Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s picks for local transit boards — including her first two Chicago Transit Authority board selections — won sign-off from the county board Thursday.

Her selections will help guide the boards of CTA, Metra, PACE and the newly-created Northern Illinois Transit Authority through a new era for public transit locally. Aside from securing more than $1 billion in new funding for public transit, the state’s new landmark mass transit law centralizes planning, budgeting and service standards across the agencies and gives Preckwinkle more sway in their decision making.

“We have a challenge across the board with our service agencies because they are siloed and they have not been collaborating,” Preckwinkle said during a Wednesday news conference. She cited a failure to plan a Metra station for the site where the future CTA Red Line Extension will cross its tracks, and the fact the bus service that PACE extended to downtown Round Lake doesn’t take riders to the Metra station there. “Everybody’s just sort of planning for themselves and not having any coherent, holistic plan.”

County commissioners who peppered Preckwinkle’s eight appointees with questions during a hearing Wednesday similarly pressed them to make it easier for riders to switch between Metra PACE and CTA, to add better connectivity between stops and suburbs, electrify buses and prioritize more service to the south suburbs in particular. Besides demands for new, better or more frequent service in their districts, the Red Line Extension, which broke ground earlier this year, was also a hot topic.

Preckwinkle’s picks included several familiar faces, from former administration officials to current board members. Their relatively easy approval was a stark contrast to the hand wringing at the Chicago City Council over Mayor Brandon Johnson’s transit appointments, which ultimately passed after objections over their direct introductions in committee.

The multibillion dollar, 5.5 mile Red Line Extension project includes four new stations between 95th and 130th Streets. Besides Metra connectivity, Preckwinkle CTA appointee Tom Kotarac, a current member of the Regional Transportation Authority board, said the project also presented an opportunity to connect with the South Shore commuter line that runs from Millennium Station to South Bend, Ind.

The extension would cross over Metra tracks at roughly 119th, east of Michigan Avenue, but there isn’t a station planned there.

Preckwinkle said Wednesday “the county would be willing to help support that. It sounds like a good use of public dollars to me.”

The planned CTA 115th Street station will be about a half mile away from the Metra Electric station at 115th Street and Cottage Grove Ave. — relatively close, but nowhere near a seamless transfer point for riders looking to transfer quickly between the two.

“CTA would welcome discussions about other transfer opportunities that maximize the connectivity benefits of the RLE project for the region,” CTA spokeswoman Tammy Chase said in a statement Thursday. “We look forward to collaborating with NITA, our transit agency peers and other stakeholders now and in the future.”

Kotarac won easy approval to serve on both the CTA and NITA boards for the next three years.

Ann Kalayil, Preckwinkle’s other CTA pick for a five-year term, was also approved. Kalayil was Preckwinkle’s former chief of asset management, overseeing real estate, facilities and capital planning. She’s been in a similar role at Columbia College Chicago since 2020.

Metra appointees Diane Williams, Romayne Brown and Joe Szabo also won approval. Brown and Williams, former head of the Southland Development Authority, will serve on both the Metra and NITA boards. Szabo will serve only on the commuter rail board.

Brown has been on the Metra board since 2013 and was not present Wednesday. Preckwinkle’s Pace picks include current board member Terry Wells, the mayor of Phoenix; Forest Park Mayor Rory Hoskins and Luis Montgomery, an engineer who has been active in the Hispanic American Construction Industry Association and the Latino Leadership Council.

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