You wouldn’t find the things Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) knows about Chicago written in any textbook. To learn the city like he did, you’d need to ride the bus.
Rep. Kam Buckner: It’s really how I learned Chicago. It’s how I learned how Chicago looked and sounded and smelled. For instance, you can take the 8 Halsted Street bus in Chicago, and you can ride it from point to point … you get to see the entire city down one street on one bus.
For Buckner, who represents Illinois’ 26th district in Chicago — and for any commuter in the Northeast Illinois region — public transportation has the potential to be a great connector across communities. But public transit systems, stops and schedules don’t always connect well with themselves, often at riders’ expense.
I’m Janek Schaller, and this is In Transit: a Midstory series bringing you dispatches from the cusp of a new era in Midwest public transportation. Today’s episode is the first of a two-part series on the difficulties of funding public transit in the state of Illinois. We’ll start in Chicago, where an impending $770-million fiscal cliff has officials scrambling to pass a new law designed to streamline transportation in the city. But not everyone is onboard with the proposal.
Before we dive in, let’s take a look at Chicagoland’s current transit infrastructure. There are three different public transit systems in the region: The CTA operates the L — the city’s subway — and CTA buses, Pace takes care of bus service in the suburbs and Metra runs commuter rail lines with stops throughout the city and the surrounding region. These systems are all overseen by the Regional Transportation Authority, but operate with different service boards.
Audrey Wennink: When people take a commuter rail … sometimes they see the Pace bus leave before the train pulls into the station.
That’s Audrey Wennink, a senior director for the Metropolitan Planning Council and an advocate for the Metropolitan Mobility Act, a bill that seeks to address public transportation inefficiencies and funding problems by combining Chicago’s transit agencies into a single entity.
Wennink: What we’ve been saying is, if everyone is accountable, no one is accountable, and people don’t realize how much this is weakening our system.
Even though they primarily serve other parts of Chicagoland, there are 74 Metra stops and 54 Pace routes within city limits. Similarly, while CTA’s service area is mostly concentrated in Chicago, their buses and trains serve over 30 suburban municipalities, too. To make things even more confusing, commuters often navigate multiple transportation agencies on a single commute, despite uncoordinated schedules and stops, and separate fare systems.
Buckner agrees with Wennink that a lack of coordination leads to larger inefficiencies. Basically, people are far less likely to use an inefficient system, and without regular ridership, the cost of maintaining service will only rise.
On top of that, the RTA is still in recovery mode. Regional transit ridership plummeted during the pandemic, and while ridership did return to 77% of pre-pandemic levels in 2024, Chicago’s transit agencies are still suffering from COVID-19’s effects on fare revenues. At the same time, federal pandemic assistance that was granted to the CTA, Pace and Metra service boards are set to run out in 2026, putting the state legislature in a time crunch to find new sources of funding.
And the stakes are incredibly high. On March 21, the RTA released a statement warning that failure to find a solution to the fiscal cliff would result in “service elimination on half of CTA rail lines, all weekend Pace bus service, and drastic Metra reductions.”
These consequences would contribute to a transit “death spiral,” as Richard Day explains.
Richard Day: The cuts happen, the service gets worse, the ridership gets even worse.
Day writes for “A City That Works,” a newsletter about public policy in Chicago. According to him, a decrease in ridership will also result in
Day: Security issues and constraints, because when there are fewer people on trains, buses, and platforms, it makes it feel less safe. And that could mean the problem gets worse, and worse, and worse, doing ever more damage to the transit structure.
At the same time, the looming fiscal cliff affords Illinois an opportunity for public transportation reform.
Day: While the fiscal cliff is scary, this is our best chance to force better governance rules and, frankly, better operating reforms into the agencies, because this is the time when people have to work together, when the suburbs and the city have to end up coordinating on how to deliver better service and support.
To Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado (D-Chicago), who spent five years working in legislative affairs at the CTA before going into state government, better service is simpler service.
Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado: My goal would be that a rider would have one system. They would have one fare, they would have one timetable, and making it so easy to use that it may become people’s first choice rather than getting in their car.
Delgado said that feeling of convenience will be critical to restoring the city’s pre-pandemic ridership, which will go a long way in shoring up the budget.
Convenience was also the primary impetus for the Metropolitan Mobility Act, a bill that Delgado co-authored and helped propose in this spring’s legislative session. The bill proposes a replacement of the RTA with a new Metropolitan Mobility Authority, as well as the consolidation of the region’s three forms of public transportation under one agency.
Despite a broad consensus that the state government must find a solution to the transit agencies’ funding woes and inefficiencies, some lawmakers are skeptical about the method proposed by the Metropolitan Mobility Act.
Sen. Donald DeWitte (R-St. Charles), who represents Illinois’ 33rd district in the far western suburbs of Chicago, is concerned that the bill would give city and Cook County public officials the opportunity to overpower their suburban counterparts.
Sen. DeWitte: The language in that piece of legislation would put the suburbs in a minority position when it comes to voting on any issue that would come before this new board. In other words, as an example, the city and Cook County would be able to gang up, if you will, on the suburbs and basically steamroll the suburbs on any particular issue that may come before this newly empowered MMA board.
Before assuming his current appointment in state government, DeWitte represented Kane County on the RTA board from 2013 to 2018.
Sen. DeWitte: We’re pooling our money for mass transit. We need to manage our money for mass transit in an equally balanced process.
DeWitte’s efforts to ensure equal representation between the city and the suburbs are reflective of a decades-old tension between Chicago’s more liberal urban core and the surrounding area, which leans conservative. As Day explains:
Day: The city is afraid of the suburbs taking over, and if you have a board that is majority suburban appointments, it’ll deprioritize the city. And at the same time, the suburbs are afraid that, because the CTA is so much bigger than the other agencies, if they end up in a world where there’s just one transit structure, they’ll get deprioritized.
Delgado, whose district borders the Chicago suburbs, says she understands the nervousness around such significant change and wants to improve everyone’s experience, including suburban riders.
Rep. Delgado: My goal is to make sure that all parts of the region are equally represented.
In lieu of the Metropolitan Mobility Act, DeWitte is advocating for a newly empowered RTA board that would largely maintain its current operational structure. He’s in favor of a labor-backed piece of legislation called United We Move that was introduced in the state senate this February, which he believes will take a more “equitable approach.”
But advocates of the Metropolitan Mobility Act think that reforming the RTA is insufficient. According to Wennink,
Wennink: It’s largely an agency that passes through money to these other three agencies, and, you know, doesn’t really provide that much regional planning or oversight.
The Metropolitan Mobility Act and United We Move are currently going through a series of public hearings in the Illinois State House and Senate.
The goal now, according to Delgado, is to “come together” to preserve a future for public transit throughout Chicagoland. But if lawmakers are to reach consensus by May 31st, they’ll need to address how policy reforms can impact riders on all sides of the tracks.
For Midstory, I’m Janek Schaller.
