(The following story by Jon Hilkevitch appeared on the Chicago Tribune website on March 6.)
CHICAGO — The Chicago Transit Authority is being forced to cut $200 million from its already underfunded budget for new trains and buses, rail station improvements and other key projects because state leaders have failed to come up with a new capital-improvement program, officials said Wednesday.
The CTA board will be asked to approve the cutbacks — $40 million a year in lost state funding through 2012 — at its meeting next week.
The cuts mark the first reductions stemming from the failure of the General Assembly and Gov. Rod Blagojevich to agree on capital funding for mass transit statewide.
The stalemate means that CTA plans announced separately Wednesday to proceed with a previously arranged lease of 150 new hybrid buses may be one of the last major equipment purchases the transit agency can make for some time. The bus deal, which costs $120 million, will be paid for largely through bonds and savings from retiring older buses dating to 1991.
In addition to the state funding woes, a $83 million cut in federal appropriations for CTA capital projects in 2008 is making matters worse, officials said. The federal funds are mostly for long-term projects, while the state money is for more immediate needs.
Combined, the shortfall totals about $121 million in 2008, but it’s partially offset by additional funding from bond interest and the shifting of $26 million from another part of the budget. The bond interest and shift of funds produce a net reduction in capital funds of $94.5 million in 2008, according to the CTA.
The shortfall will shrink the CTA’s capital spending this year from an originally planned $722.4 million to $627.9 million.
At least some of the money could be restored to the capital budget if the state comes up with a new program to pay for infrastructure, officials said.
“It means we still have a very serious unmet capital need that we must address. The good news is that the state is starting to talk about that need,” said Dorval Carter, CTA executive vice president of management and performance.
The Illinois FIRST infrastructure improvement program under former Gov. George Ryan provided the CTA with almost $200 million a year, but that funding ended in 2004.
The Illinois Works capital investment plan that Blagojevich recently proposed would provide $2.7 billion for mass transit statewide — far short of the more than $10 billion that officials say is needed to bring the CTA, Metra and Pace systems in the Chicago region to a state of good repair.
In addition to the upcoming CTA cuts, the continued absence of a new state capital plan, if it were to drag into 2009, would jeopardize at least several billion dollars in federal grants that Illinois expects to receive, officials said. Those grants require varying amounts of local and state matches.
The $200 million in cuts that the CTA must now make will boost the unfunded capital needs at the transit agency to $6.5 billion over the next five years, said Paul Fish, CTA vice president of capital investment.
That’s the amount needed to bring the existing system to a state of good repair. It does not include an additional $4.2 billion required for expansion projects that include the Circle Line, the Red, Orange and Yellow/Skokie Swift Line extensions, running express trains to O’Hare International and Midway Airports and building a new transit line along Ogden Avenue, officials said.
In 2007, the CTA diverted $56.9 million in preventive maintenance funds to its operating budget to cut a budget shortfall. Higher state operating subsidies for transit were approved in January, stopping at least for the time being the deferral of capital projects to prop up the CTA operating budget.
Meanwhile, officials at Metra, the commuter rail service, and Pace, the suburban bus agency, say they need up to $4 billion to catch up on repairs and address other capital repair priorities.
Metra and Pace have not taken any action yet in response to the state capital funding shortfall.
“We are waiting to see what happens in Springfield,” a Metra spokeswoman said.