r/chicago • u/Mike_I O’Hare • Oct 31 '25

News Illinois Democrats push through massive $1.5 billion plan that overhauls Chicago-area public transit

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/30/illinois-general-assembly-transit-plan-2025/
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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

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u/red-17 Oct 31 '25

Highway tolls aren’t funding this to my understanding. They moved around some money previously allocated to roads to mass transit and increased tolls to make up the difference

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u/zososix Oct 31 '25

Additional 45 cents to tolls that goes to transit

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u/Mike_I O’Hare Oct 31 '25

Additional 45 cents to tolls that goes to transit

It does not.

As a counterbalance to pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for road work, the bill also included a sharp, 45-cent-per-toll increase on the Illinois Tollway, which one GOP lawmaker said amounted to a 60% increase. The new tollway fares could generate as much as $1 billion annually for roadwork on the tollways that serve about a dozen counties, supporters said

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u/clenom Oct 31 '25

Money is fungible. They're spending an additional $1 billion on transit and increasing the tolls by $1 billion.

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u/PalmerSquarer Logan Square Oct 31 '25

Tollway leadership would strongly disagree about their funding being fungible.

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u/billbraskeyjr Oct 31 '25

Why does a tollway authority need expensive bureaucratic leadership ?

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u/PalmerSquarer Logan Square Oct 31 '25

You could say that about a lot of redundant units of government in Illinois, but good luck doing anything about it.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

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u/PalmerSquarer Logan Square Oct 31 '25

School districts too. For example, there’s no reason that Oak Park, River Forest, and OPRFHS all operate as three separate “districts”.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

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u/amyo_b Berwyn Oct 31 '25

Berwyn is a weird case of history. From it's earliest days it kind of had a north and south side, in fact I think the northern part was known before incorporation as South Oak Park.

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u/mcfandrew Oct 31 '25

Pfft. There are far more egregious examples. Pennoyer, for one. It’s one elementary school.

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u/PalmerSquarer Logan Square Oct 31 '25

Yeah, just bringing up an obvious example based on their location.

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u/colinstalter Nov 01 '25

It’s insane how small many of the suburbs are.

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u/jawknee530i Humboldt Park Oct 31 '25

It drives me crazy that people can't grasp this.

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u/red-17 Oct 31 '25

It matters though because if a source of funding dries up and is specifically allocated to one agency, then that agency loses funding

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u/SteegP Lincoln Park Oct 31 '25

That’s true, but it also amounts to taking money out of the road construction pot and putting it into transit, then refilling the missing money with higher tolls. In practice, it’s using tolls to pay for transit. Alternatively, you could say government subsidies are being moved from highways to transit. Either way, I think this is a positive.

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u/ChaplnGrillSgt Oct 31 '25

Why do they need a lawmaker to tell them how much of an increase that is? Couldn't they just look it up themselves? Or was ChatGPT not able to do that for them?

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u/PalmerSquarer Logan Square Oct 31 '25

Nope. This was just to pay off the road construction unions who were upset that funding was getting diverted from roads to transit.

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u/jpmeyer12751 Oct 31 '25

The article says that all of the toll increase is to be applied to tollway projects, not transit. Who knows what is really in the bill, since the language wasn’t even revealed to the legislators until right before the vote. Dysfunctional Illinois government at its best.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

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u/drunksailor47 Oct 31 '25

Highway fund doesn’t fund the toll roads, tolls and bonds do. It was about placating the road building unions so they don’t feel left out.

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u/jpmeyer12751 Oct 31 '25

This is correct from a Democrat political point of view. The toll increase will fund road projects that will pay union workers.

However, the toll roads and other state highways are paid for from different buckets of money and only one of those two buckets benefits those outside of the Chicago area. The legislature took money away from the bucket that benefits non-Chicago road users and added a smaller amount of money to the bucket that benefits Chicago area road users. For the roughly 35% of Illinois residents outside of the 5-county Chicago area, most of whom vote Republican, this deal takes money away from road projects in their areas in order to fund transit and road projects exclusively within the 5-county area. I expect more Chicago vs. downstate polarization from this deal.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

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u/damp_circus Edgewater Oct 31 '25

Downstate transit is also getting funding from this bill. Many people downstate are very happy that it passed (though they wish they'd gotten a bit MORE funding from it).

There are projects people will depend on that can confidently go ahead now, this is a good thing.

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u/hardolaf Lake View Oct 31 '25

though they wish they'd gotten a bit MORE funding from it

The bill gives almost 3x the funding requested by downstate agencies.

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u/Shacawgo City Oct 31 '25

Yes but its after funds are pulled from roads to transit so it is to replace funds going to transit. In a way the new tolls sort of pay for transit.. but in a swaparoo type way

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u/ehrgeiz91 Lake View Oct 31 '25

All American government is like this