With summer now in full bloom, the gloom-and-doom train is pulling into the station. Will state lawmakers get on board or watch it go over the fiscal chasm?

Actually, the regional mass transit system faces a fiscal abyss — an estimated $771 million shortfall for next year. That amount is only a stopgap measure; transit supporters would like to see a $1.5 billion annual investment from the state in the future.

Illinois lawmakers failed to tackle the funding crisis for the CTA, Metra and Pace during the past legislative session, which ended in May. Since then, transit officials and the 3,000 workers, many of them union members who run the trains and buses that make up the umbrella Regional Transportation Authority, are predicting doomsday scenarios next year without an injection of cash.

Those scary tactics include 40% cuts in service, employee layoffs, fare hikes, bus routes eliminated, and train schedules reduced. A public relations push by the RTA during the legislative session garnered about 12,000 letters to lawmakers urging full funding.

Legislators can schedule a summer session or wait until the fall veto session to deal with the fiscal abyss. Regardless, any legislation will need a three-fifths majority vote, rather than a simple majority. With that differential, suburban lawmakers may hold the key to funding and governance proposals in Springfield.

Transit officials and their supporters are calling any service cuts “unprecedented.” That may be to them, but Gov. JB Pritzker, after signing his seventh state budget the other day, doesn’t seem concerned.

After all, he noted about mass transit funding: “The answer is not that the state is solely responsible for filling that gap. There are lots of sources. Everybody’s focusing only on the state when actually there’s a whole lot to put together here.”

One of the first ideas to plug the transit hole was slapping an additional 50-cent surcharge on users of the Illinois tollway system, which is mainly used by suburbanites in the collar counties. Other proposals included increasing fees on ride-shares and food deliveries.

These transit “user fees” would be on top of the millions in new Illinois taxes — on sportsbooks, Airbnb rentals and tobacco products — which are scheduled to take effect July 1. Lawmakers also skipped another plan to reorganize the RTA into a proposed Northern Illinois Transit Authority.

Yet, we have heard little about raising CTA or Metra rider fares. Surprisingly, the CTA has not raised its fares since 2018. That alone should give suburbanites pause on any transit overhaul plans.

While the RTA says it needs $771 million, legislators certainly haven’t challenged that figure or actually done an audit on the transit agency’s real needs. Suburbanites need to keep a watchful eye, especially when it comes to representation on transit boards, on what goes down in the tunnels of Springfield.

One who has is William Coulson of Glenview, who has served on the RTA Board since 2007 by appointment of the Cook County Board. He is currently the senior RTA board member.

He is also the only board member to vote “no” on a Service Board (CTA, Metra, Pace) budget for the last decade. “The RTA was established as a great compromise, and we as a board have always had insufficient powers over the three Service Boards,” Coulson said in an email.

His father was Waukegan Mayor Robert Coulson, who served from 1949 to 1957. He then moved into the legislature and, as a state senator in the mid-1960s, introduced the first RTA bill.

That was in response to the old North Shore electric railroad’s closure. The North Shore’s old railbed has since been turned into bike and walking paths from Mundelein east to Lake Bluff, and from Great Lakes north to Winthrop Harbor.

It took another decade, 1974, before the RTA was adopted by state lawmakers as the mass transit agency for the six-counties of Lake, Cook, DuPage, McHenry, Kane and Will counties.

“There are a lot of smart people in the legislature and I am hopeful that both transit funding and needed governance changes will be addressed in a special session this summer,” Coulson said. “Otherwise, RTA 2026 budget planning must, by statute, begin in August, when the budget limits for CTA, Metra, and Pace will be set by the RTA based solely on existing revenue sources for 2026.

“At some point, probably by January 2026, the service boards will have to start cutting service and laying off many talented train and bus operators,” he added, “so let’s hope that something can happen this summer.

“Whatever resources may be provided, my job as an RTA Board member is to provide the best public transit system that the people of Illinois are willing to pay for,” Coulson said.

That’s the pivotal question: Just how much are suburbanites and their state representatives willing to chip in for mass transit service? We’ll find out between now and November.

Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.

sellenews@gmail.com X @sellenews