CTA Budget Statement 2002

by

William F. Wendt, Jr.

1651 Hubbard

Chicago, IL 60622

The age-old problem of public transit has been not enough money.  At least

that is the age-old perception.  I have long thought otherwise, that the real problem

is too much money.  Recent CTA developments are just more confirmation.

CTA is pushing ahead with a $500 million project to lengthen platforms on the Ravenswood to ease rush hour overcrowding, that still is largely south of Belmont.  Never mind such simpler alternatives as restoring downtown service on the 11 Lincoln bus or express buses on Halsted.  Never mind a much more promising solution such as a monorail, first between Wrigley Field and its parking losts, then extended downtown.  This would try out a new technology and be a facility useful 168 hours a week, not just ten.  At the $30 million a mile for the monorail in Las Vegas, this would come to about $200 million, the monorail I am advocating would be a half or a third of that.

CTA now says it needs $5 billion to get the system in good shape, never mind a similar figure in two previous budgets to renew it.  Figure $500 million would buy a whole new bus operation, so the once great third rail needs $4.5 billion for its older 100 miles.  At the Las Vegas price that would buy 150 miles of monorail, two or three times as much for the monorail I am advocating.  Figure Metra still wants its $4 billion to rebuild and extend commuter lines; why not a clean sheet of paper and a unified city/suburban system with a new technology altogether?

Then CTA expects another billion for a completely stupid Super-Loop and the City at least that much for a triple-decker subway for west loop office development.

The City's new Central Area Plan expects a one-third increase in downtown office space over the next couple decades and a corresponding increase in CTA service, a tacit recognition of my point that the downtown office rush determines the size of the transit system.  Who, however, is supposed to pay for it?

Shortly afterwards CTA said sales tax revenues are down and it might have to raise fares.  That, with municipal elections coming up.  Then the RTA discovers some capital funds left over from the misbegotten PRT project and somehow converts them to operating funds, at least for this year.  What about next year?

The straphangers pay the dividends, said traction magnate Charles Tyson Yerkes a century or so ago.  The delusion of transit systems meeting the rush period ten hours a week remains tody, especially when the beneficiaries do not have to pay for it.  For upcoming years let's set up downtown taxing districts, not unlike those for the Franklin subway and the downtown trolley, except to pay for downtown's

rush hour.

If CTA has restored some off-peak service, it has yet to tailor any service for its major source of revenue, the neighborhood retailers that kick in $150 million or more annually in RTA sales taxes.  Never mind that the marginal cost of off-peak service is just about nothing, as CTA President Kreusi admitted two years ago and which I have repeated at the two CTA budget hearings since then without contradiction.

As long as CTA can help itself to federal mega-bucks for all sorts of misbegotten boondoggles, it will continue to do so.  I see no solution to that except to cut off that sort of funding altogether, probably by litigation.