The Chicago Transit Authority's boss laid out his dreams of how much better bus and train system could be — if only state lawmakers would give his agency adequate funding.CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. said Thursday he wants to the city to have a "world class" transit system equal to those in Paris and London.The embattled transit chief wants to add rail lines running in concentric circles around downtown, run buses every eight minutes all day and extend L lines into the suburbs — and much more.The problem is the CTA and other area transit agencies are woefully underfunded, Carter said at a City Club luncheon. And the system faces drastic service cuts in 2026 when Carter said federal COVID dollars run out, and the CTA faces a $500 million deficit.That's unless state lawmakers bolster public transit funding to the tune of more than $1 billion a year. A transit funding bill making its way through the state house likely won't be acted on this year, WTTW reported this week."My request to Springfield is simple: You've done visionary things in Illinois in the past. Transit should be your next big visionary task," Carter said.Raising funding is the key to undoing decades of under-investment in the CTA, Carter said. It stems from a nearly 40-year-old funding formula that has forced the transit agency to undergo severe cuts in the past. Carter said the lack of funding has chipped away at the system's reliability and ridership.Carter also made the case against a proposal in Springfield to consolidate the area's four transit agencies — the CTA, Metra, Pace and Regional Transit Authority — arguing that separate agencies have never been the problem, unlike decades of disinvestment."So why all the fixation of governance? It's an easy pill to swallow, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper. It is much easier to say that bureaucracy is the problem ... than make tough decisions and take tough votes about raising revenue," Carter said.The CTA boss has faced a growing chorus of critics. Gov. JB Pritzker has called for him to step down, and more than half the Chicago City Council — 29 out of 50 members — have signed on to a nonbinding resolution demanding he either quit or be fired by Mayor Brandon Johnson.Carter was asked by a reporter after the luncheon if he planned to stay on the job until the CTA overcomes the "fiscal cliff" in 2026."Well, it's not my decision about whether I stay on the job or not," he said. "I'm committed to doing whatever I can to keep CTA operating and moving forward. As you heard me lay out here, I'm committed to a vision that I just laid out here and will do everything that I can to make that vision become a reality."