CHICAGO — Adella Bass dropped her in-person college classes because it was just too hard to get there from the far South Side of Chicago, where the city’s famous elevated train doesn’t run. And it can take her nearly two hours to get to the hospital where she is treated for a heart condition.
But things are looking up, with bright red signs across the area boldly proclaiming, “Ready, Set, Soon!” Next year, the city is poised to start making good on a decades-old promise to connect some of its most isolated, poor and polluted neighborhoods to the rest of the city through mass transit.
The Biden administration notified Congress last week that it would commit $1.9 billion toward a nearly $5.7 billion project to add four new L stations on the South Side, the Chicago system’s largest expansion project in history. The pledge, which the Federal Transit Administration is expected to formally sign before President Joe Biden leaves office in January, essentially locks in current and future funding.
Still, Bass fears President-elect Donald Trump’s administration might try to scuttle it.
Signals abound to assure residents that the project is “a go,” said Bass, who is raising three young children and works on health equity issues that affect residents of a massive public housing development near her South Side home. “But you just never know with Trump.”
The $1 trillion infrastructure plan Biden signed into law in 2021 focused far more heavily on transit than anything his predecessor advocated. That is why there has been a scramble to finalize some transit grants before Biden’s term ends, including commitments last week for rapid transit upgrades in San Antonio and Salt Lake City.
Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute, said Trump unsuccessfully encouraged Congress in his first term to pass budgets eliminating funding for some new transit projects that hadn’t secured their grant agreements. But it has been practically unheard of for administrations to claw back projects after they won final approval.
Steve Davis, who handles transportation strategy for Smart Growth America, said Trump could try to redirect future competitive grants to prioritize highway construction over alternative transportation methods such as transit. He said Trump’s Transportation Department could potentially slow down some allocations from already approved infrastructure projects but would have trouble halting them entirely.
“If you’re building an enormous $2 billion road widening, you need to know you’re going to have money in year four or five and there’s nothing a hostile administration could do to stop it,” Davis said.
One of the communities that would be served by a new Chicago L station is Roseland, a once-thriving, predominantly Black business district that has fallen victim to the loss of manufacturing and a spike in crime.
Jervon Hicks, who spent many years in and out of jail on gun charges, turned his life around and ended up becoming a mentor for at-risk youth. The new station could help quicken the same transition for others, he said.
“Roseland needs a makeover,” Hicks said. “We lack a pet store. We used to have a theater. Take some of these abandoned buildings and turn them into job opportunities.”
Unlike the busy “Magnificent Mile” shopping district on Michigan Avenue in the downtown Chicago Loop, the business district on South Michigan Avenue in Roseland has fallen from more than 90% occupancy decades ago to around 10% now.
Among the surviving businesses is Edwards Fashions. Owner Ledall Edwards hopes transportation will spur more to return.
“I don’t think it’ll get to the level it was back in the 1970s, but I think the environment is going to improve because of the accessibility,” he said. “You’re going to be able to get people here in this area much faster.”
Rogers Jones, who for 30 years has run the Youth Peace Center next to the future train station, said he can’t wait for the transformation.
“The community is going to change,” Jones said. “It’s going to be a vibrant community, and people are excited. I know I’m excited.”
Former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley told residents of Roseland and surrounding areas in 1969 that the L would eventually expand there.
Tammy Chase, a spokesperson for the Chicago Transit Authority, said the cost then would have been $114 million compared to around $5.7 billion now, a figure that would keep rising the longer construction is delayed.
The agency has hired a construction firm, opened a Roseland office in a former paint store and begun boarding up homes that will be demolished for the tracks to run through. Ground is expected to be broken in late 2025, Chase said.
U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, the top Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees transportation spending, points out Chicago’s transit system survived wars and depression. It surely also can withstand a pandemic and a presidential administration with different priorities, he said.
“The big infrastructure projects stand the test of time,” Quigley said. “These ups and downs, you have to adjust to them, but you recognize transit always comes back. If transit doesn’t come back, it stymies opportunities going forward.”
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