Recently, the Labor Alliance for Public Transportation launched a website on the Chicago area’s dire transit funding crisis. While labor’s proposed legislation has promising strategies, it largely fails to address the funding crisis and the harmful cuts it would cause.
Instead, it follows a focus on reform, leaving a massive fiscal cliff. It’s generally a sound bill, just not the one riders, public transit operators and the region need most.
Without tackling the growing $771 million operating shortfall this legislative session, our region must start planning for devastating service cuts that would most hurt low-income riders and transit workers, with ripple effects to our environment and economy ($2.6 billion less in GDP, according to the RTA).
Labor’s bill is a good alternative to proposed legislation that would eliminate Pace, the Chicago Transit Authority and Metra, which have different union contracts and service constraints. The bill has strategies for better accountability and coordination, along with (overdue) regional fare integration.
The legislation preserves some influence for Chicago, where riders, including Black and Latino residents, are concentrated. Some of suburban Cook County is inside CTA’s service area, and the county would gain CTA board representation.
Labor would also gain a seat on all agency boards, and board appointees would need backgrounds related to transit. Finally, the bill has a pilot road-user charge program, a reduction in the farebox recovery rate, and some safety strategies, like transit ambassadors and an integrated police force.
Riders can’t tolerate cuts
Yet, most riders would see little or no change with this bill. They — along with public transit employees — still could face the drastic cuts of the fiscal cliff. The bill is disconnected from rider priorities. When asked what would make them ride the CTA more, fare integration consistently ranks as riders’ lowest priority while frequency — tied to funding and staffing — consistently ranks at or near the top.
Still, we deserve more political will from our elected officials and transit boards to hold agencies accountable. Frustration is understandable, especially with ghost buses and trains, as well as some failed agency cooperation.
This lack of cooperation was perhaps worst seen with the Fair Transit South Cook pilot for discounts on the Metra Electric and Rock Island lines — an innovative equity program that met CTA resistance due to its fear of losing ridership.
I’m a public sector (university) employee and have seen internal competition for funds and student enrollment when some of us are told our departments have deficits. The CTA is especially underfunded; it provides over 80% of rides but receives only 46% of regional operating funds. It may face even greater, sooner cuts than the region as a whole.
Public agencies must be good stewards of public dollars and additional efficiencies might be possible. But compared with national peers, our transit agencies are cost-effective and receive the least state-level operations funding, according to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
Harmful ‘reform’ narrative creates underfunding
Some business elites and others have long pushed a narrative of an ineffective public sector locally and nationally. Even if public sector reforms are possible, this narrative has undermined the need for collective investment.
Decades of underfunding public transit mean it has numerous problems, like aggravating slow zones on the Blue Line’s Forest Park branch, and missed opportunities for region-wide economic, environmental and equity benefits.
The pattern of prioritizing reform over adequate public investment is not new. For example, Chicago public education has seen multiple reforms, but never adequate funding to deliver the equitable, quality education our young people deserve and that would bring economic, public safety, and civic benefits.
The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Civic Federation, which are pushing public transit reform, also used reform arguments against the elimination of the constitutional ban on a progressive income tax. Now, our legislators still have their hands tied and cannot make sure the richest residents pay their fair share for Illinois to work better for everyone. Instead of a fair tax, Illinois faces a constrained budget with limited ability to fill gaps left by federal cuts that will hurt many Illinois residents.
We all benefit from a strong public transit system with substantial shared economic, environmental, and equity benefits for riders and non-riders alike. Labor and elected officials cannot wait to address the fiscal cliff or reform our way to the system we deserve.
As an enthusiastic union member, public sector employee, and CTA rider, I hope our elected officials will immediately announce revenue solutions for the Chicago area’s public transit funding crisis — the highest priority for riders, operators and working families — or we will all lose out.
Kate Lowe is an associate professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois Chicago. Follow Lowe at @kateontransport.bsky.social.
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