Chicagoland faces a $770 million total public transportation fiscal cliff, which would result in austerity measures – extreme service cuts – in 2026. That is, unless Illinois legislators take decisive action by the end of next month to address the budget gap.
Under these urgent circumstances, on Wednesday, advocates gathered in southwest-suburban Naperville for a DuPage County Public Transit Listening Session. It was hosted by The People's Lobby, a membership-driven organization working to build support for addressing equity and environmental justice issues. The summit took place at at Nicholas Library, 200 W Jefferson Ave.
During a mass sharing exercise about what attendees would like to see local transit, People's Lobby member Rafael Padilla said he was born and raised in a place without public transportation, the west side of Puerto Rico. Padilla also spent one semester in Spain, which he said had very nice public transportation, before eventually going to Texas and Illinois. He works in engineering and manufacturing, which he said requires working in a place that's inaccessible by transit. He added that he's made peace with that situation, he would still like to have the type of transit that he experienced in Spain.
"Why was I much happier there?" said Padilla during the meeting. "I'm starting to understand it is the way that cities are planned... It was so much easier for me to make friends than it was back at home, and I could just live without a car. That's great as a broke student. You can bike, or you can take a bus." It was easy to take a train to another beautiful city for a day trip. "You want to go travel to another country, you can do that too," he added. "Take a train, take a plane, there are options. So, now that I got older and am resigned to 'Well, I'm not gonna get back there,' I want to make my home a little more like that."
People's Lobby Director of Membership Miguel Molina-Ventura is a former chief of staff for a City Council representative in west-suburban West Chicago. He said his organization supports the Metropolitan Mobility Authority act, which would consolidate the four Chicagoland transit agencies into a single bureau. He argued that the current fiscal crisis is an opportunity to improve the funding and organization of Chicago-area public transportation.
"That's why we're fighting for what we call equitable revenue sources," Molina-Ventura said. "We want to ensure that corporations pay their per share of taxes. We want to make sure that there is accountability [for] the agencies, whether it be the board agency or the NFA agency. We can hold them accountable for the lack of care and safety when they're not doing it, and they're not fulfilling their responsibilities."
Molina-Ventura added that they want to create real safety for publica transportation rider through a "transit ambassador" program, a strategy that has worked well in peer cities. These are unarmed workers trained in de-escalation, who can help make passenger feel more comfortable, deter crime, and assist with emergencies, such as when a person in the system has a mental health crisis.
"So we know that if we can get those things, you're creating the path towards our North Star, towards a world-class system that can rival that of Japan, that can rival that of Europe, which works really well, and create community as well," Molina-Ventura concluded. "And we can have that here in the state of Illinois."
Towards the middle of the meeting, attendancees broke out into groups to discuss five different issues People's Lobby says needs to be addressed to create a world-class transit system: equitable funding, rider representation, unity, accountability, and safety. At one point, an attendee asked why they were focusing on those things instead of the fiscal cliff. "A lot of these are very nice, but some of them are dreams," they said.
"Well, we mentioned [State Senator] Ram Villivalam, who had a very interesting hearing [on the MMA act] recently," said People's Lobby Lead Organizer Chris White at the end of the meeting. "He said we're note going to get funding with the reforms, right? Early on, when we started, I met with Linda Thisted, who's been part of the Coalition for Modern Metra Electric for decades. She's been fighting for those things for decades. She's like, 'We will never have a better chance to win these things because they need this money ,and we need the money to come with strings.' So, that's why we're doing this now. The fact that they need the money gives us more power to demand these reforms."
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