Editorial: Chicago's transit agencies want you to panic. They don't explain the whole truth.

Yahoo

27-04-2025

What is a rider's responsibility to a transit agency? Pay your fare and show courtesy to fellow travelers and hard-working staffers. That's all. Riders are customers, after all.
But if you listen to our panicked transit agencies, that list of rider requirements now includes frantically lobbying Springfield for $1.5 billion in additional money to prevent the so-called fiscal cliff. If you don't obey Chicagoland's Regional Transportation Authority, you're unleashing a variety of horrors, including 'devastating service cuts that would leave 1 in 5 Chicago riders without the use of transit for their regional commute,' no Pace bus service on weekends, vastly reduced Metra service, and innumerable other undesirables.
'This isn't just a transit crisis — it's a regional emergency,' insists RTA Executive Director Leanne Redden in a mailer that came our way. 'If the General Assembly does not act this spring, hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans will wake up in 2026 without a way to get to work, school or medical appointments.' And, like all supplicants in Springfield, the agency likes to use the phrase 'fully funded,' as if there was general agreement as to how much subsidy transit should receive.
The message is clear: If the trains don't show up anymore, it's the fault of Springfield and transit customers who did not listen to those who understood the crisis. Not the fault at all of the people in charge of actual transit.
This level of panic stoking, of course, does not come cheap. The Tribune reported last month that Metra had agreed to pay its lobbyist 'as much as $4.65 million in part for work related to a looming transit budget crisis,' a head-spinner given how that big bill surely contributed to the same crisis it was supposed to fix.
What the mailers don't say is that the Chicago area's transit agencies aren't alone in their financial trouble. Other cities share their dilemma. Why? Well, here's what McKinsey had to say last winter:
'Transit agencies in the United States are at an inflection point,' the consultants wrote in a clear-minded report. 'Ridership — along with revenue generated from fares — remains, on average, significantly below pre-pandemic levels. Costs continue to rise as agencies … pay more to expand services and adopt innovations that are demanded by riders. Aging infrastructure is creating growing maintenance backlogs. Meanwhile, federal subsidies, which helped many agencies stabilize their operations and workforce during the disruptions caused by the pandemic, are expected to largely expire in the coming year.'
There's the problem in a nutshell: Riders have not returned in part due to hybrid work schedules, maintenance costs have been deferred, and the federal COVID money is running out.
Meanwhile, the Chicago Transit Authority now is spending a stunning $5.1 billion on the Red Line extension (RLE).
If you look back at the second paragraph of this editorial, you'll see that big ask of Springfield is a mere $1.5 billion; less than a third of the cost of an extension that, while worthy on an equity basis, is unlikely to attract hordes of new riders, especially if there are new service cuts. Of course, the reason the extension is going ahead is because it attracted $1.9 billion in federal money that could not have been applied to actually operating a CTA line.
Welcome to the wacky world of transit funding. Money for politically attractive extensions but no money for actually running the trains on those lines. Look also at the $1.9 billion (also bigger than the RTA's ask) the state put into track improvements for a 'higher speed' Amtrak line to St. Louis. That achieved modest improvements in journey times when fright trains don't interfere and we've enjoyed riding that service, which beats driving. Yet there are only four trains a day in each direction.
But the Red Line extension cost overages are something else. Transit advocate Nik Hunder laid it out late last month on the Substack known as 'A City That Works.'
'First, this project is disastrously expensive,' he wrote. 'The RLE will be the most expensive transit project per mile and most expensive per new passenger gained in North American history.'
Here are the stunning details, per Hunder:
'When the CTA first pitched this project … in 2009, the original cost estimate … was only $1.09B (not adjusted for inflation). The estimated cost remained at $1.09 billion until 2016, when the price doubled to $2.3 billion. In 2022, it shot up to $3.6B, which is partially attributed to inflation and rising construction costs (though those increases were not to the tune of $1.3B). After the CTA received notice in 2023 that it was in line for $1.9B in federal funding, the cost estimates for the project continued to rise and quickly. In March 2024 it was $3.6B. In July it was $3.9B. In August, it was $4.3B, then 12 days later it was $5.3B and finally in October, it reached $5.75B. A 60% increase in seven months.'
Ergo, anyone with basic math skills can see that the federal money now is covering an ever-smaller percentage of the total cost, which likely means saddling the CTA with enormous amounts of ongoing debt, even as other CTA lines like the poor Forest Park section of the Blue are plagued with lengthy slow zones for want of track improvements.
Mayor Brandon Johnston constantly defended his embattled former CTA chief by saying Dorval Carter was great at getting federal money. What he never mentioned was how that money was paying for an ever-smaller proportion of the project.
The CTA has said it will increase service this spring on some lines, but few Chicagoans think there are enough reliable trains, certainly not compared with London's Victoria Line, where trains arrive like clockwork every two minutes. It's crazy to extend a system when the existing system is in such disrepair. Hunder again:
'Local media only reported the updated values as part of the overall news about the CTA's progress in securing federal funding. … Celebrating the total value of a project is becoming a troubling trend in Chicagoland. Rather than evaluate an infrastructure project based on its value to communities, local officials are evaluating projects on how much they are willing to invest in disadvantaged communities regardless of whether it is cost effective and leaves an acceptable debt burden to those same communities and the city at large.'
Amen to that. But what are ordinary Chicagoans who believe a great city needs effective public transportation to do? How do you show your disgust at all of the above and yet also prevent a situation where you cannot take a convenient bus or train?
McKinsey's report actually suggested that some of these deficits are ballooning to the point where local and even state governments can't plug the hole, even if they wanted to do so, not something you hear from the RTA. But the consultancy also outlined some of the things that both Springfield and ordinary riders should demand right now, all of which suggest that merely begging legislators for money won't change much:
'Boosting non-farebox revenue, achieving more efficient results from operating budgets, and making better-informed choices about capital expenditures can all be ways to help strengthen transit agency balance sheets — while also accelerating the service availability, frequency, reliability, and quality improvements that riders value the most,' McKinsey wrote.
That can be as simple as getting staffers to hustle so standing times for buses and trains are reduced (a chronic problem in Chicago and yet also a way to improve public safety) and more closely matching service to post-pandemic patterns of demand. It could involve transit-oriented development of agency-owned land, selling air rights to private developers, unloading office space, selling more parking, firing chronically absent staffers, vastly improving retail operations at stations, consolidating administrators and administrations, building better inter-line connections to boost ridership, offering premium express routes and focusing bosses' efforts not on just asking Springfield for money but on partnering with developers and actually building economic activity around transit modes.
All are great McKinsey-esque ideas, some of which are being pursued, to a point. But in the case of Chicago, it's getting mighty hard to argue that a well-informed choice about capital expenditures was made by the CTA. We may be solving one fiscal cliff only to deal with another down the line.
One final point. There is no inherent requirement that Chicago transit be run by the city of Chicago or one of its existing agencies. McKinsey also points out that big cities don't always directly run their own transit agencies and sometimes outsource to more able managers.
We'll end with the smart transit advocate Illinois Rep. Kam Buckner on this matter:
'Want to energize Springfield?,' he wrote to the RTA on X. 'Don't pressure us. Impress us. Show us a plan. Show us discipline. Show us that the priority is riders — not optics. We don't need a marketing campaign. We need a turnaround.'
Exactly.
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