Politics
Lawmakers Unveil Plan to Overhaul Chicago-Area Transit With New Oversight Agency, But No Solution for Fiscal Cliff
Update: Late Wednesday, lawmakers unveiled new sources of revenue for the system aimed at staving off a fiscal cliff that could have sent transit into a death spiral. Read the latest.
State lawmakers lifted the curtain on a long-anticipated plan to reform Chicago-area transit on Wednesday, just days from the end of the spring session and after lengthy rounds of negotiations.
The bill would replace the Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees CTA, Metra, and Pace, with a new entity called the Northern Illinois Transit Authority. It would be charged with creating a universal fare system and ensuring coordination of service and capital projects. Under the plan, CTA, Metra, and Pace would essentially be left to focus on delivering bus and rail service.
But the measure does not tackle the looming $770 million fiscal cliff facing Chicagoland transit next year after COVID-19 relief funding dries up.
The plan borrows elements from the Metropolitan Mobility Authority Act — a proposal filed last year that would have created a single, regional transit agency — and the United We Move framework pitched by a coalition of labor unions earlier this year.
Throughout more than a year of hearings and negotiations focused on transit, unions had been staunchly opposed to the idea of a merger. Leaving CTA, Metra and Pace in place as operating divisions will preserve existing collective bargaining agreements and prevent the potential headache of merging a pool of employees represented by an array of different unions and contracts.
Given the likely complexity of the change, the plan features a runway to put the new governance system into place. A transition working group must be seated by April 30 of next year and comprise members from the NITA, at least one labor group, and CTA, Metra and Pace.
The bill calls for NITA’s board to have five directors appointed by the mayor of Chicago, five appointed by the governor, five appointed by the Cook County Board president, and one director each appointed by the board chairs of Kane, Lake, McHenry, DuPage and Will counties. They must have “diverse and substantial relevant experience and expertise for overseeing the planning, operation, and funding of a regional transportation system.”
State Sen. Don DeWitte (R-West Dundee), minority spokesperson on the Senate Transportation Committee, said in a statement that the measure “appears to confirm our initial fears that this is a Chicago-Cook County takeover of regional transit funding and operations because the voting thresholds appear to be heavily skewed toward Cook County and the City of Chicago. We will continue to fight for fairness and equity in board representation and voting power for the five collar counties of DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will, which comprise a significant portion of the regional public transit system.”
The plan also lessens the onerous farebox recovery ratio requirement, which mandates that some 50% of operating revenue come from passenger fares — far higher than peer agencies around the U.S. The bill sets an initial benchmark of 25%.
The measure calls for developing a plan by Jan. 1, 2028, to create a dedicated police force. It also creates a transit ambassador program, an effort many passengers and transit advocates have clamored for as a way to improve rider experience, as well as assisting people sheltering on the system. And it gives NITA the authority to participate in transit-oriented development, a move many transit advocates had hoped to see.
Lawmakers, transit experts, labor unions and the governor’s office have been working feverishly to hammer out a deal. But a person close to the negotiations said the existing transit agencies were not a significant part of that closed-door process, having frustrated lawmakers with their insistence that the challenges faced by transit are predominantly tied to inadequate funding and not how those agencies are structured.
In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Tina Fassett Smith, the RTA’s director of communications, emphasized the lack of new funding.
“We are reviewing the proposed transit reform legislation posted today. Our intention is to do a complete analysis before making any statements about what is in the bill or how it may impact the region’s transit system,” Fassett Smith wrote. “It is clear from initial review however, that this bill does not contain any new funding. To date riders have sent more than 14,000 letters to their legislators urging them to act this session. Reforms alone cannot close our fiscal cliff, and riders will need to brace for service cuts in 2026 if the state does not provide funding certainty by May 31st.”
The CTA has frequently pointed to the fact that while it provides 80% of rides in the region, it gets less than 50% of the funding. And the state of Illinois provides far less money for Chicago-area public transportation than its peers, according to the RTA — just 17%, compared to 28% in New York, 44% in Boston and 50% in Philadelphia.
The language of the bill is clear about delegation of authority, saying that the NITA “has ultimate responsibility for providing the metropolitan region with a high-quality public transportation system” and “shall have the final responsibility for allocating duties among” CTA, Metra and Pace.
At an unrelated press availability Wednesday, Gov. JB Pritzker said he isn’t pushing for any specific revenue sources to address transit’s budget gap. And asked generally whether he’d back the oft-floated idea of a tax on services in the forthcoming budget, Pritzker said he doesn’t support “anything that’s broad-based and that would have negative impact on working families” and that he’d veto a spending plan that included something meeting that description.
But irrespective of revenue, Pritzker said improving management of transit is a key focus.
“People should be able to get on a bus, a train, transit of any sort and not have to worry about which ticket they have and the transfers that they may need to make,” Pritzker said. “They should just be able to get on and go where they want to go, and that has not been happening with the governance that we’ve had up to now.”
Representatives from CTA, Metra and Pace did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Contact Nick Blumberg: [email protected] | (773) 509-5434 | @ndblumberg
