Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday celebrated his enactment of a new law that advocates say will avert catastrophic service cuts on Chicago’s public transit systems and make the region’s trains and buses safer and more reliable — even as he acknowledged “transformation takes a little bit of time.”

“Far from heading toward the abyss, as some predicted, we are on the verge of delivering a world-class transportation network,” Pritzker said, flanked by dozens of transit officials, advocates, legislators and labor leaders in Union Station. 

The legislation signed Tuesday, which state lawmakers approved in October after months of negotiations and several failed legislative attempts, will provide about $1.5 billion annually for regional transportation from a diversion of the motor fuel sales tax, an increase to a sales tax in the Chicago region and interest from the state’s road fund. The new law also raises tolls on the Illinois Tollway by 45 cents. 

The new funding is intended to avert a major fiscal crisis that had loomed over the CTA, Metra and Pace — and provide enough extra dollars for the transit agencies to make significant improvements to service, advocates say. 

On Tuesday, Pritzker said riders can expect funding increases, and eventually, a “world-class system.” But that will take more than a year to accomplish, he said. 

The transit legislation does not take effect until next June and requires significant restructuring of the boards that govern the CTA, Metra and Pace. 

“There is an immediate endeavor to upgrade the service and make sure that we’re providing safer rides for people on transit over the coming year” as the new oversight structure is implemented, Pritzker said. “Then the system is beginning to truly transform. It just isn’t something that can happen overnight.” 

After the state legislature passed the measure in late October, all three transit agencies approved 2026 budgets without fare increases or service cuts. 

But questions remain about how soon the agencies will be able to implement the more significant service increases they hope to achieve with their new funding. 

The Regional Transportation Authority, the body that currently oversees the CTA, Metra and Pace, and which will be replaced next year by the Northern Illinois Transit Authority, has not yet decided how to divvy up a portion of the new revenue expected next year — about $319 million — between the three transit agencies. 

At the CTA, for instance, the agency hopes to boost service, such as by running Orange Line trains 24 hours a day. But those types of improvements depend on receiving an additional allocation of funds, CTA officials have said. 

At a CTA board meeting last month, board chair Lester Barclay cautioned against counting too many chickens before they’re hatched. 

“The public thinks that we got a lot of money to do a lot of these creative things,” Barclay said in November. “And I don’t think that’s quite the case. This is our wish list, this is what we hope will happen. But it’s subject to RTA.”

The RTA has said it is waiting to allocate the funds “to ensure prudent financial management and compliance” with the requirements of the new transit legislation. 

“RTA will collaborate with CTA, Metra, and Pace in early 2026 to plan for rider-focused enhancements that can be implemented as the new funding begins to arrive later in the year,” the agency said in a November memo. 

After Tuesday’s news conference, state Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado, one of the key architects of the transit legislation, said she thinks it would be possible for the CTA to implement a service improvement like 24-hour Orange Line service next year. 

“It’s that funding that makes the commitment to better service and more reliable and more frequent service possible,” said Delgado, a Democrat from Chicago. 

The largest chunks of funding come from diverting $860 million in revenue from the state sales tax on motor fuel purchases and $200 million from the interest earned on the state’s road fund for mass transit uses. That money typically goes toward road construction projects. The sales tax on motor fuel purchases is separate from the state’s 48-cent-per-gallon gas tax.

An additional $400 million would come from authorizing an increase of 0.25 percentage points to the tax issued by the RTA for Chicago’s six-county area on other purchases.

In addition to the 45-cent-per-toll hike for passenger vehicles on Illinois State Toll Highway Authority roads, the new law called for increasing tolls for commercial vehicles by 30%. Tolls could continue to increase in subsequent years through inflation-based increases, according to the law.

The revenue from the toll hike would generate between $750 million and $1 billion annually and would be put back into the tollway and not used directly for mass transit, supporters said.

The move was intended to offset the money being diverted from highway projects.