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Polling shows public open to concept of consolidation, but lots of hard work remains (Updated)

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* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…

One of the most important legislative debates next year will be about reforming, restructuring and finding a way to fund Northeast Illinois’ public transportation system. Statewide taxes could possibly be raised to pay for this, so you should pay attention no matter where you live.

Gov. JB Pritzker has said he’s not endorsing current legislation which would force the consolidation of the various transit systems. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning has two separate proposal about how to accomplish a reorganization ahead of an impending “transit fiscal cliff” of $730 million in FY26 that will rise to $1.2 billion over the following five years.

The public appears open to at least the concept of consolidation, according to a new poll conducted by Global Strategy Group for the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition, which supports transit agency consolidation. The polling and consulting firm works for Gov. Pritzker’s campaign, among several others in Illinois.

According to the poll of 600 likely voters conducted September 16-19, respondents backed the general idea 46-21. That’s more than two-to-one, but a third (33 percent) didn’t know enough to say.

Transit riders supported consolidation 55-20, non-riders supported it 34-23, Chicagoans supported consolidation 54-27, collar county voters backed it 53-19, suburban Cook County folks approved it 49-21 and labor union households supported consolidation 42-18.

But this isn’t really surprising. People naturally favor broad concepts like consolidating government agencies, even if they know nothing about the specifics. And that sentiment intensifies if they’re told consolidation will save big bucks.

72 percent told the pollster that potential consolidation savings of $200-250 million a year was a convincing argument. The savings range is claimed by the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition, but the Regional Transportation Authority says they have no idea where those savings numbers are coming from.

Half of Chicagoans, by the way, gave the Chicago Transit Authority a favorable rating, while 48 percent had an unfavorable view of the system. That’s somewhat surprising, given all the negative press about the CTA over the past few years. The group refused to provide full toplines or crosstabs.

Also last week, leaders of the Chicago-area public transit agencies gathered together on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight program and for the umpteenth time publicly rejected any managerial reforms while demanding a $1.5 billion increase in taxpayer funding.

That didn’t go over well with Sen. Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago), who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, is sponsoring the consolidation bill and has held numerous hearings on the topic.

“I have said from the beginning that we need to provide adequate funding for public transit,” Sen. Villivalam told me. “It is good for our local economy, public health, quality of life, mitigating climate impact and much more.”

However, Sen. Villivalam continued, “With that said, I have heard from colleague after colleague. The appetite to vote on this unprecedented amount of funding without reform is just not there. Period.”

More from Villivalam: “We need specificity on how they plan on using funds to make public transit more safe, reliable, accessible, coordinated, environmentally conscious, and economically strategic. There must be accountability and transparency.”

He’s not wrong on any of this. And the word “coordinated” is important because the transit agencies have long resisted a seamless payment system and synchronized scheduling, which is a major benefit of Germany’s transit system governance, known as verkehrsverbünde.

Germany’s regional transportation associations don’t actually operate that county’s innumerable transit systems. Instead, the associations simply enforce and oversee unified fares and ticketing, and they synchronize the transit systems’ schedules. That might possibly be where the reforms here are heading, and a fact-finding trip to Germany is apparently in the works.

Even organized labor is taking a look at the German model, I’m told.

Despite strong public statements this year against consolidation from the Illinois AFL-CIO and the Chicago Federation of Labor, organized labor has worked over the past few months to bring together a multitude of smallish transit unions to quietly work on a solution.

Bringing those union locals together wasn’t an easy task by any means, because unions often side with their employers’ Statehouse positions. The pitch from above was to organize against any attempts to divide and conquer them by peeling off a few of the larger unions to support a solution that would benefit some and not others. That approach is apparently working.

The union locals want lots more money for transit. But the German governing model is something that could work for them because the various agencies would continue running their systems. Still, it’s way too early to say the unions could jump on board.

