Politics
Transit Agencies Release Dire Warning on Looming Service Cuts; Bus and Train Lines, Overnight and Weekend Service Could Be Slashed
CTA train in downtown Chicago. (Rawf8 / iStock)
In a move aimed at galvanizing lawmakers, riders and advocates, Chicago-area transit agencies on Friday released worst-case scenarios of the drastic cuts they say will be necessary if state lawmakers don’t plug an anticipated $770 million budget gap for CTA, Metra and Pace in 2026.
“We want to get people’s attention so they understand the very dire consequences that could happen,” said Leanne Redden, executive director of the Regional Transportation Authority.
The transit agencies came up with the doomsday models at the RTA’s behest, responding to calls from Springfield legislators who’ve demanded specifics about how bad it could get if transit goes over the fiscal cliff — as well as what public transportation could look like if lawmakers go beyond plugging the budget gap and drastically increase state funding.
“We’re facing a 20% shortfall in our operating budgets … but it’s not a one for one comparison,” Redden said. “To fill that gap and avoid that fiscal cliff of $770 (million), it translates to about a 40% cut in service.”
The CTA is facing the largest budget gap. It warns that it could close or scale back service to more than 50 train stations, end service on all or some of four out of its eight lines and cut up to 74 out of its 127 bus routes.
Metra is warning it might have to slash weekday service to one train per hour and weekend service to one train every two hours, end early morning and late evening trains and shut down the Blue Island Branch.
Pace said it could end all weekend bus service, slash late-night service on 62 bus routes and dramatically scale back paratransit on weekends by as much as 66%.
Redden said Chicago-area transit has never before faced the prospect of such devastating service reductions, especially not across all three transit agencies. The report said the projected cuts could mean 90 million lost trips in the first year; a $2.6 billion hit to the regional economy and $1 billion in lost wages; and 400,000 riders losing access to bus or train routes they rely on to get around, including one in five workers in the city no longer being able to take transit for their daily commute.
“If these proposed dramatic cuts happen, (the) additional highway lane miles needed during rush hours would be 26. We obviously have no room to build even one or two additional lanes on our highway network,” said Maulik Vaishnav, the Regional Transportation Authority’s senior deputy executive director for planning and capital programming. “The amount of parking needed downtown is equivalent to building 12 Sears Towers.”
Springfield lawmakers have been digging into the specifics of two competing plans to overhaul transit governance, as well as how to boost public funding — and at what level. The RTA has proposed about $100 million of savings made up of efficiencies and modest fare increases.
Some legislators have been adamant that governance reform must come before any additional funding. But transit leaders have been equally firm that if the General Assembly doesn’t come through with the needed money, they’ll immediately have to start planning for cuts — even if lawmakers pledge to tackle the money in a fall veto session.
“While this is a funding crisis and a funding issue that we’re facing, we have been very upfront that we also welcome and support reform,” Redden said. “We are encouraged by the concept that the Labor coalition has put out there where it talks about … giving the RTA the true authority to really lead and act and coordinate across key areas like fares, service standards and capital prioritization, but freeing up the three service boards to do what they do best, which is operate the buses and the trains.”
Contact Nick Blumberg: [email protected] | (773) 509-5434 | @ndblumberg
