CTA trains every five to 10 minutes all day and better Metra service at midday, nights and weekends. One app for fares and transfers across services. Buses that can bypass traffic.
This is the vision for the future of transit set to be outlined Wednesday by Regional Transportation Authority Chairman Kirk Dillard at a lunch for the city’s business and political elite.
Overseeing the efforts would be a stronger RTA that would coordinate fares, service and construction projects among city and suburban bus and train agencies, he said. Paying for it would involve $1.5 billion for Chicago-area transit.
Included in the $1.5 billion would be fare hikes and savings from the new transit oversight model. In a City Club appearance, Dillard was to call for the authority to levy regional taxes or fees. Making up the balance of the funding would be more state money.
Dillard is expected to lay out this vision as a contentious debate brews in Springfield about the future of transit oversight and funding, with lawmakers set to weigh a proposal to do away with the RTA, the CTA, Metra and Pace and combine them into one agency. The idea to consolidate agencies remains controversial, and alternate options are in the works.
Spurring the debate is a $771 million budget gap looming when federal COVID-19 relief funding runs out, which the transit agencies warn could lead to massive service cuts and fare hikes. The fiscal cliff is now expected to hit early next year, sparking urgency to tackle transit leadership and funding.
The financial challenges have prompted calls to not just plug the budget gap but find $1.5 billion to fund transit, though getting more money could be complicated by a projected multibillion-dollar deficit in Illinois’ next budget and competing requests from Chicago. Dillard’s vision reiterates calls for the additional transit funding.
The next iteration of transit oversight will have repercussions for the existing transit agencies, city interests and suburban communities, with many of the communities already expressing concern about how they would be represented in a new agency and issues such as debt, liabilities and labor contracts.
Dillard, in an interview with the Tribune, made the case that the RTA has historically balanced city and suburban interests, referring to the agency as the region’s “referee.” And RTA Executive Director Leanne Redden said Tuesday that their vision for the future involves more service for everyone, pinning past challenges on funding woes as she and Dillard said more funding would solve many concerns.
Some lawmakers have called for reforming transit oversight before tackling the funding cliff, and looming over the debate have been frequent complaints about CTA service and leadership. But CTA President Dorval Carter announced his retirement Monday, shifting the conversation in Springfield away from the backlash against him.
Dillard, in the interview, said Carter’s retirement doesn’t substantially change the discussion about the future of transit. The region’s transportation systems remain systematically underfunded, he said, acknowledging that reform of the way transit is overseen remained necessary.
“The RTA and I have known funding must come with reform,” he said.
Still, the RTA opposes the idea to combine the four transit agencies. Dillard touted the RTA’s operations given what he described as limited funding and powers, and he described the agency as “the Solomon” of the region in working with both the suburbs and the city.
“I don’t think you have to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Dillard told the Tribune in advocating for strengthening the RTA’s powers.
Dillard’s speech Wednesday was set to be his case for a stronger RTA and more transit funding.
The regional agency has projected that failure to close the budget gap could lead to 40% cuts in service across the CTA, Metra and Pace, and Dillard was due to reiterate the dire picture, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. The speech outlines scenarios where a 15-minute wait for a city bus would rise to 25 minutes, and 24-hour service would end. A Metra line that once saw 90 trains each day would be cut to 54.
Those longer waits for buses and trains, along with higher fares and overcrowding, would prompt riders to flee the system, adding “tens of thousands” of cars to the region’s roads under Dillard’s scenario. Some 34 lanes of expressway traffic would be needed to accommodate one full Metra train of riders who choose to drive instead, he estimates in the speech.
“The extraordinary economic and environmental benefits that our mass transit system provides would begin to dissipate as roads became more clogged, businesses began to suffer from loss of labor and customers, our air got dirtier, and our region overall became a less desirable one to live and work in,” he was due to say.
But more money and a stronger RTA would allow the agency to set minimum standards for service that could, in some cases, cut wait times for the next bus or train in half, his speech says. In addition to boosting train service, some key bus routes could run every 10 minutes or less in the city and have priority via dedicated lanes or other measures, and key suburban routes could run every 15 to 30 minutes. Feeder lines in less dense areas would have longer waits.
Service improvements also could involve providing rideshare vouchers late at night, when service isn’t running, if train or bus service is cancelled, or to close the gap between a job center and where a transit line ends.
This type of more frequent service could help alleviate concerns about safety, by ensuring shorter waits and encouraging more riders to fill buses and trains, Dillard was due to say. But his speech also says the RTA could boost the presence of law enforcement and social service agencies on transit to tackle the problem.
Dillard envisions a stronger RTA that would have the ability to manage fares, which current law places largely in the hands of the CTA, Metra and Pace. The RTA could coordinate major purchases and construction projects and create a universal app and rider hub to handle fare and customer service complaints and provide service information about all the buses and trains at any stop, regardless of which agency runs them. The stronger agency could require the train and bus operators to report to the RTA four times each year about service levels.
The oversight and service measures would require more money, though. In his speech, Dillard nods to downstate communities’ concerns about paying for Chicago-area transit by acknowledging that Northeast Illinois residents should continue to contribute the most in taxes and fares. But he calls out the state for contributing less than other major systems get: Illinois covers 17% of transit operations, compared to Boston funding 44% and Philadelphia paying 50%, he said.
One way Illinois could do better is to send more funding to subsidize ADA paratransit service and free and reduced-fare programs, Dillard’s speech says. And he vows that any new money beyond the minimum needed to close the budget gap would go toward bus and train service, not administrative positions.
Dillard’s remarks call for fare hikes of 10%, which he estimated could generate about $50 million, driven by the need to account for inflation. That would amount to a roughly $0.25 hike on the current $2.50 CTA train fare, or an increase of about $0.68 to travel one way across four Metra zones. His speech also calls for expanding a low-income fare program that is now available only to Metra riders as a way to offset the fare hikes for riders who might be burdened by them.
Another $50 million could be generated through savings from the restructured RTA, Dillard’s speech says. Though Redden said specifics about the savings were still being developed, agency officials pointed broadly to measures like the ability to combine purchases across agencies and re-evaluating vacancies. Redden said no frontline bus or train operators would be laid off.
To Dillard, how often buses and trains are running is a key consideration and can solve many of the complaints riders have expressed for years. That includes addressing concerns about safety and conditions like smoking on trains, or the inability to get around the city.
“Frequency is freedom,” he told the Tribune. “I look forward to the day when someone can go to a station or stop and now the bus or train is going to arrive soon.”