Leader Eva-Dina Delgado

Update Friday 10/31/25, 9:00 AM: It was scary when the Illinois General Assembly floor debate over transit legislation entered the Halloween witching hours. But thankfully it looks like we've avoided a "Nightmare on Second Street" (the roadway where the state capitol is located). Here are some features of the new legislation that passed with $1.5 billion for public transportation, raised without statewide taxes, which I gleaned from a report by Capitol News Illinois and a summary by Capitol Fax.

On Tuesday, the curtains closed on last month's "Save Chicago Transit: The Comedy Show," a weekly series presented by Funny You Should Care at Second City. Meanwhile, it's now October, the month in which Illinois state legislators will hopefully pass a public transportation reform and finance bill that will rescue our region from the looming transit fiscal cliff.

At the Truman College event, Sen. Mike Simmons and Sen Ram Villivalam disputed claims about the transit bill from Republican senators.

"And I thought to myself you're just like everybody elseStanding at the station, but missing the trainI turned to catch her expressionShe walked back home in the rain"

Last month, when I interviewed State Rep. Kam Buckner about efforts to address the looming $771 million Chicagoland transit fiscal cliff, he noted that the discussion of the topic in the media has been something of a "boy's club." (Today, Buckner and I talked some more about this subject with Outside the Loop Radio's Mike Stephen on a show airing this Saturday morning, which doesn't undermine that argument.)