Chicago Mayor Says Think Different

The Mayor of Chicago has challenged the State to be "creative" when it comes to solving the public transit funding problem. Fresh from raising property taxes in Chicago, the Mayor also criticized the Governor for his opposition to increasing sales taxes in the six-county Regional Transportation Authority region So, let's get modestly creative and suggest that the following provisions be included in the final transit bill:

1. Indexed Fare Increases. Index fares to some reasonable measure such as the Consumer Price Index, perhaps capping increases at 4% annually to avoid sudden spikes. This provision will address the concerns of certain parties that a fare increase be part of a funding solution and allow the service boards--Chicago Transit Authority, Metra, Pace--to avoid the counter-productive cycles of putting off fare increases too long and then raising them too sharply. Indexing public transit fares provides a nice precedent for using a similar index to periodically increase the state gas tax to help protect its yield in real dollars.

2. Direct State Role In RTA . Take a board member from each of the three RTA subregions--City of Chicago, suburban Cook County and the collar counties--and make them gubernatorial appointments subject to Senate approval. Make the RTA Chairman a gubernatorial appointment. This State role is commensurate to the State's financial contribution to the public transit system in northeastern Illinois and the important role of that system in the State's transportation system.

3. Hold RTA Accountable. Currently, the RTA can reject service board budgets that do not meet the statutory requirements. The service board then suffers a financial penalty, namely, loss of their share of Public Transportation Fund monies from the State. The RTA, however, suffers no financial penalty if it is derlict in its duties by, for example, allowing service levels to grow faster than revenues over an extended period (as the Auditor General found) or approving unbalanced budgets with plug numbers for hoped-for contributions from the State to cover major deficits (as the RTA did in FY 2007). Some portion of the RTA's funding for its own administration should be subject to being withdrawn if the RTA fails to perform. This provision would apply only if the RTA remained as just a financial oversight agency. (See #5 below.)

4. Tie Transit To Land Use. Explicitly tie transit investments to land use. Write in the RTA Act a requirement that the RTA prioritize transit investment and service to regions and communities that support transit oriented development. (This is not necessarily a gimme for Chicago. Its embrace of big box retailing and minimum parking space requirements for new residential construction, for example, might put it below some suburban communities that are trying to build TOD developments around Metra stations.)

5. Restructure The RTA And The Service Boards. Combine CTA bus operations and Pace mainline bus operations into one operating unit. Pace's paratransit, vanpool and demand response service becomes another unit. CTA rail and Metra become their own units. These become purely operating units tucked into the RTA. This means that the separate boards of directors of the service boards would be abolished. Rather, the RTA and its board would have ultimate operating responsibility for public transit in the region.

Find a funding source, pass these provisions and be done with it. There certainly are more creative ideas--e.g., emergency oversight agency; combining RTA, IDOT District 1 and the Tollway; and heavy investment in alternative automobile technology (e.g., plug in hybrids)--but these provisions with the exception of #5 could be tucked into SB 572 or its successor pretty easily.