…Adding… I get letters…

Rich,

We are writing in response to your recent post about the poll conducted by Global Strategy Group on behalf of the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition. With regard to the results that suggest that Illinoisans support consolidation of the public transit systems by a 2:1 margin, we are pleased you acknowledged that generally people do favor broad ideas like consolidating government agencies, even if they know nothing about the specifics. As you well know, with all things “Springfield,” the devil is in the details.

We reviewed the poll questions and believe they were intentionally vague. For example, we have no doubt if asked simply if individuals support “unifying the CTA, Metra, Pace and RTA into one organization to improve service, safety and frequency of trains and buses thus attracting more riders,” it would be easy to answer in the affirmative. But important background data was missing, such as

• Would the make-up of the new governing board dilute suburban representation into policy and financial decisions?
• Does the consolidation and reform plan require tax or fee increases for Chicago, Cook, or suburban riders?
• If consolidation occurs, would suburban riders become burdened with subsidizing the Chicago Transit Authority’s $5 billion deficit?
In our opinion, important questions were not asked in this poll, including:
• If you are a suburban rider, do you support giving majority control of transit decision-making for the entire six-county region to Cook County and the City of Chicago?
• If you are a suburban rider, do you support tax or fee increases to help address the Chicago Transit Authority’s $5 billion deficit?

We are glad you are following this issue and we agree it will be a primary topic of discussion in the 104th General Assembly. But when Global Strategy Group begins its own poll memo with “Without any background information…” it calls the validity of the poll into question.

We are all aware that poll questions can be written to deliver a predetermined response, and the vague nature of this poll brings up a lot of questions about who was polled, where they live, what issues influence their responses, etc. Moving forward we hope for improved transparency on the important issue of public transit in Illinois.

Sincerely,

Senator Donald DeWitte, Minority Spokesperson, Senate Transportation Committee
Senator Seth Lewis, Minority Spokesperson, Appropriations- Infrastructure & Public Safety
Senator Craig Wilcox, Minority Spokesperson, Senate Labor Committee

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 8:03 am

Comments

I’ve been against consolidation because state control of the MBTA in Boston neglected and ruined that system over decades. Too much power for state politicians without enough skin in the outcomes.

=== Germany’s regional transportation associations don’t actually operate that county’s innumerable transit systems. Instead, the associations simply enforce and oversee unified fares and ticketing, and they synchronize the transit systems’ schedules. ===

This sounds more reasonable to me. I’m not against any reform.

Comment by ChicagoVinny Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 8:14 am
== However, the Villivalam continued,==

??

Comment by Wee woo Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 8:57 am
lets merge the CPS with the State Board of Education-

and give control to Cook County and Mayor Johnson-as the proposed legislation reads

Comment by why stop with transit Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 9:17 am
Illinois has too many units of government. Each has someone in charge and staff. I bet each of the transit agencies have fiscal staff, legal staff, HR staff and on and on. Consolidating the agencies could reduce these redundancies. Other states get by without 6000+ units of government. Why can’t we?

Comment by Sir Reel Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 9:31 am
Illinois has too many units of government. Per the Trib this AM, we can’t even decide how many there are (guesses range from 5,000 to 8,500). If we are going to start consolidating units, lets eliminate as many of these special purpose districts (drainage, mosquito abatement, cemetery maint., tuburculosis elimination, etc) into Counties, Cities and Townships. Lets give a good hard look at consolidating school districts with a single school or less than 100 students. Is there any reason that Sanitary Districts can’t be consolidated into counties or municipalities? Hell, in counties under 1 million residents, why aren’t the offices of Recorder and County Clerk consolidated? If it even saves 100,000 grand a year, its worth it.

Comment by Just Another Anon Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 9:47 am
== However, the Villivalam continued,==

??

Use context clues.

– MrJM

Comment by @misterjayem Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 10:05 am
“the associations simply enforce and oversee unified fares and ticketing, and they synchronize the transit systems’ schedules”

tl;dr- Verkehrsverbünde Über Alles

– MrJM

I think I’m all for it, btw.

