Progress Illinois

On Tuesday, Crain's Greg Hinz reported that after signing a $3 billion mini-capital bill earlier this month for roads and public transit work, Gov. Pat Quinn's office had strangely agreed to release only money for roads. The dispute revolved around bonds -- Quinn's office noted at the time that the state's road fund has existing revenue sources that can support $640 million appropriated for road projects while the transit funding required the General Assembly to pass "revenue enhancements" to pay off the bond, which they had not done yet. Of course, that issue was not brought up once during negotiations with transit leaders and state lawmakers, prompting state Sen. Martin Sandoval (D-Chicago), chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, to compare Quinn with his beleaguered predecessor, who routinely broke funding promises.

Since then, the problem seems to have been cleared up. The governor’s office -- while sending out mixed messages -- claims the Hinz' story was a misunderstanding. And Rep. Harry Osterman was assured that transit officials will be told by the end of the week "how to go about getting their money in short order." But the episode highlights the difficulty in ensuring a sustainable revenue source for mass transit -- infrastructure funding is hard to come by, and what's passed disproportionately benefits roads.

A new study by the Federal Transit Administration drives home this point. At the behest of 11 U.S. senators, including Sen. Dick Durbin, the agency examined the condition of the nation's seven largest rail transit agencies. The results were sobering: more than one-third of the trains, equipment, and facilities used in Chicago, Boston, New York, New Jersey, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. are outdated and it would cost $50 billion to bring the systems into good repair, along with an additional $5.9 billion a year to maintain. Yet these figures don't even include proposed expansions. Reconnecting America, which advocates for mass transit use, identifies $248 billion in developments that have already been proposed nationally but that aren't yet funded. Nor does it consider the problem with freight lines, especially in our region, which PBS and Phillip Longman have both covered this year.

As we've written before, the funding structure both nationally and locally make sizeable transit upgrades -- much less expansions -- difficult to carry out. And a serious disinvestment in infrastructure across the board -- combined with six years of gridlock in Springfield -- has exacerbated the problem. There is a dramatic opportunity to change how we fund transit with the upcoming reauthorization of the surface transportation bill in Washington and a potential capital bill in Illinois. Lawmakers concerned about the environmental and economic strength of the nation shouldn't let it slip away.

Image used under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user Shannon K.