As Funding Crisis Looms, Poll Shows Broad Support For Merger Of Regional Transit Agencies

CHICAGO — A recent poll commissioned by a coalition of environmental and labor groups showed broad public support for consolidating the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra, Pace, and the Regional Transportation Authority into a single agency, according to the survey's sponsors.

The Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition this week released selective portions of the results of a poll conducted in mid-September by Global Strategy Group of 600 likely voters via telephone and text with a margin of error of 4 percent.

Statewide, 46 percent of respondents supported the unification of CTA, Metra, Pace and the RTA into a single organization, 21 percent opposed it and 33 percent were undecided.

When pollsters added extra language suggesting that combining the Chicago area public transportation agencies would "improve service, safety and frequency of trains and buses, thus attracting more riders," support jumped to 52 percent over all and about 60 percent in Chicago and its suburbs, according to a memo released by the coalition.

State Rep. Mary Beth Canti (D-Arlington Heights), a former member of the RTA board, said the oversight body had no way to require Metra, CTA and Pace to work together, only to reject their budget requests.

"For example, the CTA, Metra, and Pace all have separate apps that don't work well together, or don't work together at all," Canti said Wednesday at a news conference in Chicago to tout the poll results. "This forces people to juggle multiple apps, multiple schedules, and separate fares that just don't work as well as they should."

Suburban residents want to be able to take the train to a game or a show, get to their destination on time, be able to pay a single fare and transition between buses to trains, Canti said, noting that suburb-to-suburb bus routes have been slashed in recent years, which makes it even harder to get around without a car outside of Chicago.

"The overwhelming majority of voters in Chicago, Cook County, and the collar counties don’t want to hear parochial political arguments — they want solutions," she said. "Making transit cleaner, safer, and more frequent is what riders and taxpayers want, not the present system that stands in the way of regional connectivity and financial inefficiency."

Earlier this year, state lawmakers proposed the Metropolitan Mobility Act, or MMA, to create a single transit system out of the agencies. Supporters say it could save up to $250 million a year as the RTA approaches a $730 million fiscal cliff. Critics of the plan, among them existing agency officials, have contended that chronic underfunding, rather than bureaucratic mismanagement, are to blame for the agencies' problems.

"You've all heard about ghost trains and ghost buses that either show up late or don't show up at all," said W. Robert Schultz, a campaign organizer for the Active Transportation Alliance. "I've had conversations with hundreds of riders who shared the same frustrations I have when service delivery on the streets and train platforms is so chaotic, unpredictable, and challenging that it's difficult to plan your day utilizing public transportation."

Schultz noted the survey showed that the CTA was the least popular among agencies and generated the strongest feelings, with 48 percent of its Chicago respondents giving it an unfavorable rating.

"Too often, buses and trains are not on time, not clean, and sometimes not as safe as they can be," he said. "We have a responsibility to do better."

The poll also examined what kind of messaging what most effective to persuading voters to support consolidation. The three most convincing: the looming fiscal cliff, the waste of taxpayer dollars on duplicate services and lobbyists and the lack of state funding compared to other states.

State Sen. Robert Peters (D-Chicago) said the transit system is currently controlled by the leaders of "little fiefdoms," who are spending millions of taxpayer dollars on lobbyists in an attempt to protect the status quo.

"There’s no new funding that doesn’t come without these changes. We need to unify this system," Peters said.

"I was recently, about a year ago, in Germany. I was in Hamburg, and I was just in awe. I was in awe because they have this sort of unified system — they have high union density — they have folks who are getting onto that system, hopping off, hopping on," he said. "I think that if we’re the richest country in the world and the third-largest city in that country, then we should have the richest, most robust public transit system possible."

Peters said people feel more isolated in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and there is value to the experience of sharing a bus or a train with other community members.

"Nine million people should be able to feel connected," he said.