How Illinois Made a ‘Transformational' Investment in Transit

Frequent service on more bus routes, overnight trains and regular deep cleaning of buses and train stations. Those are among the first improvements promised by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) thanks to the transit funding deal the Illinois legislature passed last month. Lawmakers hope it’s just the opening act of a push for world-class transit service in Chicago and the surrounding region.

The transit bill, which Gov. JB Pritzker is expected to sign, provides a funding boost of some $1.5 billion for Chicago-area transit services. It also overhauls the way those services are operated and governed. Supporters hope it means not just more transit service overall but better coordination between the region’s three transit agencies and more seamless travel around the third-biggest metro area in the country. If the new system works, it could prove to be a model — albeit an expensive one — for other transit systems looking for a way forward after the pandemic caused deep ridership losses and resulting financial chaos.

“This is a really comprehensive approach to addressing a pretty dire situation,” says Eva-Dina Delgado, an Illinois state representative who backed a version of the legislation.

Legislative efforts to improve coordination between Chicago transit services goes back decades. The region’s services are run by three agencies: CTA, which runs city buses and trains; Metra, which runs commuter rail between the city and its suburbs; and Pace, which runs suburban buses. The Regional Transportation Authority oversees all those agencies. But users complain that they have differing fare policies, poorly coordinated schedules and multiple apps and trip planners that don’t work in tandem. Ridership was already declining gradually in the late 2010s, as it did in much of the country. But reduced ridership during the pandemic threw the three agencies into a dire fiscal crisis, with the expectation of major service cuts and layoffs if lawmakers didn’t come up with a funding solution.

Delgado, who worked for CTA prior to joining the legislature in 2019, says it was a goal of hers to improve the transit network even before the pandemic created a funding emergency. She co-sponsored legislation in 2022 asking the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), the regional planning organization, to recommend solutions for the area’s transit woes. CMAP ultimately recommended $1.5 billion in new operating support for transit service, additional funding for capital needs and a series of options for governance reform, including the potential merger of the three agencies into one.

Lawmakers set about looking for new revenue sources and holding hearings on the proposed reforms. The House formed a public transit working group, chaired by Delgado. A bipartisan delegation from both chambers visited Germany to learn about transit governance models there. A different version of this year’s bill passed the Senate last spring, but the House didn’t vote on it before the end of the session.

Negotiations came down to the wire again this fall, as lawmakers debated various funding streams between the legislative chambers and Pritzker’s office. The legislature ultimately sought to raise money for transit mostly from existing revenue sources, including redirecting a portion of state fuel taxes to transit and allowing the RTA to raise sales taxes it collects in the areas it already serves. It also establishes a Northern Illinois Transit Authority to coordinate service in the region, with voting board members allocated differently among the various jurisdictions around Chicago, and directs it to establish a universal fare system. The bill also eliminates minimum parking requirements in areas close to high-frequency transit, and calls for safety improvements and a transit ambassador program that has been used in other cities.

Supporters of the legislation hope it makes the transit network easier to use, with more intuitive wayfinding for riders, simpler fare policies, a stronger sense of safety and cleanliness and more frequent service. The ultimate goal is to increase ridership and make transit a viable alternative to driving for more people.

“What’s super exciting about this is that it is taking the fiscal cliff and turning it on its head,” says Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute. “It’s saying, not only do we need to solve the funding crisis, but we need to make transit better.”

Still, Freemark says, there “isn’t necessarily anything revolutionary” about what the legislature is doing. The governance reforms are important, and give some lawmakers more confidence in the investments they’re being asked to make, but ultimately wouldn’t accomplish much on their own, Freemark says. The additional funding to run more service and expand the system is the key to bringing back riders.

“If you want to prove that these investments are worth it, they better be able to show they increase ridership,” he says.

Every big-city transit system in the U.S. has faced financial challenges similar to Chicago’s in the last half-decade. Some benefited from relatively quick action from state governments. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, for instance, made a deal to prop up the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City with new funding from a payroll tax in 2023. That same year, the Minnesota Legislature passed a comprehensive transportation funding package, which substantially increased funding for transit in the Twin Cities.

Others are still on the verge of budget gaps. San Francisco Bay Area agencies are planning a major ballot measure for increased funding next year. Pennsylvania’s state legislature — split between Republican and Democratic control — has been locked in a protracted budget battle related partly to transit-funding problems in Philadelphia. Washington, D.C.’s transit agency has invested as much money as it could in improving service in the short term to bring back riders while it looks for long-term solutions from the three jurisdictions that fund it. Virginia lawmakers recently proposed $400 million in funding for transit in the district and around the state.

In Illinois, it helped that Democrats, who tend to represent urban areas with greater desire to fund public transit, have control of the state legislature. But it was also important that the legislature was looking for "transformational" solutions for a problem that predated the acute fiscal crisis, Delgado says. Even still, she says coming to consensus on a bill took lots of debate and negotiation and “wearing people down” — including herself. With a degree of expertise in transportation policy that most other lawmakers don’t have, she occasionally found herself getting stuck on certain points. She told herself: “Can I give a little to be able to get all the different advocacy groups on board and then ultimately focus on what I thought was most important?”

In its final form the bill includes funding for transit systems around the state, not just the Chicago area. While Democrats control all three branches of the Illinois state government, the bill also got some votes from Republicans. Democrat Ram Villivalam, the state senator who championed the legislation, says it helped that the bill had been rooted in “good public policy” from the beginning with the recommendations from CMAP. It also had time to be read, understood, debated and tweaked by lawmakers over the course of several sessions. And the acute crisis of COVID-19 showed what was at stake if the legislature didn’t act.

“I think we acknowledged that there cannot be a Band-Aid solution. If there’s a Band-Aid solution and we expect a world-class public transit system to manifest itself, it’s not going to happen,” Villivalam says. “People saw this was going to be better for everyone in every part of the state and that’s why they were able to vote yes.”