State Policy

On July 1, 2014, Illinois' pool of transportation money will dry up. That's the day that the state's last five-year capital program—the law that funds maintenance and construction of roads, highways, and public transit across the state—expires. Without a replacement, roughly a billion dollars of annual support to the state's transportation infrastructure will disappear.

The state of Missouri is aiming to bridge its transportation funding shortfall with a 1 percent sales tax that will generate $8 billion over 10 years. Rather than raising the gas tax, this regressive tax will force people who don't drive to subsidize roads -- and for good measure it will also forbid tolling on two major highways.

Transit systems in Northeastern Illinois face a $20 billion maintenance backlog. Now the question is how to pay for it.

Governor Pat Quinn’s northeastern Illinois task force released its final report [PDF] yesterday, detailing recommendations from its mid-March draft. The task force launched last year, after former Metra CEO Alex Clifford resigned to protest the commuter rail operator's long-running patronage culture.

I’m sure state representative Mary Flowers, a South Side Democrat, had the best of intentions in pushing for new legislation requiring the school system to provide free bus service for students who currently walk to school along Safe Passages routes. The bill passed the Illinois House 73-39 on Thursday and now moves on to the Senate, the Sun-Times reported. However, it’s not clear this would be a wise policy.

At least one Illinois legislator supports a unified transit agency, even though RTA board chairman John Gates and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have declared their opposition.

The transit task force Governor Pat Quinn convened last year after the Metra governance scandal continues to discuss the merits of a single transit authority to replace the Regional Transportation Authority and absorb Chicago Transit Authority, Metra, and Pace. Count Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CTA President Forrest Claypool among the opponents of that idea.

On Tuesday, the Northeastern Public Transit Task Force, created after former Metra CEO Alex Clifford's abrupt resignation and the ensuing severance package scandal last summer, issued four different options for restructuring regional transit governance [PDF]. While there's a lot of variation among the four options, they would all hand more power to the governor. This is the wrong direction to take.

By now, Streetsblog readers know all about how the Illiana Tollway, a proposed highway that will see little use and cost taxpayers $500 million, has messed up our regional plan. Last October, the MPO Policy Committee of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning voted to add the Illiana to the GO TO 2040 plan, allowing the Illinois Department of Transportation to go ahead and build it, even though the project actually works against the plan's goal of focusing growth near existing infrastructure.