Public hearings about mass transit consolidation in the Chicago region highlight a persistent issue: where is the mass transit to serve all the people who commute suburb to suburb?

“Right now, our transit system reflects an old design,” DuPage County Board Chair Deb Conroy testified in Naperville. “One that saw commuting as merely bedroom communities serving downtown workplaces.”

“All suburban residents deserve the same level and access to and from Naperville to Rosemont or from Oak Park to the Morton Arboretum in Lisle.”

College of DuPage student Rowan Julian experienced that disconnect trying to get from Wheaton to Batavia to see a friend, a 20-minute car trip. She wanted to use public transit but found it could take up to one hour and 40 minutes.

“For me I felt like I had no choice … so I chose to take my car,” she said.

Chicago, like many older metro areas, has a hub-and-spoke model where the train lines feed the center of the city. This fit a particular era when there was a mass of jobs and economic activity in the center of cities.

Today, metropolitan regions are sprawling and many commuters do not need to go to the big city for work: there are all sorts of jobs all throughout the region. This presents particular challenges for mass transit. Buses can use existing roadways but tend to be slower than cars. Trains can connect nodes but then there needs to be additional service from the train stations. Access via walking or biking might be theoretically possible in some suburban areas but it is often dangerous. Communities and the region can encourage more development around existing transit nodes. And Americans often seem to like driving because of the individual freedom it offers and go when they want and where they want.

What American regions do this well? Could be older regions or newer regions. Who has a model that other regions can emulate? How can regions build this capacity and pay for it? When much of the money is funneled to maintaining existing roads and building new ones, how can suburban places find resources for mass transit?