Mayor Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and Chicago Transit Authority President Dorval R. Carter, Jr., announced two significant funding boosts for the CTA’s Red and Purple Modernization Program, one of the largest projects in CTA history that will modernize the CTA’s Red and Purple Lines and benefit generations of future CTA customers. President Obama’s proposed federal fiscal 2017 budget included $125 million of funding in 2017 for RPM Phase 1 from the Federal Transit Administration’s Core Capacity Program, supported by U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) in 2012 as a member of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) Conference Committee. Also, the U.S. Department of Transportation allocated a separate $156 million in new funding provided by Congress, which had been budgeted for in previous years but never appropriated. The CTA will receive the $156 million from the USDOT if it gets a full-funding agreement approved by the FTA, which the CTA is seeking. Combined, the two funding sources represent nearly 30 percent of the federal funding envisioned for this transformational project. For more information about RPM, visit www.transitchicago.com/rpmproject/.