Please comment on Chicago Regional Transportation Plan.
Comments due by July 31 and you don’t have to live in Illinois to comment.
As the center of the nation’s railway network, the Chicago area has a critical role to play in building high-speed and regional rail.
The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning is seeking comments on the 2026 revision of the official Regional Transportation Plan (RTP), which describes the vision and guidelines for transportation spending and planning.
Here’s the good news. The RTP outlines great emerging goals:
- Strengthen connections between people and places
- Prioritize safety and public health
- Mitigate pollution and invest in resilient infrastructure
- Support economic prosperity and inclusive growth
- Strategically govern, fund, and preserve the system
These goals cannot be met without the dramatic mode-shift that only electrified trains can create.
The bad news, the RTP doesn’t do much to make competitive trains a reality.
The plan does give a shout out to Metra Regional Rail. But it doesn’t lay out a strategy for building it. Amtrak’s Chicago Hub Improvement Program (CHIP) gets a big mention, but CHIP’s goals are too modest to have the needed impact.
The most important part of the plan is the 2027-32 Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) which lays out spending priorities. The TIP is where the real priorities come to the fore. It has several projects that could be the foundation for regional rail, including upgrades to several Metra lines, but none of them have any substantial work in progress. Nor have they been funded.
CMAP is in the process of changing the process for developing its long range plans. Your comment on this plan will play a role in changing priorities in the future.
Please make a comment if you would like to take the train to or from Chicago, or within Chicago.
We have provided sample comments, but it will be best if you make them your own. Let them know where you want to ride the train and why it’s important to you.
