Entries associated with the tag "Cta":

The business-based Civic Federation (PDF) on Illinois state legislators' ongoing carnival of errors:

"The state has provided short-term funding at the last minute to ward off 'doomsday' dates the CTA responsibly planned for.... The reprieves first borrowed from the agency's future state funding and then granted federal capital dollars to be used for operations."

Better than nothing, right? Wrong:

"Granting temporary funding at the eleventh hour is not only unfair to riders, who suffer uncertainty about getting to work and school, but also costs a good deal of money to the CTA. The agency has to reprogram its fleet and stations in preparation for new fare structures, reorganize its bus system, and place signage to warn riders. The CTA estimates that each 'doomsday' preparation costs $1.5 million."

BTW, "a new bus costs $250,000 and a new rail car costs $1.5 million."

(The Federation supports Julie Hamos's Senate Bill 572, which combines long-term funding and reforms.)

In Friday morning's Chicago Tribune, Richard Wronski notes the un-success of the RTA's "Moving Beyond Congestion" lobbying effort in Springfield. Today's email brings news that the Concerned Commuters of Northeastern Illinois will be taking their petitions to Governor Blagojevich's office at the State of Illinois building Monday morning at 10 am. CCNI is the Illinois Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and "20+ community group representatives and transit activists."

Transit Doomsday has been proclaimed so often, it's easy to forget that it could really come. If the CTA is reduced from an alternative way of getting around to a rush-hour-only convenience, then Chicago will have devolved into a bloated version of Springfield or Indianapolis. These officials and activists are fighting the good fight, but they're caught between a rock and a hard place.

Specifically, they're asking state taxpayers to pony up money that will be managed by Mayor Daley and his appointees, who over the years have shown little ability to listen or to involve the public in setting sensible transit priorities. (What would a real CTA director sound like? Check out this from Beachwood Reporter.) And it's not just bad CTA priorities like the express from Block 37, it's general. I for one would trade every green roof and solar panel in the damn city for a transit system good enough to make driving seem like a fool's errand.

2007 isn't just the year of the money in Springfield, it may also be the year of the process -- and if you believe some good-government advocates, a better process might be just what the CTA needs for a life-saving cash transfusion. Now that the Capital Investment Accountability Act has passed out of committee and into the full house, here's the simple version; you can also check out the Daily Southtown opinion piece by Michael McLaughlin of the Metropolitan Planning Council.

The bill (House Bill 801, same as Senate Bill 1582) sets up four state transportation goals. Everything the state spends on transportation is supposed to contribute to:

(1) efficiency -- meaning reducing delays and unreliability, shifting modes (probably from cars to transit but it doesn't say) and managing demand,

(2) economic development -- that is, putting money back into local and state economies,

(3) integration of land use and transportation planning, and

(4) safety -- meaning reducing crashes, increasing security, and encouraging use of "physically active modes" (presumably walking and biking, as opposed to driving).

If the bill is passed, a new Statewide Prioritization Committee will turn these four goals into 5-10 specific criteria for judging all proposed highway, railroad, and transit projects. Judging will be done by each Metropolitan Planning Organization on the local level, a new District Prioritization Committee for each of the state's nine transportation districts at the regional level, and the statewide committee for statewide projects. (FYI Chicago's six-county region is one district.) Within limits, the lower-level groups can each choose how to weight the criteria but they can't just trash 'em.

Top-scoring projects get passed up to the statewide committee, which puts them all together, and on January 15, 2009, the statewide committee is to deliver its "comprehensive project prioritization plan" to the General Assembly and the governor. (If Illinois' political culture should reassert itself and members of the General Assembly decide to clout through something that didn't pass muster normally, they'd have to do it in public, but the law doesn't otherwise constrain them by requiring supermajority votes or anything.)

In other words, a public process to generate rail, road, and bus plans based on stated goals and professional expertise, not political clout. 

Will this complex but transparent and open process inspire more tax support for transportation, including Chicago-area mass transit? That's one of MPC's goals, but for the CTA there's little good news yet, as Sick Transit Chicago reports.

Conscious Choice has graded the City of Chicago on 11 aspects of sustainability, one of which is whether we have a "world class transit system." The magazine didn't just pull their B- grade out of a hat, they asked some knowledgeable folks:

"Dr. Howard Ehrman from the University of Illinois-Chicago and the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization says that no other city in the U.S. 'comes anywhere close to the lack of funding for public transportation than the city of Chicago.' Ehrman says that for the last 32 years the city has spent $3 million per year, or $1 per person out of the city’s budget, on the CTA. The next city up the ladder, Pittsburgh, spends $33 million, and only has a population of 334,562: ten times as much as Chicago spends, for just one-tenth of the people. New York City spends $200 million, Los Angeles, $165 million. Clearly, here is one obvious opportunity for rather substantial change.'

