Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation pumping $1.5 billion per year into Chicago-area transit agencies and instituting a new oversight system, ending years of debate over how to govern and finance the CTA, Metra and Pace as they struggle to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lawmakers bridged the $200 million-plus fiscal cliff that had faced the agencies next year by redirecting gas sales tax revenue, dipping into interest on the state’s massive road fund and increasing a Chicago-area sales tax by 0.25%.
The law will also replace the Regional Transportation Authority with a strengthened Northern Illinois Transportation Authority after it takes effect next spring.
Democratic leaders hailed the measures during a Union Station press conference as landmark legislation taking aim at the shoddy service and crime that have all too often plagued bus and rail lines since ridership plummeted five years ago.
“Far from heading toward the abyss as some predicted, we are on the verge of delivering a world-class transportation network,“ said Pritzker, who long indicated he’d sign the bill that passed the Illinois General Assembly in the waning hours of the fall veto session on Oct. 31. “This new law not only averts the cliff but preserves affordability and makes transit safer and more reliable.”
Fares will be collected under a unified system under NITA, and agencies will be subject to independent audits every five years.
The overhaul includes a task force led by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office to coordinate law enforcement across the Chicago-area transit system. It also calls for unarmed transit ambassadors to patrol buses, trains and stations, as well as the introduction of a new mobile application for real-time crime reporting.
Supporters in organized labor and environmental groups celebrated that the law does all that and more without raising fares or service cuts, as the agencies had warned was inevitable before finally landing the transit deal that lawmakers had wrangled over since 2023.
Tolls are expected to increase 45 cents for passenger cars and 30% for commercial vehicles to help further bolster transit coffers, though the Illinois Tollway board still has to vote on potential increases.
“We haven’t raised tolls in the state of Illinois — they haven’t for quite some time,” Pritzker said.
He applauded Democratic leaders who shepherded the legislation in Springfield and singled out west suburban state Sen. Seth Lewis as “the sole Republican who voted to save our transit systems.”
“Transformation takes a little bit of time. … It just doesn’t take one year in order to accomplish all those things. But there is an immediate endeavor to upgrade the service and make sure that we’re providing safer rides for people on transit over the coming year,” Pritzker said.
GOP leaders blasted the legislation as a bailout for “Chicago’s broken transit system,” with downstate transit agencies only expected to receive about $129 million from the package.
“This law permanently diverts more than $1 billion every year from the Road Fund, money that was constitutionally promised to fix roads and bridges, and sends it to prop up transit operations driven by years of mismanagement,” Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, said in a statement.
State Senate Minority Leader John Curran, R-Downers Grove, said it will “make life even more expensive for suburban families with tax hikes and surcharges, while reducing suburban representation on transit decisions.”
The incoming 20-member NITA board could include up to 15 members from Cook County, in addition to representatives from Lake, McHenry, Kane, DuPage and Will counties.
The seven-member CTA board will have three mayoral appointees and two each from the governor and Cook County board president.