Comment by @misterjayem Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 10:08 am
CTA has 11,000 employees. Two thirds of the $1.7B operating budget goes to labor. Ridership revenue is $412M compared to $697M pre-Covid. CTA should cancel the outside security contract (which costs $50M annually) as CPD should be responsible for CTA security, reduce scheduling on low ridership bus routes, and raise fare prices.

Comment by Chicagonk Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 10:32 am
“lets eliminate as many of these special purpose districts”

What makes you think that eliminating a special purpose district or consolidating units of government will reduce taxes? The employees and work get transferred into the new organization. The money needed to continue the work will continue to come from levied taxes.

Comment by Huh? Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 10:51 am
The real problem with our transit governance is that the “oversight” agency is beholden to the service providers. Anytime the RTA even thinks about exercising its limited muscles, the service providers complain to their appointing authorities, who are the same appointing authorities of the RTA, and status quo is maintained.

Comment by Just Me 2 Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 11:10 am
@HUH?

Fewer admin staff to be frank and fewer elected official salaries. For example, did you know that sanitary district trustees get 6k a year plus benefits. For one sanitary district thats about 30k just in elected official salaries.

Hell, Mosquito Abatement Districts don’t pay their board members, but they exist to levy and hire an outside contractor to spray. They have their own attorney and accountant(which a quick look at the minutes indicates costs about 15k a year).

Those are just topline numbers, admittedly, but offer examples of two types of districts. One with an acutal job, staff and infrastructure to be absorbed; and one which is largely a paper district. There are even fire protection district’s whose sole purpose is to meet annually and levy funds to be paid to a municipal fire department. They also pay their attorney about 10k.

Townships already have attorneys. It would be nothing for mosquito abatement and paper fire districts to be absorbed there and the only thing that would change would be 25k a year less in attorney fees and expenses associated with the appointed officials. Make an exemption to PTELL for districts merging and permitting an levy up to the total prior amount of both levys plus PTELLS max. If the sanitary district were to be taken over by the County, which already operates its own sanitary facilities, there would be significant savings in staff and administration. Ditto on how to fix the levy issue.

Comment by Just Another Anon Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 11:16 am
Agree with Just Me 2. The verkehrsverbünde model addresses one problem (fare and service coordination across service providers) but doesn’t address the problem of service provider oversight.

It would be great to have an integrated regional transit network, but who’s going to prevent, for example, the CTA wasting $50M on outside security contracts, etc?

Comment by CTA Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 11:44 am
==Germany’s regional transportation associations==

I’ve been to Germany. Their train systems have their fair share of reliability issues. I had to deal with a couple last minute cancelled trains that had me scrambling across the hauptbahnhof. Allow plenty of time for connecting trains. In other words, German precision ain’t what it used to be.

Much cleaner though.

Comment by City Zen Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 12:58 pm
“Every time I hear the word ‘Consolidation’, I reach for my calculator.” And the RTA/Pace/CTA/Metra ridership, revenue and funding numbers are awful.

Comment by thisjustinagain Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 1:29 pm
A challenge for northeast Illinois coordination: make mass transport the fastest and most reliable airport connection. Everything is on a trustworthy schedule. Connect the Metra spokes to the airports without people needing to travel through downtown Chicago. Be prepared for people with suitcases and provide shelters for passengers waiting for connections. Charge a surcharge if necessary; but the service is so attractive that every year more people will want to use mass transport instead of private cars and taxis.

Comment by Ivory-billed woodpecker Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 1:50 pm
== Illinois has too many units of government. ==

While not necessarily transportation / Chicago specific, it all goes back to the way Illinois sets up taxation and bonding authority. If you truly want to reduce individual units of government, you’re going to have to tackle that whole issue.

Comment by RNUG Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 1:55 pm
Separate units of government agencies allow for greater accountability and the ability to track down where the money is actually spent. Mayor Johnson wants one agency that he would be able to control by appointing most of the board members. The board could then use the money from the collar counties RTA taxes to bail out the CTA.

Comment by Dupage Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 3:06 pm
Rarely if ever does re-arranging the deck chairs keep the ship from sinking.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Monday, Oct 28, 24 @ 6:29 pm