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CHICAGO — Chicago Transit Authority fares will increase next year for the first time since 2018 because of an ongoing fiscal crisis that Regional Transportation Authority officials are working to address.
CTA riders will see an increase of 25 cents as of Feb. 1, 2026, meaning that if you typically ride a CTA bus, the cost will rise from $2.25 to $2.50. See the rates below after fare hikes:
Sydnee Alexander, a regular CTA rider who has a 40-minute commute every day, was waiting for a bus at the Belmont Brown Line stop Tuesday morning and spoke with WGN-TV about the fare hikes.
“Twenty-five cents is 25 cents, but it adds up really quickly,” Alexander said. “So I know that’s going to impact, then, the monthly passes, your daily passes, and overall just a larger expense than what people are estimating — especially if your wages aren’t going up. And so it’s a domino effect of, can people afford to even take public transportation when owning a car in the city is just as expensive?
“… It’s frustrating, right? We’re estimating what these passes are each month, and we’re budgeting into that.”
The fare hikes come as CTA faces a fiscal crisis due to federal pandemic money running out and decreasing ridership numbers, which have not returned to pre-2020 levels, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
With federal pandemic dollars set to end for CTA at the end of this year, the RTA Board of Directors in August approved a short-term solution to keep CTA funded through the early months of 2026, which reallocates $74 million from PACE and Metra to CTA.
Meanwhile, transit agencies have reduced their expected 2026 budget shortfall from more than $770 million to $200 million. That decrease comes from administrative savings and revenue from a new tax on online sales.
Still, transit officials say ridership will decline in 2026 and 2027 if CTA doesn’t receive the funding it needs and is forced to make service cuts.
Proposed operating budgets
CTA is proposing three operating budgets for Fiscal Year 2026. Each one reflects what CTA could face pending legislative efforts in Springfield this fall:
- Budget A is the baseline budget that assumes typical state funding levels that solely address the existing structural funding gap.
- Budget B is the growth budget that fixes the funding disparity and allows CTA to close that budget gap and make significant investments to deliver services being requested by riders.
- Budget C is a reduced budget that has no additional funding to address the structural gap, which would mean big cuts to services.
The Illinois General Assembly meets for the annual fall veto session from Tuesday through Thursday, then it reconvenes for another three-day session from Oct. 28-30.
A public hearing on the CTA fiscal crisis is scheduled for Nov. 5 at CTA Headquarters on West Lake Street.
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Michael Johnson
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