The Illinois General Assembly approved a $1.5B mass transit bill in an overnight marathon legislative session, a win for transit-oriented developers and the Loop's burgeoning recovery.
The expansive package, which will help the city's transit agencies avoid a looming budget crisis, will include an increase in tolls on Illinois tollways, shift millions of dollars in motor fuel sales tax revenues to transit purposes, raise the existing Regional Transportation Authority sales tax and tap interest on the state’s road fund.
The majority of the funding, $860M, will come from the redirection of tax revenue from motor fuel sales, while $478M will come from the increased RTA tax and $200M from the interest growing in the state's road fund.
The bill will also abolish the RTA, the financial and oversight body for Metra, Pace and the Chicago Transit Authority. It will be replaced by the Northern Illinois Transit Authority, which will have the ability to establish a universal fare system and coordinate scheduling among the three agencies.
The measure passed the Illinois House by a 72-32 vote just before 2 a.m. Friday at the end of the fall veto session and passed the Senate by a 35-22 vote, moving the bill to Gov. JB Pritzker’s desk for final approval.
"We are changing our public transit system for the first time in five decades to be safe, to be reliable, to be accessible, to be integrated, making sure that we've got the performance and we've got the funding that's needed to make a system of the next level," state Sen. Ram Villivalam told CBS News.
The RTA had been facing a mass transit budget gap of about $200M in 2026 that would have increased to almost $790M in 2027 and nearly $890M in 2028 without new state funding. Mass layoffs and 40% service cuts on the CTA and Metra would have also been in the cards.
Proximity to public transportation boosts property values, drives rents and increases accessibility across the city.
An affordable, reliable and safe transit system is critical infrastructure for a world-class city, Trina Sandschafer, vice president and managing director at Project Management Advisors, told Bisnow earlier in October. Proximity to transit is a key decision-maker in site selection for the businesses that drive Chicago’s economy, and workers rely on it to get to their jobs, she said.
It has also been a key component in bringing to life projects in the Loop like the redevelopment of the James R. Thompson Center for Google. Google touted the "unparalleled public transit access" of the building when it announced its intentions for its new headquarters in 2022.
As the Loop battles to regain a foothold following the lingering impacts of the pandemic, continued transit access remains a key factor.
"We think that [the transit gap] is an existential issue for the Loop," Michael Edwards, president and CEO of the Chicago Loop Alliance, told Bisnow earlier this month. "The Loop is here largely because of transit."
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