The Red Line Extension Coalition grew out of the Developing Communities Project, the nonprofit community organizing group led in the 1980s by former President Barack Obama. “We’re talking about transit equity, transit justice and environmental justice, because this will reduce some of the pollution in these areas,” LaFargue says. Michael LaFargue, a South Side resident and former president of the Red Line Extension Coalition, which has advocated for the project for years, says extending the transit system to the southern edge of the city is a matter of fairness. Neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side have some of the lowest median incomes in the city, as well as l ow rates of vehicle ownership and usage compared to other neighborhoods. For residents of the South Side, the project is “going to change their lives in ways they can’t even imagine” said CTA President Dorval Carter Jr., in a promotional video. Officials say the investment of time and money are more than justified by the degree of benefit the new line will create. And despite some concerns about the proposal raised by several of the city’s aldermen this summer, the project’s planners say they’re confident the Red Line Extension will move forward.ĬTA has now spent over a decade and a half working on the extension, including identifying properties that it plans to acquire through eminent domain to establish the new line. To raise the local funds, the authority is proposing a new twist on an old tool called tax increment financing (TIF), which has been used extensively to fund economic development in Chicago. It’s seeking more than $2 billion in federal funds, with the city and CTA required to put up about $1.6 billion of their own. The CTA completed the environmental review process for the project earlier this month, and is hoping to move into the engineering phase by next year. But local leaders say it’s a long-overdue investment that could cut travel time from the far South Side to the Loop by as much as 30 minutes while providing a host of economic benefits to underserved communities during and after construction. It’s an expansion of urban railway infrastructure on a rare scale in an age of funding crises and shrinking ridership for public transit agencies. It would add four new stations and 5.6 miles of elevated and ground-level track to one of the busiest routes on Chicago’s “L” system. The project, known as the Red Line Extension (RLE), has been in active planning by the Chicago Transit Authority since at least 2006.
By the end of the decade, Chicago’s Red Line train could finally extend past its current terminus at 95th Street and into the far South Side, connecting some of the city’s poorest communities to its sprawling transit network and fulfilling a mayoral promise made more than half a century ago.
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