yup thats exactly what I want.

Yea, that's "not much of a challenge".... right.

Unless you have our license revoked and you REALLY need some Swedish-designed knick-knacks, I can't imagine a situation where you would rather take public transit than drive to IKEA.

The time value of money alone justifies getting a shared car for a few hours, not to mention the convenience of not having to hold your purchases across a train and two buses - and that's only if you live along the Blue Line.

I'm pretty sure that was MrD's trademark cracked-dry wit, but it's tough to tell.

Am I the only one not overly concerned about the service cuts? Remember when the Brown Line capacity project started (Jan '07, I think?) and it was supposed to double commute times for over a year? I don't recall much of a difference in service or commute time on my Damen-to-Grand, Brown/Red Line commute, other than Belmont being a little more chaotic. It's too bad, but life goes on.

10% less service on the L is not going to chase me away from this city. (I don't take too many buses, so no comment on the 20% cuts)

about this Ikea thing. Of course I would use Zip car or something. All I was doing was responding to the NYC answer I got.

I just did some math and something doesn't add up. If the CTA's budget shortfall is 95 million for this year alone and the CTA has 11,000 union member employees that would come to 8636 dollars per employee. So a lack of a 3% raise this year will save 95 million dollars? That would mean the average union salary is 285,000 a year before the 3% raise.

A 3% raise on a salary of 285,000/year for 11,000 union members of the CTA comes to 95 million a year.

So what is actually the story?

Actually, I wasn't cracking wise about IKEA. Most of you would have predicted that it would take two hours on a bus from Rosemont to Schaumburg, winding slowly through Elk Grove and Rolling Meadows. A half-hour trip doesn't seem all that daunting.

I'm not complaining about it. If I was a transit-dependent living in, say, Garfield Park, a 90-minute commute is pretty long, but reasonable enough that the jobs in Schaumburg are a feasible option. If I lived in Avondale, even better. But transit isn't a reasonable option for shopping trips, unless you're getting something really unique that can only be found in Schaumburg... and there's not much in Schaumburg that can't be found in the city.

On a tangent... Pace already operates express service to Bolingbrook. I wonder if it would be worth it for Pace to detour that route up to Boughton Road to allow for an IKEA/Promenade Bolingbrook stop? If there's really a demand for Ikea among city-dwellers, then this seems like the most expedient way to provide transit service there. The Kennedy has much worse traffic than the Stevenson, so I imagine that Bolingbrook could be reached more quickly than Schaumburg. (It's also a concentration of employment...)

Giving back the 3.5% raise would only save something around $30-35 million - which makes more sense with the labor cost of a union employee's wages + benefits, with benefits being upwards of 50% of wages.

The rest could be made up via some combination of furloughs, which would still involve some level of service cuts since if a driver isn't working he can't drive a bus. There could be substantial savings if the contract allowed for more part-time shifts and split shifts (i.e. 8 hours a day but split into 4-hour shifts covering each peak period), but those would probably be the second to last thing the union would ever give up, the last being the seniority system.

The reductions on the rail system will not be too severe. Reductions on bus will hit some places very hard, particuarly in the reduction of the service span, e.g. the 70 Division current runs until 1:30 am but will now end at 10:30 pm. The frequency hit will be substantial but generally manageable, but the span reductions mean tacking on extra 1/2 mile or mile walk to get to a bus that's still running. Those with some money to spare will cope by taking taxis a little more often.

In the CTA's defense, they have actually come to the table and shown that they can control (non-labor) costs. I can't say the same for the city or the state...and quite frankly, the state's answer to transit funding is a fucking insult.

Despite this article's title, all hope isn't yet lost..
 

CTA cuts start Sunday after last-minute talks fail

February 5, 2010 10:31 PM | 21 Comments | UPDATED STORY

CTA service cuts are set to begin Sunday after a last-minute negotiation session called Friday by Mayor Richard Daley failed to bring a resolution.

As feared by public transit commuters, bus service will be cut by almost one-fifth, and train operations will undergo a 9 percent reduction. About 1,100 CTA employees will be laid off.

"There wasn't really any new" proposals discussed during a meeting led by the mayor, said Terry Peterson, CTA board chairman. "But I think the reality of 1,000 people not being at work might have helped drive home the message that this is real."

The cost-cutting moves mark the first major service cuts since 1998.

CTA riders will feel the full impact of the cuts starting with Monday morning's rush period. There will be fewer trains and buses, and they will be more crowded. Hours of service also will be slashed.

Even when a deal is reached between CTA management and the transit agency's labor unions to come up with more than $95 million in savings to close the budget shortfall, it could take a week or longer to reassign laid-off employees and get buses and trains back on normal schedules, officials said.

CTA officials and union leaders pledged to begin fresh talks after meeting in Daley's City Hall office Friday afternoon for several hours.

Until the mayor summoned both sides to the negotiating table, CTA officials and union leaders had argued mainly over the legality of the CTA's layoff list. Union leaders said management officials ignored their proposals to cut costs, while CTA executives countered that the union never offered an idea.

The reality of service cuts and the accompanying layoffs taking place in the middle of winter -- and the resulting public anger -- may be enough to spur new initiatives or some acceptance by the unions of what the CTA put on the table.

The transit agency laid out a menu of options to help eliminate what originally was a $300 million budget deficit for 2010. They included deferring union wage increases that are covered under the current contract, requiring employees to take a certain number of unpaid days off, and cost savings in health care and other areas.

