By Joshua Kim
Following the passing of new legislation by the Illinois General Assembly, the Regional Transport Authority (RTA), soon to be the Northern Illinois Transit Agency, will receive an additional $1.2 billion for its annual budget this year.
That brings the budget up to $4.352 billion, according to the RTA.
The additional funding will be used to improve “frequency, reliability, and safety” of Pace, Chicago’s suburban bus system, Metra, the train system connecting downtown Chicago with nearby counties and the CTA, the independent government agency providing public transit in the city and the surrounding suburbs.
Jessica Cabe, a communications specialist for the RTA, said the added money was a long time coming, following years of underfunding by the state and reliance on ridership fares, which dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When COVID happened, ridership plummeted, and the RTA region was overreliant on rider fares compared to other transit systems across the country,” Cabe said. “Our state funding was a much smaller slice of the pie of our budget. When we lost that ridership and we lost that fare revenue, it impacted our bottom line.”
Cabe said as a result of the pandemic, the federal government provided relief funding to make up for the lost revenue, which helped keep the transit system running. Once the pandemic ended, ridership increased, even surpassing pre-pandemic levels.
Michael Gillis, the communications director for Metra, said that federal funding was a critical part of what helped the commuter rail system when ridership dropped.
Gillis said. “That allowed us to continue operating the service even though the ridership was a lot lower than it had been before.”
However, Gillis said that the relief money is finite and set to run out at the end of this year.
Cabe said that the RTA, soon to be NITA, has been advocating for years for more state funding.
Cabe said, “Anytime anyone is asking for taxpayer money, you have to make the case. And so we made that case, advocates made that case, riders made that case, folks came together and advocated strongly and explained to legislators why it was a worthwhile investment.”
The funding is much needed for Chicago residents who often complain about the lack of connection and unreliability, said Allison Yates, the founder of Read & Run Chicago.
Her community organization organizes running tours in the Chicago area based on books and book-based events.
She says one problem is that Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the country when it comes to racial subgroups, making some neighborhoods more disconnected than others.
Yates said. “There are so many underserved areas. You could [use public transport], but most people don’t have the time or the will to go out of their way to make that work.”
Yates said that it is inconvenient for most people, especially in more spread-out areas such as the southwest side of the city, to use public transit, unless they live directly on a train line that goes downtown.
Yates also said the infrastructure and frequency are currently unreliable for many people to use regularly.
“If you want to get downtown, fine, but if you want to get anywhere else, it will take so long,” she said.
Gillis said a final plan for how to use the additional funding will be determined after the new NITA board is formed by the end of September, but the current RTA leadership remains hopeful that the money will bring improvements to transit service.
“We don’t really know how much more funding we will get. It is way too early in the process,” Gillis said. “In general, the goal is to improve service, whether it is adding trains or changing the fare collection system. That is the intent, but we cannot quantify that at this point.”
Cabe said. “In the meantime, we put forth a vision called Transforming Transit that is focused on improving efficiency and improving reliability. And that is going to come down to hiring operators.”
“These are all things that we have been advocating for and working on, but knowing that we now have the funding to actually carry them out encourages us to continue,” Cabe said.