CHICAGO (CN) — The federal government plans to devote $2 billion for an extension of Chicago's Red Line commuter train, numerous state and city officials announced Friday. The money represents about half the total cost of the project, which would extend the Red Line some 5.6 miles south of its current last stop on Chicago's South Side and add four new commuter stations.
"We are now significantly closer to being able to provide a point of connection that's been missing on the South Side for half a century," Mayor Brandon Johnson said at a Friday morning press conference.
The funds are not yet guaranteed, but Chicago Transit Authority President Dorval Carter Jr. said the project has progressed through several hurdles under the Federal Transit Administration's so-called New Starts grant program.
"CTA has been granted permission by the Federal Transit Administration to advance into the engineering stage of the planning process, which is the final step we have to complete in order to begin construction on the project," Carter Jr. said.
The remaining half of the funds, according to the CTA, will come from sales tax bond proceeds and local tax-increment financing district revenue. Carter Jr. said he expects the federal funding would be granted to the CTA in 2024, with construction on the extension beginning in 2025.
"We are already in the process of preparing to award a contract to do the engineering and construction work by the end of this year," Carter Jr. said.
The Red Line is Chicago's primary north-south commuter train line, currently running from 95th Street on the South Side to Howard Street on the far North Side. It is also an indicator of race and class divides in the city: The South Side portion of the line running through majority-Black neighborhoods has fewer stops — several placed in the middle of the I-94 expressway — than the majority-white North Side tracks, and ends almost six miles north of the city's far-south neighborhoods.
Under the CTA's proposed Red Line Extension plan, the Red Line would run through those neighborhoods with four new stops, ending at 130th Street near the city's water reclamation district and Beaubien Woods nature preserve. The plan also calls for a new rail yard adjacent to the furthest south stretch of the tracks and 78 new rail cars.
If fully funded and completed, the extension will be the first major addition to Chicago's commuter rail system since the Orange Line, a track running southwest to Midway International Airport from the central business district known as the Loop, opened in 1993.
The CTA settled on its preferred route plan for the extended Red Line in 2018. But promises for an improved, extended South Side Red Line go back over 50 years, when former mayor Richard J. Daley opened the 95th Street terminus in 1969 and told residents he expected the train to eventually run further south. The CTA's own 1958 master plan for the Chicago public transit system also show the agency intended to build commuter train lines far south of 95th Street, but never did.
"This was a 50-year-old promise to our community. And I think I'm probably the only one on this stage that remembers that promise, because I was six years old when that promise was made, that we were gonna extend the Red Line ... to 130th," said Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale, through whose city ward the planned extension will run.
Multiple state and city leaders since then, including former mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, have stated they supported financing a southward Red Line extension, but no concrete funds have yet materialized.
Instead the most significant Red Line construction in recent years has been the first phase of the Red Purple Modernization Project, an ongoing $2 billion renovation of North Side Red Line tracks and stations. Commuters on the northwest-running Brown Line and rush hour-only Purple Line express trains also stand to benefit from the construction, funded mostly by the federal government and local tax-increment financing district revenue.
Johnson on Friday acknowledged the investment and access discrepancies between the North and South Sides.
"For too long our transportation system has denied residents beyond 95th Street, and for too long South Side residents have been hindered by barriers to transportation," the mayor said.
News of the $2 billion investment comes as the CTA faces criticism over long train and bus wait times and outdated facilities and train cars. Crime on the CTA, though declining in recent months, also served as a talking point in the mayoral election this past spring.
Budget issues also loom for the CTA. According to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the end of federal relief funding in 2026 could lead to northeast Illinois' Regional Transit Authority — under which the CTA operates — facing budget shortfalls of over $730 million each year. The agency projected this could result in the Regional Transit Authority cutting up to 40% of its services.
Besides Mayor Johnson, President Carter Jr. and Alderman Beale, Democratic Illinois congresspeople Mike Quigley and Robin Kelly, and Senator Dick Durbin, who serves as the Senate Majority Whip, also attended Friday's press conference.
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