A $3.6 billion plan to extend the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line by almost six miles would be a difficult undertaking, even in the best of times.
But leave it to the CTA to find a way to make things even harder for itself.
The agency and the Lightfoot administration are seeking City Council approval to help fund the extension by capturing and using $950 million in future property tax revenue increases near the Red Line between Madison Street and Pershing Road.
It’s a big ask. And alderpersons began questioning the deal last week — with good reason.
“We’re looking to extend a system that is failing,” Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) said when the finance plan was brought before the City Council budget committee last week.
“Certainly, folks on the South Side deserve access to the Red Line,” as he said. “But rewarding poor stewardship with a billion-dollar investment is difficult to rationalize.”
Reilly and other alderpersons who questioned the finance request — including Budget Committee ChaIrperson Pat Dowell (3rd) — are absolutely correct.
No matter how potentially vital the Red Line extension may be, the CTA must help its case for getting the huge sum of money by better tending to the system as it exists now.
That means properly addressing the current upswing in CTA crime and fixing the agency’s alarmingly unreliable service.
Money on the line
The tax increment finance district that would be created under the plan would follow the route of the Red Line from downtown to Bronzeville, encompassing a half mile on either side of the tracks.
Announced in 2018, the Red Line extension would carry L service to 130th Street — 5.6 miles beyond the current 95th Street terminus — and add new stations at 103rd St., 111th St., Michigan Avenue and 130th.
The CTA says the expanded line would shorten commute times from the Far South Side into downtown by 30 minutes.
Creation of the TIF district would help make the CTA eligible for a $2.4 billion federal grant to complete the project.
The district would use the expected revenue from the next 35 years of property tax growth within its boundaries to fund the expansion.
A portion of Reilly’s ward would be included in the district, and of Dowell’s as well.
At last week’s Budget Committee meeting, Dowell said she wants a “discussion that looks comprehensively at CTA and what they want to do as we are trying to find $950 million and more to help do the Red Line extension.”
A deadline ahead
Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants the City Council to approve the finance plan by Dec. 31 in order to meet deadline requirements for receiving the federal matching funds.
With time of the essence, CTA President Dorval Carter should have spent the last six months stressing to City Council members the importance of the Red Line extension.
Carter should have been showing alderpersons how the project is part-and-parcel of an overall plan to substantially improve the agency, by also getting a handle on the system’s crime, service woes and sanitation needs.
He could have personally told the council how the Red Line is the transit spine of the city, and how strengthening the south portion of it helps the whole.
He could have pitched to them that the expansion, along with proper city planning and housing policies aimed at rebuilding neighborhoods, could help stem the historic population loss on the South Side — particularly the far reaches of it.
There was so much to say and time to say it. Instead, Carter wasted those months repeatedly ignoring invitations to personally come before the City Council.
And why Lightfoot or the CTA board didn’t demand he attend is beyond us.
Because in all this time, Carter could have been making his case about the Red Line and enlisting alderpersons as his partners in the endeavor, rather than his potential adversaries.
Carter and the CTA have got some heavy work to do over the next two months, which should have started months ago. Let’s just hope it’s not too late.
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