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Our Story

In our work we partner with business leaders, public officials, and other civic and community organizations to identify and address the region’s key challenges. We focus on key subject areas to provide direction to our efforts.

What Have We Done

2021 – Present

Transportation and Infrastructure

Performance-Based Programming
2022

Performance-based programming calls for allocating transportation dollars according to consistent and transparent evaluation criteria. Illinois lags behind other states in using data-driven, transparent funding, and project selection processes that are based on objective criteria aimed at maximizing performance and benefits of the transportation system.

The Civic Committee supports efforts that will require the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to adopt a comprehensive performance management system and continues to work with other stakeholders to require all recipients of transportation revenues to adopt performance-based programming processes.  In 2021, the Illinois General Assembly passed legislation supported by the Task Force that will implement performance-based programming at IDOT and the transit agencies in the Chicago region.

The Civic Committee joined other organizations in jumpstarting a re-evaluation of capital spending by the three transit agencies operating in the Chicago region.  Funding levels and investments strategies have been largely based on static, fixed formulas that are a roadblock to a more coordinated, flexible, and efficient mass transit system. In 2021 and 2022, the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) will reform their funding allocation strategies in response to these efforts.  

2021

Cook County, Metra, and Pace launched a new pilot program to improve transit service on the south side and south suburbs by lowering fares, increasing service, and improving coordination of the transit agencies in the region.  The task force has been a leading advocate and strategic advisor for the pilot.  Civic Committee President Kelly Welsh was featured as a key partner in the launch video announcing the beginning of the pilot program.   

The Transportation Task Force has championed legislation promoting performance-based programming— the use of data-driven, transparent project selection – at IDOT and the RTA.   We have made positive strides in promoting this policy in the past six months, with highlights from the past quarter below.   The legislation (HB 253) was subject to numerous hearings where the Transportation Task Force testified before it passed both houses of the Illinois General Assembly unanimously.