http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=33446
South Shore rail line to increase service March 25, 2009 The South Shore commuter rail line in northwestern Indiana plans to add trains to its weekend schedule to ease overcrowding and delays between South Bend and Chicago. Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District spokesman John Parsons says that currently only 53 percent of weekend trains run on time. The railroad wants to add cars to trains departing Chicago on weekend mornings and add a train that leaves at 9:15 p.m. A morning express train from South Bend to Chicago is also planned. |
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Don't I recall that Illinois Center was designed to accommodate trains to the Chicago River? The BART system more or less acts like this. Of course, the RER by itself carries more people than the entire Chicagoland public transit system.... |
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Can somebody tell me when the Paulina brown line stop is supposed to open? In the past, they’ve announced around 2 weeks out when the stations would reopen. We’re coming up on the 1 year timetable the CTA laid out, but I haven’t heard anything. Other than painting the track beams, the thing is done.
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april 3rd |
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Sound familiar?
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...fare-hikes/?hp Quote:
I just wish the Trib would run this under the headline, "Economic downturn effecting transit systems nationwide" rather than, "MTA takes notes from CTA; threatens doomsday." :rolleyes: |
Aren't the MTA's funding problems the result of massive borrowing without identified revenue to pay it back? IIRC they borrowed something like $50 billion for capital improvements. Laudable to invest, but not without having a plan to fund the debt service.
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Looking around, no newspaper can afford to be arrogant, and I actually think the Trib has been doing better lately - although it may be too little, too late - I guess we'll know soon enough. |
The Trib has pretty thoroughly hung its fortunes on attracting conservatives who fled Chicago for the suburbs decades ago and don't remember exactly why but are sure it had something to do with things being screwed up in city government. (The Trib's poster child for this demographic is of course John Kass.) The paper exists to vilify every person and agency that has little to do with the problems Chicago faces and ignore the ones that do. The CTA is an incredibly easy whipping boy because nobody will stand up for it, and reversing course on the CTA now would be awkward for the paper since they've invested so much credibility in ripping it up, so the Trib can go on pretending that it's Chicago's second biggest scourge... next to pitbulls.
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^^^ I think they also like to generate CTA stories for the Red Eye, since those stories appeal to that rag's readers. The only time I read the Red Eye is when it has an article about the CTA on the front page.
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^Well, there's the small problem that the state constitution says that public pension systems can't be abrogated. That's why the teachers unions were so adamant about fighting a con-con last fall.
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...this is not even getting into how most CTA employees saw take-home pay and taxable income decrease over the past several years due to employee benefits contributions more than doubling and the lack of cost-of-living increases due to the repeated doomsdays. To the extent there is mismanagement/waste/corruption on a large scale ('large scale' meaning significant dollar amounts - a couple cronies at $90k/year, while certainly annoying, hardly bankrupt a public agency with an annual operating budget over $1bn), look to the public pension boards themselves, the management companies they hire, the firms they invest in, and so on. |
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I don't know what it is off the top of my head, but if it is like most public entities, I'm sure it is short. Perhaps the answer is extending the number of years. It seems to me that city jobs pay pretty well, compared to the rest of the market, and that one of the benefits of working for the city/cta was that while you did not necessarily make a ton of cash, the trade off was for an early retirement with good pension. If that is the case, then it seems these employees are getting it good from both sides. Right? I'm not trying to stir up drama here, just trying to make sense of the 80% going to pensions...:koko: |
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And about those pensions: don't you think that if the CTA/city could, they'd just stop paying into those pension funds? They are a HUGE drain on their budget and I'm sure they'd be glad to use that money for other purposes. Small problem, though: they are legally obligated to keep paying in (as Mr. Downtown pointed out). Until the city, state and unions can work out a feasible long term solution to the pension problem, these issues will persist. Blaming the CTA for the issue demonstrates a pretty limited understanding of the roots of the problem, IMO. |
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Chicago has no history of city employees being in bed with the unions. I doubt they would ever fathom getting kickbacks for making sure the pension programs are fat and happy! /sarcasm |
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