Who Is Transit For, Anyway?
6th September 2025
By ‘transit’ is meant, of course, ‘mass transit’ or ‘public transit’. Your car is just as much ‘transit’ as a bus or a train, but not being paid for by taxpayers makes it markedly declassé.
More than 70 organizations are asking the Illinois legislature to “reform” transit, by which they mean give it more tax dollars, according to a Chicago non-profit called the Active Transportation Alliance. The group’s list of organizations shows that at least half of them are labor unions or associated with such unions.
This supports my contention that transit today isn’t about moving people; it’s about jobs for union workers and profits for contractors. Some environmental groups are on the list of Chicago transit supporters, but they wouldn’t be if they really looked at the numbers.
Much like railroads in the modern world.