A $25 million reconstruction project to improve accessibility at the Green Line’s Austin station on the West Side is underway amid broader funding uncertainty that stands in the way of efforts to make all rail stations on the Chicago Transit Authority fully accessible by 2038.

The CTA, Metra and Pace are facing an impending budget gap when federal COVID-19 relief funding runs out next year. Transit labor groups have stopped short of calling for a merging of the transit systems as a funding solution, unlike what some advocacy groups have called for.

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.

The order comes after a 2023 ruling in federal court that Chicago’s long-running failure to protect blind pedestrians violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, following on the heels of a similar ruling in New York City.

The CTA board of directors approved the purchase of cameras aimed at catching bus lane scofflaws on Wednesday, making good on a plan announced last year as part of a pilot program.

This year’s construction is focused on the outbound Kennedy lanes. Work is expected to start Monday and be finished around Thanksgiving, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Metra has launched a survey to get feedback on potentially renaming lines to make the system “easier to understand for new and occasional riders,” according to the rail service on Monday.

Metra, the Chicago Transit Authority and Pace, along with the Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees some aspects of the Chicago area’s transit systems, collectively face a $771 million funding shortfall in 2026 as federal pandemic dollars run out.

The measure failed after nearly all members of the City Council’s Black Caucus voted against it because of concerns that the change would mean more fees and fines levied against Black, Latino and low-income residents.

The move comes less than three weeks since the midair collision over Washington, DC, that killed 67 people and that highlighted shortages of air traffic controllers and FAA infrastructure issues.

Nora Leerhsen, who has worked at the CTA for more than 10 years, took over as its leader on Feb. 1.

With hundreds of billions of dollars in transportation money still unspent from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, such changes could be a boon for projects in Republican-majority states, which on average have higher fertility rates than those leaning Democratic.

State lawmakers debating the future of Chicago-area transit have a new proposal to mull over, after a labor-backed coalition announced it would file a bill calling for reforming public transportation but stopping short of merging CTA, Metra, Pace and RTA.

While the train operator was found to have alcohol in his system at the time of the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board determined that this was not what caused the Nov. 16, 2023, collision north of the Howard Street CTA station.

The Chicago Transit Authority says the $1.9 billion in federal funding it’s been promised for the Red Line Extension should be secure, despite the Trump administration’s sweeping freeze of grant money Tuesday.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson have both said they are prepared to confront President-elect Donald Trump's policies head-on. But it is unclear how Trump will make good on his promises of retribution, and what power city and state officials will have to resist or thwart federal authorities.