Chicago Elevated Train Funding Passes with Unanimous Support

The Chicago Transit Authority will receive a major cash infusion to modernize, speed up, and add capacity to its urban train system. The Chicago City Council approved 1.1 billion dollars in spending just in time to apply for a 1.1 billion dollar matching grant from the federal government. The plan, named RPM, "…would rebuild the Red and Purple Line tracks from Lawrence to Howard, upgrade signals, reconstruct four stations and create a flyover just north of the Belmont stop to eliminate conflicts between Red, Purple, and, Brown Line trains," John Greenfield reports for Streetsblog.

The timing of this funding is not accidental, "The deadline for the CTA to apply for the $1.1 billion federal Core Capacity grant," Greenfield writes. While the Trump administration has promised to build a trillion dollars of infrastructure, it's unclear how much, if any, of that infrastructure will include public transportation. His administration's plan makes no mention of the phrase "Public Transportation" or the words "Train" or "Bus."