Take a look at the fine print of the transit deal and you surely will see some promising things. You’ll also see lots of question marks, such as whether the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace finally will come out of their poorly coordinated silos, whether consolidation of expensive bureaucracies and duplicative transit routes actually will occur and ultimately whether the Chicago region finally will start acting like a region.
The key is the governance structure of the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority, which will replace the Regional Transit Authority as the presumed master of all things involving public buses and trains.
The new NITA board will have 20 members, five each selected by the mayor of Chicago, the president of the Cook County Board, the governor of Illinois, and the chairs of the five suburban collar counties that encircle Cook. Those 20 will select a chairman from among themselves.
Under the new rules, NITA will set fares and budgets, and effectively control routing, service levels and capital expenditures. But there’s a big if involved. Actually using that power will require a super-majority vote of the board. Either 12 votes will be needed, including two from each of the four appointed caucuses, or 15.
A somewhat similar super-majority requirement hobbled the RTA for decades. Any really tough decisions — i.e., forcing through a politically unpopular fare hike, or requiring the CTA and Metra to cooperate rather than compete — were rejected, because each agency controlled enough votes to block action. So they worked out a nice compromise in the form of mutual back-scratching.
Will the new NITA board be any better? No one knows. What we do know is that collar county Republicans are very worried that, with as many as 15 board members come from Cook County, the burbs will be treated as a cash cow, giving much but getting not much back.
The converse also applies. If, for instance, the NITA board wanted to require the CTA to consolidate back-office functions such as legal, purchasing and media relations with Metra and Pace, the city’s five-member bloc will need only one vote of the other 15 to obstruct action.
The same kinds of disputes could arise over fares, big capital projects and routing. Recall that City Hall and the CTA a few balked at pilot project pushed by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle to lower fares on Metra’s South and West Side routes. CTA feared it would lose some fare income, and that was that.
Legislative insiders say the chairs of the collar county board were involved in final negotiations on the package that was approved and, apparently, went along. Beyond that, the first NITA chair will have to be confirmed by the Illinois Senate.
But color me skeptical on this one.
A good test will come on what happens with fare hikes that were supposed to go in effect this upcoming Jan. 1. The hikes generally were rather modest, particularly considering that what patrons pay hasn’t gone up since before COVID and in some cases has gone down, inflation notwithstanding. Ergo, the CTA monthly pass cost $88 in 1988. It now goes for a near giveaway $75 for unlimited rides.
The package approved by lawmakers bans any fare hike for a year after the new law goes into effect, next June 1. The RTA could allow the proposed hikes to go into effect before then, but appears to be backing off. Elections are coming up, don’t you know, even though most riders are commuters who can and should pay a little more.
If it’s responsible, the RTA, NITA or whoever is in charge will hold off on implementing the quarter of a percent hike in the sales tax the Legislature authorized until it’s prepared to make riders put some skin in the game in the form of a fare hike. Ditto the new security task force that Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is going to lead. If the transit folks can’t make riders feel safe, they don’t deserve all of that big new tax income.
Hopefully, the powers that be will figure this out and now just spend all the loot faster than a teenager who just got their allowance. For the moment, only part of the job of fixing Chicago-area transit has been completed. There’s still work to do.
