the Federal Transit Administration) to complete their portion of the review process so that we can stay on track to execute a grant agreement between now and early next year.”

While CTA officials have expressed confidence they’re poised to secure that money, the high-profile Red Line project is far from the only hurdle local transit agencies could face in the coming years. The FTA, a part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, provides billions in funding for capital projects used to build and repair transit infrastructure across the country. It also offsets operating costs for urban areas with populations of fewer than 200,000 people.

Not everyone is a fan of their approach. 

The FTA capital grants are “another example of Washington’s tendency to fund transit expansion rather than maintaining or improving current facilities,” wrote Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Transportation during the first Trump administration, in a chapter of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report. “Because Americans have demonstrated a strong preference for alternative means of transportation, rather than throwing good money after bad by continuing federal subsidies for transit expansion, there should be a focus on reducing costs that make transit uneconomical.”

Project 2025 became a political hot potato during the most recent presidential election, with then-candidate Donald Trump and his allies attempting to distance themselves from the blueprint for slashing government programs and spending. 

Some advocates worry that “strong preference” for ways of getting around other than transit overlooks the fact that many people rely on public transportation because they cannot afford or are unable to drive. Nearly 20% of households in Cook County have no vehicle, according to a Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning analysis of Census Bureau data.

Since the election, Trump has announced multiple appointments will be filled by Project 2025 contributors, including John Ratcliffe, Trump’s nominee for CIA director; Brendan Carr, his pick for Federal Communications Commission chairman; and Thomas Homan, tapped to serve as “border czar.”

The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, expressed optimism in an interview with the New York Times that the conservative think tank will quickly regain its influence with Trump.

“I anticipate speaking with him pretty soon,” Roberts told the Times at a launch party for his book, which features a forward by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and whose release was reportedly delayed to avoid becoming another political headache for the Trump campaign. “We’re very optimistic about working with the administration.”

The Project 2025 section on transit bemoaned the fact that members of Congress opposed a push from the first Trump administration to scrap the FTA’s Capital Investment Grants program. The program has enjoyed bipartisan support, since the federal money can help create jobs for lawmakers’ constituents and boost local economies.

“At a minimum,” Furchtgott-Roth wrote, “a new conservative Administration should ensure that each CIG project meets sound economic standards and a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.”

Given the support from Congress, local transit officials aren’t concerned those grant programs will disappear. There’s also funding available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021 — but it’s only locked in through 2026, so that would need congressional reauthorization.

Even without entirely ending certain federal support for transit, Trump appointees could slow-walk things or quietly alter programs — changing eligibility standards, making selections based on political preferences or purposely leaving open key jobs needed to process requests for funding. The president-elect’s nominee for secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, is a former Fox News contributor, Republican congressman from Wisconsin and “Real World” contestant without significant experience in the transportation sector.

Another area that could be targeted: programs transit agencies use to ensure more women and people of color get job opportunities on major projects like the Red Line Extension or the Red-Purple Modernization. Those efforts typically fall under the federal Transportation Department’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program or Minority Business Enterprise programs through the state or city.

The federal DBE program is currently being challenged in court, which Carter said means the CTA is looking at other ways to ensure large contacts remain inclusive.

“We have other options at CTA, typically given the position that the state of Illinois takes and some of the other legal options we have,” he told the board. “But I think it’s safe to say that race-based or race-conscious diversity programs right now are under severe attack and … how they’re going to look could change dramatically in the upcoming years.”

The CTA has regularly touted its DBE goals as a key part of its equity mission. Agency staff said that through the end of September, 21% of its spending on the Red-Purple Modernization has so far gone to DBE firms — some 119 companies in total.

Coincidentally, that overhaul of the Red and Purple lines on the North Side was in a similar position after Trump was first elected to office in 2016, with CTA and FTA officials hurrying to get the needed federal award in place so the project could move forward.

“Eight years ago, we were also in the 11th hour of securing money from the FTA,” said CTA spokeswoman Tammy Chase. “... We worked with the outgoing Obama administration to finalize and get that funding agreement signed before President Obama left office. That’s the exact same scenario we envision this time around. We are confident that we will be able to get this signed and done before President Biden leaves office.”

Despite the change of administration just after the RPM funding came through, Chase said the first Trump administration didn’t pose any problems.

“It’s a full funding grant agreement that the federal government signs — basically, the federal government signs a pledge saying we will make sure that the money for your project gets appropriated on a certain schedule through the life of the project,” Chase said. “We have received all of the funding at the schedule that we expected, … so that’s what we expect to happen with the Red Line Extension project going forward.”

Maulik Vaishnav, the Regional Transportation Authority’s senior deputy executive director for planning and capital programming, echoed that confidence in the Red Line Extension project.

“There’s always that little bit of unknown in terms of what we are going to deal with globally with this administration, but I don’t think at this point we are expecting anything different than how RPM moved through the process,” Vaishnav said. “Our five-year capital program includes a significant amount of locked-in funding, so from that perspective I think we have lined everything up for this to move forward.”

Contact Nick Blumberg: [email protected] | (773) 509-5434 | @ndblumberg