IL: RTA presses the CTA, Metra and Pace to share more details about looming service cuts

Public transit riders could soon know which of their bus routes and train lines will get cut if the CTA, Metra and Pace don’t secure hundreds of millions of dollars in additional state funding.

That’s because the board of the Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees the three public transit agencies, has directed them to get specific.

RTA board Chairman Kirk Dillard sent a letter to his counterparts at the CTA, Metra and Pace telling them to come prepared to talk about service cuts in detail at the Oct. 3 meeting of the RTA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Transit Funding. The leaders of each agency were also copied on the letter, dated Thursday.

The region’s transit agencies are facing a looming budget gap of up to $771 million as federal pandemic aid runs out. Without more money from the state, the RTA has warned, drastic 40% cuts to service will hit Chicagoland transit riders starting next year.

So far, those cuts have been discussed in broad terms. The RTA has warned, for instance, that around 60% of the CTA’s bus routes could get slashed and that service could be suspended on whole portions of half of the agency’s ‘L’ lines.

But riders — and the state lawmakers whom the RTA is depending on for more money — don’t know which routes are on the chopping block.

On Oct. 3, the three agencies should be ready to detail exactly what types of service cuts they plan to make “with as much specificity as possible,” the letter said. They should also be prepared to say when service cuts and fare increases will take place and when layoff notices will go out to workers, it said.

The letter comes as RTA board members have fretted that legislators — and the public — won’t fully understand the magnitude of transit cuts unless they know exactly which bus routes and train lines are going to disappear.

“We’ve got to move beyond, ‘It depends …’” RTA board member Tom Kotarac said at the board’s meeting Thursday. “We have to find what the date is when the cliff happens, what the cuts are specifically — and is the Yellow Line going to close down, is the UP-West going to close? Are we going to have a curfew at 10 p.m.?”

State lawmakers, who failed to pass transit funding during their spring legislative session in May, are returning to Springfield in October to try again. The RTA has tried for months to establish a sense of urgency amongst lawmakers in Springfield, where a deadline is often the most powerful motivator for action.

“If we are not transparent and detailed about what’s at stake, I don’t think we’re going to be successful coming into October,” Kotarac said Thursday.

Failing a funding solution, CTA is expected to run out of money first, sometime in the middle of the next year. Metra and Pace will follow, with cuts to the suburban bus service not expected to take place until sometime in 2027.

Last month, the RTA approved the reallocation of $74 million in discretionary funding from Metra and Pace to the CTA next year. The move is intended to push devastating cuts on the CTA back by two or three months into the middle of next year. But the last-ditch effort could take some pressure off lawmakers as they head back to Springfield next month.

So too could a previously unaccounted-for boost in sales tax revenue that could provide an extra $10 million to $20 million per month.

Dillard’s letter focuses on keeping the pressure on in Springfield.

“It will be critical to communicate it to the members of the General Assembly and the Governor to demonstrate the urgency of addressing a funding and reform solution in their October veto session and to avoid a transit crisis in 2026 and beyond,” he wrote.

Representatives for the CTA, Metra and Pace did not comment.

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