ROSELAND — When the 95th Street Red Line station opened in 1969, Mayor Richard J. Daley stood before South Side residents and made a promise: the trains would keep going south. Fifty-seven years later, that promise is finally being kept.
On April 24, 2026, the Chicago Transit Authority officially broke ground on the $5.7 billion Red Line Extension project at the site of the future Michigan Avenue station on 116th Street in Roseland. The atmosphere, by all accounts, felt less like a press event and more like a family reunion. "The energy, everyone in the community coming out, so much of our community leadership, everyone in that space overjoyed by having this momentous occasion celebrated," said Katanya Raby, vice president of planning at the Far South Community Development Corporation and chair of the CTA Citizens Advisory Board, according to WTTW.
The extension will stretch 5.5 miles from the current terminus at 95th Street down to a new endpoint at 130th Street, with four new fully accessible stations at 103rd Street, 111th Street, Michigan Avenue/116th Street, and 130th Street. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the project will create more than 12,500 direct construction jobs, and once completed, will make an estimated 25,000 additional jobs accessible to Far South Side residents within an hour commute. The CTA has also set goals requiring disadvantaged business enterprises to make up 25% of design contracts and 22% of construction work.
This project doesn't just make history — it corrects it."— CTA ACTING PRESIDENT NORA LEERHSEN, AT THE APRIL 24 GROUNDBREAKING
The road to this moment was not smooth. In late 2025, the Trump administration froze roughly $2 billion in federal funding for the project, citing DEI concerns — a move the CTA called politically motivated. The agency filed suit, and in March 2026 a federal judge ordered the funds unfrozen. Mayor Brandon Johnson called the legal win a turning point. "Sixty years in the making, we made good on a promise that we're going to invest in our people," Johnson said, according to ABC7 Chicago.
For residents, the stakes are deeply personal. Marc Pullins, who runs the community group Roseland Matters, told NBC Chicago that South Siders have long been cut off from jobs, medical care, and cultural life downtown. "We have done everything we can to help the community, but transportation to the downtown and the North Side is highly needed down here," he said. Local business owner Isaiah Christmas, whose barbershop sits near the future 116th Street station, sees economic transformation on the horizon. "There is a lot of youth that will probably get jobs and they will be able to afford haircuts," he told NBC Chicago.
Alderman Anthony Beale (9th Ward), who has spent years pushing the project forward, was blunt about what it means for his constituents. "My constituents deserve to be better connected to the rest of the city — not only through transit, but through access to jobs, training, and continued investment in their community," Beale said in a City of Chicago press release. Station construction is expected to begin in 2027 or 2028, with the line projected to open in 2030.