* 8/27/28 - Greg Hinz: Promise and peril await as Chicago public transit enters a new era
Buzz Sawyer
"One final challenge will be wisely using the enormous new development
powers NITA was handed by lawmakers.
Though it has received almost no notice, the legislation appears to give NITA near
unlimited power to develop, own, finance and build commercial and multiunit residential
projects near transit stops. Shrewdly done, that could be an enormous plus both for the
region and the transit agencies, providing all sorts of financial and environmental benefits.
In the wrong hands — think Chicago’s experience with tax-increment financing districts
— horrid things could occur. Be very, very careful, NITA."
Greg Hinz: Promise and peril await as Chicago public transit enters a new era
The champagne corks are popping in the offices of Chicago’s long-stressed public transportation system — and for good reason.
The new Northern Illinois Transportation Authority board officially comes into existence less than a week from now, on Sept. 1. On paper, it has all the tools it needs to succeed:
• Money, with an infusion of $1.4 billion in new tax revenue, twice what was needed to close current deficits.
• Central control, designed to make the region’s three operating agencies — the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace — abandon their silos and work together on items such as a universal fares, coordinated service and security.
• Above all, public good will from riders who are tired of mediocrity and want a system that provides the safe, convenient and affordable rides offered in other major cities around the globe.
Even so, huge challenges face the new NITA team, not least among them wisely spending all of that new tax money, and dealing with the post-COVID reality that where we work and how we commute has radically changed. Are the system’s new chieftains up to it?
Challenge one is selecting the right leadership team, a NITA board chair and executive director that can provide the necessary vision, political experience and nuts-and-bolts expertise.
Under the legislation adopted by the Illinois General Assembly earlier this year, the 20-person board first will select one of its members to be chair. Some big names that had mentioned are out of the running: Folks such as Kirk Dillard, a moderate Republican who did a more than respectable job chairing the soon to be defunct Regional Transportation Authority, and ex-CTA Chair Carole Brown, one of the stars of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s tenure. Neither was named to the board, with officials likely wanting to turn in a new direction from Dillard and the now-retired Brown unable to serve because of out-of-town commitments.
That leaves as the apparent front-runner Tom Kotarac, a current RTA board member who is the transit guru at the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. He already chairs the NITA transition committee.
Whoever gets the job, he or she will have to hold together a board on which a supermajority of as many as 15 votes will be needed to pass budgets, set fares, determine capital-project priorities and otherwise exercise NITA’s new powers.
The old RTA was never really able to accomplish those things, with the operating agencies blocking tough decisions. The new NITA will have to do that to succeed, but Gov. JB Pritzker didn’t do the new chair any favor in naming five Cook County residents to the NITA board. Along with the five picks each from Mayor Brandon Johnson and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, that means 15 of the 20 board members come from Cook County, 10 from Chicago alone. (The other five were selected by the chairs of the region’s five collar counties.)
We’ll see how that plays out in choosing the executive director, who will run NITA day to day. Among names being bandied about are Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning chief Erin Aleman and ex-Illinois Tollway boss Kristi Lafleur.
Once selected, the leadership team’s first priority needs to be security.
I can’t tell you how many friends and acquaintances flatly refuse to the ride the CTA nowadays, repelled by crime, smoking, public urination and still far too often dirty cars and buses. Despite lower fares, total CTA ridership is down more than a quarter compared to pre-COVID years. Until that changes, spending a ton of money on added service risks being a waste.
A task force chaired by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is charged by the NITA legislation to come up with proposed solutions by the end of the year. In a recent City Club appearance, Dart was pretty candid about what’s needed. He has dozens of deputies now patrolling the CTA each day, mostly on the Red Line south, and said they’ve been able to slash violent crime to a small fraction of what it was. He also said fare evasion — jumping over or otherwise avoiding the turnstile — runs as high as 85% at some stations.
What’s needed? In Dart’s view only boots on the ground — police with the authority to make arrests — will really work. But social workers and transit ambassadors also are needed because throwing homeless people off the train merely creates problems elsewhere, he stressed. That sounds smart to me. Still, will anyone at NITA really have the political courage to deal with fare evasion, which not only costs other riders money but breeds the attitude that there is no law on the el?
Some of that new income needs to go toward added service. A bit of that already has occurred, with the RTA moving to standardize fares at 75-cents a ride or a bit more on CTA, Metra and Pace, and the CTA boosting 24-hour service on four bus lines. More in that vein is on the way. Good.
But please, NITA, be smart in what you’re doing. The public’s patience with empty trains and buses is going to be limited, given that that $1.4 billion came from higher taxes on retail sales and motor fuel, and by effectively jacking up tollway fees. That’s why it’s important that NITA really deliver on the $48 million in efficiencies the new law requires the organization to find in the next year. The operating agencies likely will balk. But, for instance, do the CTA, Metra and Pace really each need their own legal, purchasing, tech, HR and media-relations staffs?
Longer run, NITA needs to develop a strategy to deal with the fact that Uber, Lyft and other ridesharers have stolen much of their market. And with the fact that the Loop office market, the source of much of CTA’s and Metra’s business, will need a decade and maybe more to regain its vigor.
Another challenge is high on the to-do list. That’s prioritizing projects that will get scarce capital funding rather than taking the easy way out and just promising everyone everything, which has been the pattern.
I’m not sanguine about that. While the new NITA law puts all capital and borrowing decisions in the hands of a supermajority of the NITA board, the law also grandfathered the pending extension of the Red Line to the southern Chicago city limits. That job has exploded in cost, pegged at $5.75 billion in 2025, and quite possibly has blown by that figure by now. The politics are tough, but this project needs a rethink, given the enormous needs for repairs and other maintenance work on other, slowdown-plagued el lines.
One final challenge will be wisely using the enormous new development powers NITA was handed by lawmakers.
Though it has received almost no notice, the legislation appears to give NITA near unlimited power to develop, own, finance and build commercial and multiunit residential projects near transit stops. Shrewdly done, that could be an enormous plus both for the region and the transit agencies, providing all sorts of financial and environmental benefits. In the wrong hands — think Chicago’s experience with tax-increment financing districts — horrid things could occur. Be very, very careful, NITA.
Other challenges exist. But you get the idea.
Insiders who know transit and have followed the birth of NITA are optimistic. “Compared to where we were as a region, we’re in a much better place now,” one tells me privately. I hope that source is right. This is one experiment Chicago can’t afford to get wrong.