"According to Jackie Leavy, of the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group, which looks out for the meaningful neighborhood use of tax money, Mayor Daley should use some of the money from the lease of the toll road and the underground parking garages to bolster the CTA. 'The city gives only three million dollars a year to the agency and goes begging to Springfield when fiscal crises loom. It is time for the mayor to use more city money to repair and improve the CTA. It is also time to get the universal fare card going to allow transfers between suburban and city transit.'"

There's more, but no discussion of the ghastly prospects on the Red Line, and no mention of the rampant corruption within the Daley administration. What were they thinking? For a realistic assessment, see Greg Hinz's piece at Crain's.

Not everyone gets to choose, of course, but I was surprised to read colleenabean's experience comparing people catching the el to those catching a Metra train:

"Commuters on the CTA walk briskly but they aren't crazed. They move with purpose but not in a maddened state of panic like the Metra commuters do. Everyone is funneling themselves into different doorways with complete disregard for everyone else around. They have a train to catch dammit, they do this everyday, get the fuck out of the way."

Then she had to get into a Metra car:  "The vestibule was packed with standing passengers. Like the robot I am, I shoved my way on. I got many dirty looks. Oops. This isn't CTA where we all tolerate standing uncomfortably close to one another for a few stops. This is a long commute and I broke a rule of suburban commuting. I then noticed that while everyone's jammed in the vestibule, there's no one standing in the isles between the seated passengers."

She was happy to get back on the el, but some commenters report quite a difference between Union Station and other Metra venues, such as Northwestern (excuse me, Ogilvie) and Randolph Street.  How about you?

Just remember these before you say, "I can't do this on a bike!"  (Hat tip to Mental Floss.)

Somewhere George Orwell is gagging. The "stay the course" president is now denying he ever said it, and major media let him get by with rewriting history. A summary.

CTA Tattler is about Frank Kruesi's duchy, and sometimes it's about us: "In the two years I have been riding the train with my daughter every Monday-Friday, only three times has a gentleman offered me a seat. All other times it has been a woman."

Treehugger and its commenters have suggestions for some ways in which air travel might become a little bit more green.

Lileks is always good for a cheap shot: "School was adjourned for teacher training. (You know, just like the newspaper doesn’t arrive some days because everyone’s in Newspaper training, or the electricity cuts out because they’re all getting lessons in power generation.)"

Do lighter-skinned immigrants get a 10 percent pay boost?  Some research says so.  Links and discussion here.

"[D]emocracies have historically been created by elites when the threat of social unrest and violence cannot be defused in any other way." Read the review of this new book here.

• Kevin of CTA Tattler rode north from Chicago and State on the red line: "There were 21 people in the 34 square feet of space (4.5 feet x 7.5 feet) area between the doors. That is not an exaggeration or hyperbole. I counted the people and then paced off the area after the crowd thinned. One woman just screamed out in frustration: 'Oh good lord! If I'm touching you where I shouldn't be I apologize in advance.'"

• Archpundit thinks Eric Zorn needs an editor to remind him where he's from--and that the Green Party needs to stand for something besides causing Republicans to be elected. (OK, that last clause was me, not Arch.  But good grief, first Nader campaigns in swing states and hands it to Bush in 2000, and this year the Greenie in Pennsylvania takes gobs of Santorum money. Thanks for nothing, y'all.)

• David Nirenberg of the University of Chicago, writing at the New Republic online adds needed context to Pope Benedict's September 12 speech that provoked a number of Muslims to violence. (Don't get all technical on me about whether it's a blog; it's online and it has comments, though not enough links.) The Pope's key idea, writes Nirenberg, is that only Catholicism unites faith and reason; Islam, Judaism, and at least some strains of Protestantism overdo the faith part and worship a deity unconstrained by reason. Nirenberg concludes that the Pope was inviting Muslims not to dialogue, but to conversion. (Several commenters disagree vigorously but intelligently--how can you have a dialogue with someone who has no regard for reason at all?)

• What may be the best television show ever aired gets a good going-over by Alex Kotlowitz and Steve James at Slate. (Hat tip to Whet Moser.)  Money quote: "I have repeatedly discovered as a documentary filmmaker what you, Alex, so brilliantly captured in There Are No Children Here: There's no substitute for putting in the time it takes to really get past seeing people as mere symbols—be they symbols of good or bad, or the powerful or desperate. This is what David Simon and his team have done now for four years."

