Promoted

Update 2/12/25, 1:30 PM: The Chicago Department of Transportation will host another public meeting on this project Thursday, February 13, 6-7 p.m. on Zoom. Register at bit.ly/granville2025.

There was a changing of the guard today in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. The bicycle store launched as Urban Bikes, then transformed into Uptown Bikes, rebooted once again as Broadway Bikes, with longtime wrenches Leah Plummer and Nina Hazelton now the owners.

Sometimes right now it feels like Chicagoland residents are on a runaway train (or a scene from the 1994 city bus thriller Speed?) hurtling towards our region's looming transit fiscal cliff. Federal COVID-era public transportation subsidies for the CTA, Metra, and Pace, overseen by the Regional Transit Authority, are projected to run out in 2026. That would leave the systems with a total budget gap that would be the better part of a billion dollars.

On January 13, the CTA announced that the agency's embattled President Dorval R. Carter was stepping down after more than a decade on the job. As Streetsblog discussed that day, elected officials and transit advocates had major problems with the way he ran the system, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. They cited major problems with reliability, crime, and cleanliness. As early as last April, everyone from the grassroots group Commuters Take Action to Governor JB Pritzker was calling for new leadership at the agency.

Right now, the elephant in the room for Chicagoland public transportation planners and advocates is the looming regional transit fiscal cliff as federal COVID-19 funding subsidies run out. According to the Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees the CTA, Metra, and Pace, the three systems will face a $770 million total shortfall – almost 20 percent of the operating budget – in 2026. The RTA says that if the issue is not addressed by this spring, the result would be higher fares and reduced service, leading to less ridership, aka the dreaded "transit death spiral".

McCoy Cantwell was born and raised in Chicago and now live in Los Angeles, where he's pursing a master's degree urban and regional planning at Cal Poly Pomona. He wrote this piece as a class assignment to discuss a current planning issue.

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It's relatively simple to eulogize people who were well-loved, or even just generally liked, and who never really did much out of the ordinary in their lives. Longtime Chicago cycling advocate Arthur Travis Duffey, known as "Flip Bike Travis," was not such a person.

Earlier this month, The Travel mentioned Chicago Union Station – along with Baltimore's Penn Station – as being one of two American Amtrak stops that needs a revamp. "Much of the [Chicago] station’s infrastructure feels outdated and disconnected," the website noted. "The lower-level concourses, where most passengers navigate, lack the charm and appeal of the main hall... The station’s confusing layout and aging facilities often frustrate travelers."