CTA spends big despite looming fiscal cliff

(The Center Square) – A new report says that overspending, not underfunding, is to blame for the Chicago Transit Authority’s budget woes.

CTA is facing a $577 million budget shortfall.

Illinois Policy Institute policy researcher Ravi Bishra said CTA ridership is barely 60% of pre-COVID levels, and growth has been extremely slow.

“They are not projecting the CTA [ridership] levels to reach pre-pandemic levels until 2030,” Bishra said.

The CTA reported 273.5 million riders in 2023. There were 455.8 million riders in 2019.

Bishra disputed CTA President Dorval Carter’s claims that public transit is underfunded. Bishra said regional transit agencies in the Chicago area waste a lot of taxpayer money.

“Silly, ridiculous, reckless spending has been an issue for Chicago-area transportation for some time now. The political climate definitely has a lot to do with it. A lot of politicians want to add these ridiculous costs just to make themselves look good instead of pursuing good fiscal stability,” Bishra said.

Personnel costs made up 68% of the CTA’s $2 billion budget in 2024, he said. Nearly half of CTA employees, 5,154 of 10,588, are not transit operators but rather work in administration, management and support roles.

Citing one example of what he called unnecessary spending, Bishra said the CTA spent $20,000 on a disc jockey for 300 hours of work.

“The CTA system had a $2 billion boost from temporary federal [COVID relief] funds, but little was done to mitigate a lot of the issues that the CTA was facing. Now that the funds have been running out, it’s facing this enormous shortfall and it’s set to continue for years,” Bishra said.

The Illinois Policy Institute reported that the CTA budget is projected to reach over $2.2 billion by 2026, a $650 million increase since 2019, when it was $1.52 billion.

Consolidation may help regional transit agencies save money in the long run. Several polls have shown that a substantial majority of Illinois residents favor combining Metra, Pace, the CTA and the Regional Transit Authority.

Earlier this year, state legislators proposed the Metropolitan Mobility Act, which would create a single transit system out of the agencies. Bishra said consolidating agencies would be a good first step.

“The biggest problem is that consolidation takes time, effort and resources, so it would not be an immediate fix. Going forward, it could be a fix,” Bishra said.

Bishra said the Civic Federation projected a total savings of $200 million to 250 million per year for regional transit with consolidation.

“The entire RTA is facing over a $700 million shortfall. Even though this would be a step in the right direction in the long term, it is definitely not even close to filling that budget deficit,” Bishra said.

Chicago-area transit agencies are facing an estimated fiscal cliff of $730 million in 2026.

Transit systems in other major U.S. cities also face growing budget issues. New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli projects that their Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s projected budget gap of $221 million this year will rise to more than $652 million by 2028 unless ridership improves or the agency gets a new infusion of funds.

Los Angeles has several major transit projects planned ahead of the 2028 Olympics, which the city is hosting. Costs for a 2.25-mile “automated people mover” could balloon to $3.3 billion due to construction delays and lawsuits.

Kevin Bessler, Kenneth Schrupp and Chris Wade contributed to this story.