April 14, 2023
Thank you to everyone who joined us on Thursday, April 13, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago for our half-day policy forum, “Public Transit in a Post-COVID World: Building a Financially Stable, Equitable and Accessible Mass Transit System in Chicago and Beyond.” We are grateful for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s ongoing partnership and for the involvement of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago as co-host. We also appreciate the participation of each of the guest speakers, whose transit expertise and passion for good transit policy made this event a great success.
This year’s forum welcomed transit experts from across the country, who drew comparisons between the transit-related issues and strategies at the forefront of discussion in their cities with those impacting Chicago today. Civic Federation Acting President Sarah Wetmore spoke on the history of mass transit funding in the Chicago region, while our two expert panels and keynote speaker delved into challenges related to transit funding and creating an equitable mass transit system, with timely examples highlighted from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. In his keynote address, our Los Angeles-based guest speaker Joshua Schank, managing principal at InfraStrategies LLC, explored the pros and cons of three potential paths forward for public transit: to act like a business, to act like a public service, or to find a new funding model.
In a post to come, we will provide a more detailed look at the key policy takeaways and observations from the panel discussions and keynote address, as well as a photo slideshow of the forum.
To view this event’s agenda, click here. A video of the full conference can be found here.
Sarah Wetmore provides an overview of the recent history of transit funding in Northeastern Illinois.
Former State Representative Julie Hamos moderates the first panel including Illinois State Senator Ram
Villivalam, Professor Joseph Schwieterman of DePaul University and Andrew Ward of Fitch Ratings.
Tom Kotarac moderates the second panel discussion including speakers Erin Aleman, Sharon Carney, Bob Dean
and Georgia Gann Dohrmann.
Tom Kotarac moderates the second panel discussion including speakers Erin Aleman, Sharon Carney, Bob Dean
and Georgia Gann Dohrmann.
