Forest Park Mayor Rory Hoskins has advocated for mass transit reform in northeast Illinois for years. He has aimed to improve safety on the CTA trains serving Forest Park and to secure state reimbursement for the rising number of ambulance calls to the CTA station on Des Plaines Avenue. 

As part of a flurry of legislative actions as the fall veto session closed on Oct. 31, state lawmakers passed a bill that adds $1.5 billion in funding to public transit and creates a new entity to oversee the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is expected to sign the bill, which would go into effect in June.  

The bill includes an amendment that requires the CTA to reimburse Forest Park, Oak Park, River Forest and Rosemont for the costs of police and fire personnel responding to CTA stations. The municipalities will be reimbursed annually after submitting an itemized billing statement.  

Hoskins said the village estimates it would be reimbursed up to $950,000 for the fire department’s responses to CTA stops. That doesn’t account for the cost of police responses, which the village hasn’t looked at yet. 

The bill replaces the Regional Transportation Authority that currently oversees the CTA, Metra and Pace with a newly created Northern Illinois Transit Authority to standardize fares, service and infrastructure across the three transit entities. 

In recent years, Forest Park has seen a significant increase in emergency calls to the Blue Line terminal at 711 Des Plaines Ave. A decade ago, Forest Park first responders got about 200 CTA-related emergency calls, about 160 of those at the CTA Forest Park Blue Line station. Last year, there were nearly 500 calls to the Blue Line terminal, or about 12% of all emergency calls. This year, first responders are on pace to exceed 600 calls to CTA stops, but there have been few additional resources to help with the increase. 

“We just want to support our first responders. We want to see safe trains, and we want the public to feel like we hear them,” Hoskins told the Review. “When I hear from residents that they don’t feel safe on the train, I want them to know that I’m listening to them, and I’m sharing their concerns with our partners, whether it’s at the county level or the state level.” 

The new bill also addresses public safety by creating a transit ambassador program to help with rider issues and a law enforcement task force made up of the Cook County Sheriff’s Department, Chicago Police Department, Metra police, Illinois State Police and suburban police departments. 

“We see this as a start. I don’t know that the passage itself will have a dramatic impact on public safety,” Hoskins said of the bill, though he acknowledged the creation of the taskforce and said Forest Park could have a seat at the table. 

The $1.5 billion transit reform is funded by diverting money from the state tax on motor fuel and the state road fund to mass transit. The bill will likely raise sales tax, plus increase tolls by 45 cents on the Illinois Tollway (the first increase in 13 years) to raise an estimated $1 billion annually for roadwork. 

Passing this bill prevented an impending fiscal cliff for Chicagoland mass transit.  

Though the RTA was given hundreds of millions of dollars during the Covid-19 pandemic, that funding is set to soon run out, leaving the RTA with an estimated $770 budget deficit next year. As a result, CTA has said they’d have to cut service by up to 25% in August. Metra and Pace have said they’d also have to make cuts by 2027 if not given more funding.

Advocating for Forest Park 

Hoskins — along with village officials Village Administrator Rachell Entler, Fire Chief Lindsey Hankus and Police Chief Ken Gross — has vocally supported the transit reform bill for months, meeting with legislative staff, representatives, CTA and county leadership to discuss the strain that CTA operations put on the village’s emergency responders and resources. 

Hoskins spent Wednesday and Thursday in Springfield before the bill was passed early Friday morning. There, Hoskins, Entler and Hankus advocated for the amendment that would reimburse Forest Park by speaking with legislators, including the lead negotiators for the House, the Speaker’s office, senators and labor officials. 

“We were letting people know that we were there to support the transit reforms,” Hoskins said. “We’re just trying to represent the residents as best we can.”  

Hoskins said Forest Park officials are talking with Oak Park and River Forest to try to quantify the fiscal impact that emergency calls to CTA stops have on all three communities. 

“Thinking about it not just as a Forest Park perspective, but a tri-village perspective,” Hoskins said, and “how much our three suburbs service the wider county.”  

“The village is deeply grateful for the continued collaboration and support from our state legislators, county officials, the CTA, and the governor’s office,” Forest Park officials said in a statement. “Their partnership is essential in working toward a sustainable solution—not only for Forest Park, but for other municipalities along the Blue and Green Lines facing similar challenges.”