The Ride

Limited space in today's paper kept me from providing more details about Tuesday's transit rally at the Thompson Center, where Mayor Daley, House Speaker Mike Madigan and several others tried to put pressure on Governor Blagojevich and the General Assembly to pass a funding package for mass transit.

If you've been reading or watching the news at all lately, you know that Mayor Daley and officials from the RTA, CTA, Metra and Pace have made almost daily pleas to the legislature to beef up transit funding in order to avoid fare increases and service cuts. You also know that the RTA wants the General Assembly to raise money for transit by passing a bill that would increase the RTA sales tax in Cook and the collar counties by one-quarter of 1 percent and an additional one-quarter percent in the collar counties.

What set Tuesday's rally apart was Madigan standing at the podium, making his first public show of support for the transit funding bill sponsored by State Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston).

"This is a good, sound piece of legislation that should be enacted," Madigan told the crowd at the rally.

In typical fashion, Madigan also blamed Blagojevich for the bill's slow progress in the General Assembly, since the governor has said he won't support a sales tax increase.

But Blagojevich's camp fired back, calling Madigan a hypocrite for being at the rally when he refused to attend special sessions called by Blagojevich to hammer out a funding plan for transit. Madigan also sabatoged the governor's multi-billion capital plan to raise money for transit and other infrastructure needs, Blagojevich's people say.

"The governor has been calling on the legislature for quite some time to work on these issues," Blagojevich spokesman Gerardo Cardenas said. "It’s ironic that the speaker who opposed the capital plan and special sessions shows up at a rally for the CTA."

Instead of increasing the RTA sales tax, Blagojevich wants to raise money for transit by closing corporate tax loopholes for certain businesses.

Hamos said she thinks she has enough bipartisan support to pass her bill on Sept. 4 and override the governor's veto. RTA Chair Jim Reilly thinks so, too.

What do you think? Will legislators be able to put aside their differences and get a funding bill passed before Doomsday hits on Sept. 16?

Posted by Monifa Thomas at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

In today's Ride, I interviewed a staff member for Travelers Aid at O'Hare Airport. For those of you not familiar with it, Travelers Aid assists people at airports with a variety of services, from referring people to hotels to connecting passengers with their families in other cities or states.

I got the idea after I got stranded at LAX overnight last week while trying to fly back to Atlanta with my neice. We were supposed to take the redeye, but she got bumped from the flight at the last minute, so we both ended up spending the night there. And yes, that was about as much fun as it sounds.

What about you? Have you or someone you know ever been stranded at the airport and needed help? The best tales will be published in an upcoming edition of the Ride.

Posted by Monifa Thomas at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Chicago Police wrote roughly 13,400 tickets last year to people caught talking on a handheld cell phone while driving--not many when you consider parking citations number in the hundreds of thousands each year.

Do you think police should step up their enforcement of the ban, or would that be a waste of police time and resources?

In the two years since the cell phone ban was passed, has it changed your driving behavior at all, or is it just a nuisance?

Posted by Monifa Thomas at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

It's official. The CTA will cut several bus routes and raise fares on Sept. 16 unless the state legislature comes up with additional funding to plug the agency's budget shortfall.

The plan approved by the CTA board on Wednesday is a less severe version of what was proposed in May. It seems hundreds of rider complaints at the public meetings held in June made CTA officials revise the plan, so that it has a less severe impact on transit-dependent, low-income riders.

Read more about it here.

Posted by Monifa Thomas at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

About 9 percent of Illinois' roughly 8,000 bridges are considered "structurally deficient," the same rating given to the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis.

Basically, that means bridges aren't in imminent danger of collapsing, but they should be repaired sooner rather than later.

Back in 2003, the Sun-Times did an analysis of the state's bridges, showing that 8 percent of Illinois bridges were structurally deficient that year. Read more here.

Posted by Monifa Thomas at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Pace's board of directors voted to go ahead with a variety of service cuts and fare increases this year, if the agency doesn't get additional money from the state legislature to balance its budget.

But Pace put off the worst of the cuts until January, hoping a solution will be found in Springfield before then.

Some highlights of the plan approved Wednesday:
(By Sept. 1)
- Fares for local Pace routes and Metra feeders will increase from to $1.50, from $1.25
- ADA paratransit fares will go up from $2.50 to $3.
- Taxi Access fares would increase to $5.50.

(By Oct. 1)
- 23 underperforming Metra feeder routes will be cut (by the end of September)
- Pace will stop accepting CTA passes

(By December)
- All remaining Metra feeder routes will be cut

(By January)
- All weekend service would be eliminated
- Taxi Access fares go up to $6.50
- Regular Pace fares would increase to $2, from $1.50

Should Pace receive funding from the legislature, the agency's board will revisit the any cuts that have been made, but there's no guarantee that current fares and service levels would be reinstated, Pace spokeswoman Judi Kulm said.

Posted by Monifa Thomas at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)