Sunday is Doomsday for the Chicago Transit Authority if legislators don't do something fast to find a funding solution to the transporation system. The future of the city, the state even, is critically tied to keeping people moving from their homes to their jobs. If politicians don't follow through, how will you get to work Monday? Are you as disgusted as we are that it's come to this?
CTA Doomsday Scenario
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The CTA needs to get rid of the unions. My brother works at the CTA south shop as a mechanic. He brags about not working a 1/3 of the day. And it's not just him but many other of the high paid workers being lazy too. We need an outside neutral company to come in and clean house!!!!!! The CTA does not need more money, just to be more efficient.
CTA, a joke. The bus costs $300,000. It costs $100 per hour to operate and takes in about $35 per hour average. Gets about 3 mpg. To make matters worse, the city has 4-way stop signs along bus routes. Anyhow, India makes a great SUV that cost $2500. I say the CTA should go the way of the dinasaurs and the money saved could buy every person that doesn't have a car the India SUV within a few short years.
The state legislature should eliminate all funding for the RTA. That spending is unfair to people who live outside of the Chicago area. The people who live in Rock Island, Springfield, Carbondale, and many other cities rarely (or never) use the RTA trains or buses, so their tax money shouldn't be used to pay for the RTA. Too many people who live in the Chicago area think about themselves and not other areas of IL. The county governments in Cook, Lake, DuPage, Will, McHenry, and Kane Counties should increase their sales tax rates and give more money to the RTA. The people, in those counties, benefit, even if they don't ride the buses and trains. The people who drive see less traffic because other people use the public transportation.
About 15 years ago, New York City increased their subway fares. The number of riders decreased and the revenue decreased. They decreased the price, and the number of riders increased, causing the revenue to increase. CTA should learn from the mistakes of other cities and decrease all fares to $1.50.
Mr. Malone, are you seriously suggesting that the city should buy everyone an SUV to replace public transit?
Who gets an SUV-- all registered drivers, or just one per family, etc.? Where will we park the additional hundreds of thousands of SUVs? How much will it be to park downtown?
How bad will traffic be with all those extra SUVs? How long will it take to get to the airport? What if you get stuck behind those hundreds of extra SUVs at a 4-way stop on Kedzie, or a red light on 95th?
What about the lines at gas stations? How about the smell of exhaust from all those extra vehicles? Or the additional costs to our hospitals from the extra accidents? (Let's be honest here and admit that if there really was a $2500 new car that could actually pass national and state requirements for safety and emissions, it would already be here.)
What about people who take the CTA because they either can't drive or simply don't want to? Are you seriously prepared to hand the keys to an SUV over to a dude with a suspended license? How about a guy who stopped driving because his eyesight is going bad? How about the disabled, kids going to school, etc?
And are you going to go ahead and pay for all that car insurance out of the taxpayers' pockets too? Or maybe you feel that we don't have enough uninsured drivers out there already?
You're right that the CTA has some serious problems. Anyone who has ever driven past the bus depot near Howard & California has seen pull out in front of traffic, run a stop sign and drive in the middle of the road, all while belching huge clouds of black smoke out the exhaust.
But as bad as that is-- and it's really bad-- how is an army of cheaply built SUVs really going to make things better?
CTA needs money. Tell you what, let's have a fund-raiser. Restore service like it was back in the day when it was dependable. Trains were on time, buses were plentiful (you didn't have to wait 30 to 45 minutes for the next one). Try it for 30 or 45 days. With the outrageous gas prices and the high cost of parking, I'm sure riders would come out of the woodwork.
I'd rather pay $5 or $6 dollars a day, if I didn't have to add three hours to my workday!
Why can't we just make the super-rich pay taxes since they are exempt and maybe we wouldn't be in that bad shape. (If we can stop spending it!!!!) Maybe then we would have money to work with.