(The following article by Jon Hilkevitch and Virginia Groark was posted on the Chicago Tribune website on September 30.)
CHICAGO — Work on some 20 Metra rail station and parking lot projects has come to a halt because the state has not released money to pay for them, local transportation officials said Wednesday.
Money for the upcoming CTA Brown Line rehabilitation also has been blocked, and no explanation for the delay has been offered, they said.
But state Transportation Secretary Tim Martin said the issue is the RTA’s amount of bonding for capital projects, and once a guarantee is given that the agency will not exceed the state-mandated cap, the money will be released.
Martin said the RTA has bonded $1.162 billion under a multi-year program in which the state pays the debt service on the transit bonds. The cap is $1.3 billion and the state has asked for a letter from the RTA promising not to go over that amount, he said.
“We’re not playing politics at all. We’re just trying to make sure in real tight financial times that every “i” is dotted and every “t” is crossed,” Martin said.
Roughly $45 million in matching funds already available for the Chicago Transit Authority’s Brown Line renovation and an additional $13.6 million for Metra projects that are near completion are being held back, local officials said. The Regional Transportation Authority already has approved funding for the projects using transit bonds, they said.
“We have been kind of getting the runaround,” said Joseph Costello, RTA’s chief financial officer.
“The RTA Board approved funding for the Metra and CTA projects at its June 24 meeting and five minutes later, we fired off the list to Springfield for the governor’s approval,” he said. “It has been sitting there ever since.”
The RTA has the authority to issue bonds to pay for CTA and Metra projects, but Gov. Rod Blagojevich must approve the list for the money to be released, Costello said.
He has talked to state officials about the bonding cap and will send a letter Thursday promising not to exceed it, Costello said, adding that the RTA never intended to break the law that set the ceiling.
One transit official said the state might be delaying approval of the projects so it could postpone reimbursing the RTA for the cost of debt service on the bonds.
For Metra, the situation means work on 24 projects, including construction or improvements of rail stations in Chicago, Crystal Lake, Elgin, Des Plaines and Bartlett, won’t be completed this year, said Judy Pardonnet, an agency spokeswoman. In addition, construction of much-needed parking spaces in Downers Grove, Lombard and Joliet is delayed.
In many suburbs, Metra ridership growth is limited by the availability of parking. In Joliet, Metra was supposed to build about 200 parking spaces.
“We’ve got a real parking crunch,” said Jim Haller, director of community and economic development for Joliet. “I wish the money could flow so we could get this thing online.”
Another project being delayed is Metra’s modernization of the Randolph Street station in downtown Chicago, which has been slowed since the late 1990s because of Millennium Park construction.
The CTA is waiting for state money for its $530 million Brown Line project that would expand ridership capacity by lengthening station platforms to accommodate eight-car trains rather than six-car trains, rehabilitate stations and rail infrastructure and meet the requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The CTA has received a full-funding agreement for the federal portion of the project’s cost–$423 million–but the $45 million state match that is in limbo is part of a $107 million contribution that is supposed to be provided by the RTA, IDOT and the CTA.
CTA officials said they were not told why the governor hasn’t approved the project list, but they expressed confidence he would give his authorization.
“There is no reason to believe the money is not going to be approved,” said CTA spokeswoman Noelle Gaffney.