• If you thought all the trouble was just on your CTA rail line, learn the depressing truth (and the number of energetic activists laying it out) at Scott Gordon's place in the Beachwood Reporter. Money quote: "We can't quantify any of the aforementioned problems. The CTA has released some specific data about slow zones and how long it takes certain lines to go around the Loop, but so far has not released much in the way of empirical data that tells us how specific train lines and bus routes are performing. (The CTA just waits for the Campaign for Better Transit to release its own independent reports and then dispatches its flaks to dismiss them.)"

• Mike Klonsky at Small Talk on a study in which Cornell researchers were shocked--shocked!--to find that students average only 16 minutes of activity per physical education class: "Well, duh! Didn't these researchers ever go to high school? . . . But seriously, is gym any different from other traditional high school classes, which are usually about 45-50 minutes long and where, after taking roll and getting things 'on task' they're lucky if there's 16 minutes where students are really engaged?"

On some days UIC's Robert Bruegmann has trouble telling his neighborhood in the city from the burbs:

"The same big-box retail establishments and rowhouses visible in far suburban Gurnee or Tinley Park, 40 or 50 miles from Chicago, were sprouting in my own neighborhood, originally a German working-class community but now in the process of rapid gentrification. . . . As an increasingly affluent population moved in, [population] densities plummeted and automobile usage soared. Increasingly, although my neighborhood looked like a traditional city neighborhood . . . it started to function in ways that made it similar to any suburb." (Sprawl:  A Compact History, page 7)

Whether or not you agree with all his conclusions, Bruegmann's the rare person who sees what he's looking at, and not what he expected to see. For years most of my interview subjects assumed that I'd travel by car to meet them. But it never occurred to me just how marginal life without a car really is, even in the American city best suited for it (after New York of course).

A city ought to be a place where you can live without having to support an automobile.  Here's a partial collection of links on the subject:

• Carfree Chicago: half blog, half web site: "The deck often seems stacked against those of us who can’t or choose not to drive. There are few places in the nation where we can live without cars, and we’re lucky to be in a place like Chicago where there’s decent public transportation and plenty of walkable neighborhoods. But we need to stay informed" on both policy and how-to.  Still a tad sketchy, but aren't we all?

• CTA Tattler: a blog consisting mainly of anecdotes, plus some survival tips for Chicago Transit Authority riders and connoisseurs. Blog critic Malcolm Gladwell should drop by--this is all first-hand stuff, nothing "derivative."

• Cycling Sisters: web site of a women's cycling group in Chicago whose mission is "to increase the number of women who ride bicycles for transportation." E-mail list as well. These people are serious:  "I ride my bike year round, almost always with my 3 kids in tow. This is what I typically carry in my trailer during the summer months . . . "

• Chicagoland Bicycle Federation: lots of help here, and if you didn't know about these folks already, you may need 'em.

• I-GO Car Sharing: four-year-old nonprofit spun off from the Center for Neighborhood Technology. OK, sometimes you really need a car.

• The Slow and the Curious: first-person blog of a mother in downstate Normal who's spending July with a two-year-old and no car.  Worth a look, because she's not strongly pushing an agenda, and because she's doing it in a far more hostile environment than Chicago.

• The Year of Living Carlessly Experiment: Alan Durning of the Sightline Institute blogs the same thing in Seattle.

• Moving Beyond Congestion: Long-run policy stuff, RTA's plan to beef up funding and service.  I'm congenitally skeptical of big plans, Burnham notwithstanding. But without good transit Chicago's in a world of hurt. 

Please feel free to add suggestions.  More later, and maybe some stories.  As a friend says, for middle-class folks "the experience of being marginalized, while never pleasant, is illuminating."

If you didn't get the e-mail, you can go here to find out about the Regional Transportation Authority's latest plan for a plan to improve mass transit in the Chicago area. It's called "Moving Beyond Congestion."

The email says, "We are engaged in a strategic plan for modern transit and we seek input and participation from residents throughout the six-county region" to create a plan that reduces traffic congestion. There's a July 25 media kickoff at Union Station for those who sign up to be "Partners for Transit."

Here's one of the ten goals:

"Ensure that the passenger experience is of one seamless public transportation system."

Great idea, RTA folks, but maybe you could get your own people to stop feuding and agree to this before dragging the rest of us into a bunch of meetings?

To see part of the problem, check out this July 5 report from WBBM 780's Bob Roberts. The suburban Pace bus system is still threatening to cut off CTA seven-day passholders because Pace claims it's not getting enough money from CTA to compensate for honoring them. Other CTA passes and cards are still good there, and I'm sure everyone using them has plenty of spare time to keep track.