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Illinois Chamber Letter of Support: CREATE - Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant Opportunity Program
The Illinois Chamber recently wrote a letter to USDOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg in support of CREATE’s application for the Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant Opportunity (MPDG) program. This grant will fund a segment of the Belt Junction and 80th Street Junction Replacements.
Provided below is a portion of the support letter.
The Illinois Chamber of Commerce is fully supportive of IDOT’s application for the Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant Opportunity (MPDG) funding on behalf of the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) Program. This grant will fund a segment of the Belt Junction and 80th Street Junction Replacements (defined as “EW2”), which includes reconfiguring the Belt Railway Company (BRC) main tracks between the Dan Ryan Expressway and Belt Junction, where four freight railroads conflict with each other and Metra’s SouthWest Service operations.
This project is part of the 75th Street Corridor Improvement Project (CIP), a grouping of four smaller projects that make up the most complex portion of the overall CREATE Program, and have been advanced as a single project, due to their logistical and environmental linkages. The four projects take place along two passenger routes and six freight rail lines. The first two components of the CIP (projects P3 and GS19) began construction in October 2022 with the support of a 2018 INFRA grant. The remaining two components, projects EW2 and P2, are critical to ensure the complete benefits of the project.
This segment of EW2 project will reconfigure Belt Railway Company (BRC), Norfolk Southern (NS), and Metra tracks. A third BRC main track will be constructed, thus eliminating multiple conflicting paths for freight, Metra, and Amtrak trains. This project will start to alleviate the congestion at the most congested rail chokepoint in North America in the Chicago Terminal, the Belt Junction, where 30 Metra and 90 freight trains cross each other’s paths per day. This project will also improve performance on the Amtrak Cardinal service, by eliminating freight conflicts in the vicinity of 80th Street.
View the full letter here.
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago: Electric Vehicles, Motor Fuel Taxes, and Road Funding in the Seventh District and Beyond
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago recently released an article on motor fuel taxes and road funding. The article takes a look at road funding trends in states within the Federal Reserve's Seventh District (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin) as well as funding models nationally and internationally.
Provided below are some relevant excerpts.
State and federal highways are currently funded by a combination of motor fuel taxes (MFTs), general fund transfers, fees, tolls, property taxes, and bond revenues. Of these, state fuel and vehicle taxes comprised 26% of revenues used for U.S. highways, and federal fuel and vehicle taxes made up 15% in 2021, according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The MFT share of funding is declining due to increasing overall fuel economy trends, inflation (since many MFTs—including the federal MFT—are assessed in cents per gallon and not indexed), and recent vehicle miles traveled (VMT) trends—especially during the 2020–21 pandemic years, which saw lower passenger and freight travel. Electric vehicles (EVs) have the potential not only to accelerate the fuel efficiency of vehicles in use, but also to lead to a sizable population of individual road users who pay no fuel taxes...
MFT revenue was never expected to be the only source of funding, but states in the Federal Reserve Bank’s Seventh District had an aggregate negative $10.5 billion difference between highway user tax revenues and capital outlays in 2020. This deficit illustrates how much states must rely on other sources of road funding and why state legislatures may be looking to increase MFTs, increase fees, and explore tolling or other use tax strategies...
Even if electric vehicle adoption was not growing, overall vehicle fuel efficiency is increasing in the United States. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reported that between 1993 and 2020, average fuel economy increased by 26%. While fuel economy standards for new vehicles increased 61% for passenger cars and 30% for light-duty trucks between 2010 and 2020, the average fuel efficiency of the vehicles in operation grew 6.6% in this period (see the blue line in figure 3 for the trend 1993–2020) due to the age and mix of vehicles on the road.
I encourage you to read the full article which further discusses some of the proposed alternatives here.
Release: Illinois EPA Invests Over a Half Billion Dollars in Drinking Water and Wastewater Projects in Fourth Quarter of FY23
The Illinois EPA announced the issuance of more than $571 million in water infrastructure loans to local governments and water districts for the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2023 (April - June 2023). The Illinois EPA State Revolving Fund (SRF) Program provides low-interest loans which fund wastewater, stormwater, and drinking water projects. More than $53 million in loan forgiveness was also provided to those recipients meeting the loan rules for either the Small Community Rate or Hardship Rate. In total for fiscal year 2023, Illinois EPA issued over $803 million in low-interest loans for water infrastructure. In addition to the SRF loans, Illinois provided nearly $54 million in funding for lead service line replacement over the last 12 months.
Illinois EPA's SRF includes two loan programs, the Water Pollution Control Loan Program (WPCLP) which funds both wastewater and stormwater projects, and the Public Water Supply Loan Program (PWSLP) for drinking water projects. Both programs provide funding at a low interest rate of just 1.24 percent for State FY23. These SRF programs receive federal capitalization funding annually, which is combined with state matching funds, interest earnings, repayment money, and periodic bond sale proceeds, to form the source of financing for these infrastructure projects. The state matching funds for State FY2020-2024 are being provided through the Rebuild Illinois Capital Plan thus increasing the funding capacity of both loan programs.
View recipients here.
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