About

About the Working Groups

During the Making a Plan input season, RTA staff, regional stakeholders, Service Boards, and CMAP staff have expressed interest in continuing to shape contents of the 2023-2028 Regional Transit Strategic Plan. In response to the high level of interest, RTA staff proposes to hold several working groups as forums for ongoing engagement and for development of plan content.

The purpose of the groups is to:

• Create a forum for mutual learning and discussion

• Develop content recommendations for the plan, to be considered by RTA and Service Board staff for inclusion in the next steps of plan review and development.

• Cultivate a group of stakeholders that are knowledgeable about transit issues and invested in potential solutions, in anticipation of needing to call upon these and other stakeholders to help with implementation after the plan is completed in 2023.

The RTA is committed to creating an environment in which collaborative dialogue, learning, and problem-solving can occur among agency staff, stakeholders with whom RTA interacts regularly and others who may not have been a part of RTA planning activities in the past.

The groups will work together to help the RTA and Service Boards develop goals, strategies, and performance measures for the 2023 Regional Transit Strategic Plan. The stakeholder groups will meet for 3-4 months to develop recommendations to the RTA and Service Boards. The recommendations will be summarized by each group in a memo that is provided to the RTA strategic plan team. RTA staff will combine and edit input received from all groups and work with the Service Boards to coalesce the recommendations into combined goals, strategies and performance measure that will be vetted with the broader Movers group over the summer. A draft plan will be released for public comment in fall/winter 2022 and presented to the RTA Board for approval in first quarter 2023.

Read more about group member codes of conduct, compensation for group members, and other FAQ in the Stakeholder Participant Guide or watch an Informational webinar from April 7, 2022. below

About the Strategic Plan

Transit spurs economic growth, mitigates climate change, and enables opportunity in ways and at a scale nothing else can. The Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) is developing a strategic and financial plan to guide our region’s irreplaceable transit system over the next five years and beyond.

Six months of public engagement and stakeholder discussions have informed a vision, principles, and six desired outcomes for the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA)’s next regional transit strategic plan: three outcomes are focused on the kind of transit system we want to work toward and three are focused on the kind of region a great transit system can help build.

Vision

Safe, reliable, accessible public transportation that connects people to opportunity, advances equity, and combats climate change.

Principles

• Committed to Change

• Equity

• Stewardship

Outcomes

In the future our region’s transit system will be…

• Safe, accessible, reliable, and useful for riders  

• In a state of good repair   

• Financially stable 

In the future our region will be… 

• Connected  

• Winning the fight against climate change

• Thriving

Defining the Plan Principles

Defining the principles of Equity, Stewardship and Committed to Change is critical to guiding the discussions, developing strategies, and ultimately achieving the outcomes. The RTA has developed a Principle Discussion Tool with definitions and key questions that will be used to help evaluate ideas proposed during the working groups.

Questions

If you have questions about the Regional Transit Strategic Plan, contact Peter Kersten, Peter.Kersten@RTAChicago.org.