Tag: NITA

Choosing NITA board members: it needs the best people

February 2, 2026 / / 0 Comments

It’s super important to the success of the forthcoming Northern Illinois Transit Authority1 (NITA, pronounced “neat-uh”) that is has new board members who are forward-thinking, collaborative, and invested in high-quality transit service. Collaboration is almost an inherently necessary trait, as 17 of the 20 new board members will also serve on either the Pace, Metra, or Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) boards! A mind for the future is also obligatory because NITA will take over planning responsibilities from the three service boards and decide on service patterns and expansions with the region in mind, using new-to-the-region operations and capital funding.

The Blue Line to Forest Park desperately needs an overhaul to eliminate slow zones and create stations that are comfortable for riders. Connect 290 Blue is an interagency effort to consolidate planning for the Blue Line overhaul and the reconstruction of the Eisenhower Expressway.

There is going to be an estimated $1.2 billion in new funding for transit service and another $180 million annually for capital projects; I want the new funds to be invested well2 and I think that starts with a well-formed NITA board3.

The authority will materialize on September 1. Good board members should be nominated by their respective choosers and confirmed by the Illinois Senate well in advance.

Mayor Johnson will get to appoint five members to the NITA board, similar to how the mayor of Chicago appoints five members to the Regional Transportation Authority board. The RTA will dissolve on September 1. The same goes for Cook County President Preckwinkle, who will appoint five members to NITA, with “advice and consent” of the 17 commissioners.

New to the process will be Governor Pritzker, who will get to appoint five members to the NITA board. The Illinois governor did not get to appoint any of the RTA board members.

The last key attribute of a NITA board member is their personal investment in transit.

Drake Warren is running for a seat on the Cook County board and at the Abundant Housing Illinois happy hour last week he said that as a commissioner, to ensure that NITA provides the best connectivity for Cook County residents, he will support only the nominations of people who actually ride transit in the region.

This is what Drake said (which is in the video above):

Cook County is responsible for putting some of the upcoming NITA board members on the board, and I have some non-negotiables [in order] to have my support for appointment.

Somebody has to be a transit user and have relevant expertise, whether that’s legal, whether that’s technical, operational, or otherwise.

I’m not going to have a discussion around support unless they can meet those criteria because transit is one of the most important ways for how our city fulfills its function of connecting people.

I think whether one rides transit is a reasonable and preferred heuristic to gauge board member eligibility. So that’s another reason why I think AHIL’s endorsement of Drake Warren was the right call.

Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC), based in Chicago, adds six of their own criteria – vision, regional perspective, financial experience, consistent and recent transit use, commitment to values, and being a transit champion – for good board member choices. They offered this in an open letter to all of the people required by law to appoint NITA board members.

Ensure your voter registration is up to date and request a Vote By Mail ballot.

Footnotes

  1. I think that Austin Busch wrote the best summary of NITA (SB2111), for Streetsblog Chicago. ↩︎
  2. Speaking of good choices in spending: the transit TIF that is funding the local match for the CTA’s Red Purple Modernization Phase 1, which was completed in summer 2025, will likely have generated the necessary amount of monies in 2028. CTA does not yet have a plan for Phase 2 and should not automatically have access to transit TIF funding. City That Works argues that the transit TIF should be terminated at that time rather than continue to divert money from the different city and county governments. ↩︎
  3. Diverging Approach writes about some of what the new board’s mandate comprises. ↩︎

Illinois legislature adopts People Over Parking Act to ban parking mandates in transit-served areas

October 31, 2025 / / 0 Comments

This article has been re-published and expanded on Streetsblog Chicago. Please read that version.

At about 4:22 AM this morning the Illinois Senate concurred with the Illinois House on bill SB2111 (PDF), approving a revenues and reform package that will close budget gaps and provide additional funding for the state’s 63 transit agencies. Among the reforms are establishing a new oversight authority that will centralize service planning and fare-setting in Chicagoland and assigning powers to build transit-supportive development, among other major and unique policy changes.

Development around the Naperville Metra station cannot be mandated to provide car parking after SB2111 goes into effect.

Additionally, the bill includes the People Over Parking Act, which was introduced by Rep. Buckner earlier this year and prohibits municipalities from requiring car parking for residential and commercial uses in areas served by transit. The bill, which will go into effect on June 1, 2026 (per House Amendment 4), will also apply in home rule communities. This includes Chicago, which passed its own transit-adjacent parking reform that took effect on September 25, 2025.

Specifically, the ban on parking mandates applies when the following is true:

  • a development project is for new construction or renovation and that is not a hotel, motel, bed and breakfast, or other transient lodging
  • the project is located within one-half mile of a public transportation hub (nodes) or one-eighth mile of a public transportation corridor (street segments)

A public transportation hub is a node that includes rail transit stations, a boat or ferry terminal that is served by a bus stop or a rail transit station, and street intersections where two or more bus routes meet and those bus routes have a combined frequency of 15 minutes or less during the morning and afternoon peak commute periods. This means that new housing will soon be able to be developed, at lower cost, within a half mile of the Highland Park Metra station without any parking.

Metra has 168 stations outside of Chicago, and there are also Metrolink rail stations in Illinois communities east of St. Louis, Missouri. That’s in addition to higher-frequency bus service in Champaign and some communities served by Pace bus.

A public transportation corridor is a street segment that has one or more bus routes that have a combined frequency of 15 minutes or less during the morning and afternoon peak commute periods.

Map showing the commercial and vacant properties within a half mile of the Highland Park Metra station. See full map on Chicago Cityscape.

The fine print

Municipalities are still allowed to enact minimum parking requirements for bicycles; and they can establish maximum parking allowances. The act does not apply to existing approved Planned (Unit) Developments but will apply to any amendments or extensions if the amendment or extension will increase the car parking requirement.

In situations where developments are voluntarily providing car parking, municipalities can impose requirements that reserve space for car share vehicles, that some parking be made available to the public, and that parking must be made available for a charge. Municipalities cannot require that parking be made available for free.

I believe that this new law will override Chicago’s requirement that projects in the Downtown zoning districts and projects in transit-serve areas that are served only by Metra obtain an administrative adjustment to build less parking that otherwise required.

Finally, Illinois has existing code regarding electric vehicle charging and sets a standard for how much of the provided parking must be “EV ready”, “EV capable”, and “EV installed” (read the Illinois Electric Vehicle Charging Act) – those requirements are not impacted by the People Over Parking Act.