Daley's message to union leaders was that it was critical to avoid laying off workers when the economy is weak, Peterson said.

Less than two hours before the meeting, union leaders offered the first details on a proposal they floated a week ago to save $90.6 million.

Talks will now begin from scratch, said Darrell Jefferson, president of the CTA bus drivers union.

He said Daley mostly served to facilitate the talks and did not offer a plan. Daley mostly helped thaw the icy relations between the sides, he said, and that helped clear the air so substantive talks could begin.

Robert Kelly, president of the CTA rail workers union, said he hoped the job and service cuts could be reversed "in seven to 10 days.''

He also wondered why Daley did not get involved sooner.

"I don't think you should wait until the eleventh hour,'' Kelly said.

Normally support the Union (not some of the things they stand for and their inability to provide any customer service...union, public, government should actually work more like checks and balances for the good of the whole system, but they don't), but it was the wrong time for the Union to put it's foot down.

CTA didn't do a doom and gloom this time around. There was the agreement with Quinn CTA went to the table with the unions, who didn't budge and we have this weekend. Hardly any news on this till this week and it only kept coming up because all of a sudden the Union wanted to stop playing chicken. Am happy CTA took a stance against the unbending Union.

Also, CTA, the updates have been wonderful on the buses. I am very very impressed. For several weeks now each bus has had announcement
"specific" to that bus route about how things would be changing. Foster even announced new beginning and ending schedule times. Great work! Finally CTA is talking to us the riders.

Yeah, I don't know about Ikea, but I've made it to Woodfield Mall from Clark/Lake at rush hour in 75 minutes before via CTA and Pace.

This is the sort of thing that Unions just don't even get. The Public sees this and thinks, "Why should the unions wait for Daley to get involved?" Kelly comes across as some whiny child, unable to act like a mature, responsible adult, waiting for the grown ups to plan his life for him. What a pathetic man he must be to blame the lack of progress on the mayor. I also really resent that the Unions claim to have offered $90 million in savings, but $70 million of it isn't even this year when the dollars are actually needed. PR spin at its cynical worst. I won't judge the unions as a whole, but this Kelly fellow is leading them over a cliff.

Wilson Yard - Target update
 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/26396462/T...n-July-25-2010

• Possible walkway connecting the store to the CTA station
• Quote:

  The community has sent some letters to Target corporate asking about sponsoring the Wilson El stop (rehab of the station) - is that something that could be possible? That is something that the corporate office would look at. Jeff [DeMoss, District Team Leader] is willing to talk to anyone that has ideas and explore it.

Metra to bus transfer project on Congress, article below:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhal...alsh08.article

Connected firm wins Metra-bus contract
TIED TO DALEYS | Walsh to build transfer facility

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com

A clout-heavy company with two generations of ties to the Daley family has been awarded a $3.3 million contract to build a "transfer center" meant to make it easier for commuters at Metra's LaSalle Street station to switch to CTA buses.

Walsh Construction will convert a surface parking lot at the southeast corner of Congress and Financial Place into a bus turnaround, with covered shelters, a lighted, landscaped plaza, and an elevator and staircase to the Metra station.

Metra passengers will be able to board CTA buses in one place, instead of walking to bus stops on Jackson, Van Buren, LaSalle or Harrison. The project will feature two new, dedicated CTA bus lanes on Financial Place.

Financial Place will be converted from a two-way street into a northbound one-way street between Harrison and Congress. Non-bus traffic will still have one northbound lane.

The LaSalle Street station serves Metra's Rock Island line, which goes to Joliet.

"It's intended to improve the connection between Metra and CTA," said Transportation Department spokesman Brian Steele, adding that Walsh was the low bidder.

Company chairman Matthew Walsh's father grew up with Mayor Daley's father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley. Before Richard M. Daley stopped accepting campaign contributions from city contractors in the wake of the Hired Truck scandal, the Walsh family had been a reliable contributor.

Walsh Construction rescued Millennium Park from cost overruns and oversaw the $200 million reconstruction of Wacker Drive.

Since 1996, Walsh has been awarded $735.3 million in city contracts -- $260.9 million in just the last four years, according to the Department of Procurement Services.

Last year, Walsh got a $79 million contract to build the third and final runway in Phase One of Daley's massive O'Hare Airport expansion.

Five years ago, Walsh provided a landing for ousted city Buildings Commissioner Stan Kaderbek, who worked with Walsh as the city's chief bridge engineer during the Wacker Drive project.

http://i.ebayimg.com/23/!BlPFfBw!Wk~...9(92!~~_12.JPG
suntimesarchives

..

This is a great pic.

The CTA Tattler broke down the CTA's and union's proposals for plugging the budget whole yesterday.

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/cta-...vice-cuts.html

He boiled it down to these two tables:

Sorry for the crap formatting (follow the link to see it better...and to read his, IMO, spot on reaction to the proposals).

But as you can see from the table, the CTA is only claiming $20 million in savings from cutting the raise alone. The rest is healthcare changes, furloughs, holiday pay cuts, freebee cuts, etc.

^thanks

and am I reading this right? Really? just wow.

Eliminate pay guarantee for show-up $3.0

Crazy, right?

And the union's proposal is even crazier. No wonder they didn't let the CTA or the public see it before service cuts took place. It is a hard proposal to take seriously...