The Chicago Transit Authority's massive plan to reconstruct the Red Line north is receiving a boost of up to $281 million from the federal government.

In a pair of announcements this afternoon as President Barack Obama prepares to travel to Springfield tomorrow, officials announced that the CTA has allocated $156 million in available U.S. Department of Transportation funds for the Red Line job.

Beyond that, in the fiscal 2017 budget that Obama proposed to Congress today, the Red Line would get an additional $125 million.

Both pots of money would come out of the Transportation Department's "Core Capacity Program," a relatively new line item created several years ago at the request of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and intended to help older transit systems like the CTA expand ridership by renovating aging facilities.

The money will go toward one highly controversial project—the Clark Junction Flyover where the Red and Brown Line tracks now meet—and several less contentious items including replacement of track structure and viaducts that are as much as 100 years old.

The work is the first phase of a larger project to totally rebuild the Red and Purple Line tracks and stations north of Belmont.

Phase one of the so-called Red/Purple Modernization program has a total price tag of $2.13 billion. About half would come from the feds, and the remainder from the state and local government.

The latter has not yet been hammered down, but officials have been eyeing a sort of transit-oriented tax-increment financing project in which part of the growth in taxes from property along the Red Line would go toward its reconstruction.

Officials today also announced that they will soon hire a consultant to develop a plan for transit-oriented development in that area.

As Red Line riders know, trains have gotten more crowded in recent years, especially at rush hours. CTA officials say the flyover and related work will allow them to add more trains and reduce crowding, as well as to replace infrastructure that has outlasted its design age.

The CTA received $35 million in similar funds in 2014, which it used for preliminary engineering.

Of course, Obama's budget at this point is only a proposal.