Suburban mayors and regional transportation experts closed ranks Tuesday against merging the Chicago area’s mass-transit systems, toll roads and land-use planning groups into a single “super agency.”
The officials were invited by state Republican lawmakers to speak at a hearing in Des Plaines that was aimed at showing opposition to consolidation of transportation agencies into one that would work to solve congestion problems and coordinate long-range projects.
The six-county metropolitan area has a transportation system with a solid foundation that could be made even stronger, the officials said.
“If it isn’t broken, don’t break it,” said Steven Quigley, executive director of the Will County Governmental League, summing up most of the day’s testimony before the Senate Republican Task Force on Transportation.
State GOP lawmakers from the suburbs questioned the motives of a fledgling effort led by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to improve the coordination of transportation services in the six-county region. They indicated the process could be commandeered to put Chicago interests ahead of suburban transportation needs.
“To be blunt, the state is run by people who live in the city of Chicago,” said state Sen. Dave Sullivan (R-Park Ridge), who chaired the transportation task force hearing. “That does give some suburban concerns.”
Witness after witness insisted the main problem isn’t poor management of the transportation network, but rather insufficient state and federal funding to address congestion tightening around the region. They also raised concerns that productive grass-roots decision-making between municipalities and transportation providers could be jeopardized by a regional body focusing on the big picture.
A super agency, or appointing a regional transportation “czar,” “would dictate our needs and never know what our needs are,” Arlington Heights Mayor Arlene Mulder said.
The almost unanimous support voiced for the existing transportation structure pre-empted a regional transportation task force created by Blagojevich and the General Assembly. The state task force, slowly taking shape, has been assigned to study how transportation and planning agencies in northeastern Illinois could be restructured to maximize coordination and end infighting.
But the task force, announced last spring and facing a March 1 deadline to provide recommendations, has not met. Several positions on the 22-member task force, to be headed by U.S. Rep. William Lipinski (D-Ill.), remain unfilled.
The General Assembly has passed legislation requiring the state task force to consider consolidating the Regional Transportation Authority, the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, the Chicago Area Transportation Study and the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission into a single agency. A merger could affect the future of the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace, which operate as separate transit service agencies subject to RTA financial oversight.
“The task force will be looking at ways to reduce duplication of service, access more resources from Washington and address traffic congestion,” said Blagojevich’s spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff.
Top officials at the tollway, the RTA, CTA, Metra and Pace told the GOP task force that the current arrangement best serves motorists and commuters who rely on buses and trains.
CTA President Frank Kruesi, who has competed vigorously against Metra in Washington and Springfield for more money for his agency, even went to bat for Metra in his defense of the three-agency setup.
“It’s an artificial distinction to say Metra should not receive [sales-tax subsidy] funds in the city of Chicago,” said Kruesi, one of only a few Democrats to testify that Metra receives none of the RTA sales-tax revenue collected in Chicago, even though Metra has 79 stations in the city.
Jim LaBelle, deputy director of Chicago Metropolis 2020, was practically alone in calling for dramatic change. His nonprofit civic group released a report in March calling for sweeping reforms that focus on helping people to live closer to their jobs and using open lands more wisely.
“The system is not working,” LaBelle said. “Suburban transit is so infrequent and limited that it is not a useful alternative for a car owner. There is no one responsible to achieve regional goals.”
