Pictured, top to bottom: The METX 196 Metra train in Aurora, Illinois, taken December 2024. [Guo Rui Pei / Public Domain] / The 26 Pace bus in Oak Park, Illinois, taken in August 2019. [David Wilson / CC BY 2.0] / Chicago "L". [Rene Schwietzke / CC BY 2.0]

Days after an Illinois lawmaker filed a bill that would combine the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace mass transit systems into one under a newly formed Metropolitan Mobility Authority, current Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) officials announced a proposed $1.5 billion plan to create more synergy with Illinois’s existing three public transit systems while still keeping those systems siloed. 

Kirk Dillard, former Illinois state senator and current chairman for the RTA, said during a Jan. 15 City Club of Chicago public affairs forum the current Illinois General Assembly needs to figure out a legislative solution by the end of spring session in May to help fund public transit in the northern part of the state especially. He said the three mass transit systems under the RTA umbrella are facing a fiscal cliff with the state no longer receiving COVID-19 pandemic relief funding starting next year. 

“We are at a critical moment where we must think big to fix the chronic underfunding and disjointed governments that have plagued our transit system for too long,” Dillard said during his Jan. 15 prepared comments. “There is no time to delay because the consequences of inaction are dire.”