Erin Aleman has pushed for better mass transit in Illinois for years and was ever-so-hopeful for a solution to aid financially strapped Chicago area transit agencies.

Then came the end of the fall veto session and what had looked like a light at the end of the tunnel suddenly turned into a freight train.

“If you had asked me the week that the legislation passed, I would have told you, ‘Forget it, it’s not happening,” Aleman said.

The executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and her term played an advisory role for legislators during transit-funding discussions that eventually led to a transit deal.

“Every time they came up with a new revenue source, we really took that information, went to the (Illinois) Department of Revenue, looked at the stakes they were raising and went back to them to say, “Hey, you know, we vetted this a little bit more for you. Here are some of the risks and the benefits potentially,” Aleman said. “So there were lots and lots of meetings and briefings that we were brought into.”

As the passed legislation provides $1.5 billion in transit funding and creates a new agency encompassing Metra, Pace and CTA, Aleman said the work is just beginning.

“It’s going to be really hard to maintain focus on expanding and enhancing the transit system in building something new,” Aleman said. “I think another good role for CMAP is to remind the legislators and others that this is going to be a multi-year process, that with some of the benchmarks that they are putting in place they need to consider the time it takes to start up new services, to get new drivers, to get all of the pieces in place to make this successful.”

Aleman has been leading CMAP for six years and was part of the 2022 team that examined how to make mass transit in Illinois better.

“I think one thing that everybody agreed on was that our transit system is too important to our region to let it go by the wayside,” Aleman said. “But how we got there, there were definitely divergent opinions on how much and what the governance should look like.

“At the end of the day, I think continuing to remind people that our transit system is really important to our economy here in the Chicago region really kept folks together.”

Recognition

Aleman’s persistent push for better mass transit as well as her planning efforts for the 284 communities and seven counties that make up the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning have earns her the 34^th Motorola Solutions Foundation Excellence in Public Service Award.

The award, presented and administered by the Civil Federation, will be given to Aleman in a ceremony at 8:30 a.m. Dec. 18 at the Four Season Hotel Chicago.

Political and civic leaders say the recognition of Aleman is well earned.

“I’m very grateful that the Civic Federation takes it upon itself to honor people who are in public service. Erin, on the basis of the work that CMAP has done, is deserving,” said Toni Preckwinkle, president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. “She’s been doing the difficult work on trying to bring people together across the region to focus not just on transportation and infrastructure, but on environmental resilience.

“There’s nobody else that’s is doing that work, so that makes CMAP kind of a unicorn.”

Gia Biagi, secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, said that Aleman’s sights on the future helps the entire region.

“Erin is helping guide our entire region toward making sure we set goals around these important issues for quality of life, housing, and transportation, and makes sure that we follow up on them,” Biagi said. “It’s a huge role for our state. It’s a huge role for our region – one that Erin plays so well.”

Derek Douglas, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, credits Aleman with being a driving force on the recently passed mass transit legislation.

“She’s calm. She’s steady. She’s bright. She’s a connector. She is a policy expert. She knows the content very well,” Douglas said. “That was my main experience in working with her, that she was able to really drive a wonderful process that we all know ended up with a transformational piece of legislation in Springfield.”

One transit system

Aleman thinks one unified system is going to improve public transportation.

“We think that some of the changes to governance help the system act more like a comprehensive transit system,” Aleman said. “For example, if each of the boards is making various decisions on where it’s going to serve, it means that there are potentially some disconnections, right? So, you get off your Metra train and maybe the bus doesn’t come at the right time because you’ve got different frameworks for decision-making.”

“So no longer will you have sort of three separate systems planning for their own capital needs. It’s really looking at where people are moving and where people need to get to, and then what capital infrastructure do they need for that,” she added.

Aleman said she was pleased that the mass transit legislation didn’t just plug the $720 million funding gap that existed.

“We really pushed for that $1.5 billion because every time we talked to people they told us they wanted more service and setting up a new agency for success and only giving then a meager portion of funding to get that done, we felt that was really going to be a disservice to the people of the region.”

Part of those efforts for more service are getting people to their jobs. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning has mapped out where there’s a high concentration of jobs and a low concentration of mass transit.

“We’re hopeful that we can spur and encourage the new agency to use data points like that to help buses work better in the suburbs, really be thoughtful about where we’re investing new bus systems,” Aleman said. “Maybe there are opportunities for different ways of serving people than we’re doing today, but there’s money now to do more.”

kbeese@chronicleillinois.com