Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CTA President Dorval R. Carter, Jr. announced that the Red and Purple Modernization Program (RPM) reached an important milestone, following the approval of a plan by City Council that will provide significant local funding for the first phase of a project to reconstruct the Red and Purple Lines. Chicago City Council Wednesday approved the creation of a dedicated tax-increment financing district that will generate $622 million toward the first phase of RPM. RPM will rebuild the CTA’s busiest rail line, the Red Line, which is nearly 100 years old. The tracks, structures and stations are well past their useful lifespan, and can no longer handle additional trains to meet the increasing demands of growing ridership – which is up 40 percent during the rush hours over the last five years. To move the RPM project forward, the City and CTA are pursuing $1.1 billion in federal grant funding—more than half the project cost. In order to secure those funds, the CTA must provide local matching funds. The Transit TIF will provide a portion of those local funds, with the remainder expected to come from various other CTA sources including bond funds. The first phase of RPM, which is estimated to cost $2.1 billion, will rebuild four stations and more than a mile of tracks and track structure from Lawrence to Bryn Mawr, and create a Red-Purple bypass to improve overall service that will benefit the entire Red Line by improving service reliability.