awesome ... there were four of these ...

The sales tax is naturally regressive as well, with the poor paying a higher % of their income in taxes. Also, the middle and upper class residents can alter their behavior and drive out to Oakbrook to buy the higher end items where the sales tax hits the hardest (tvs, computers, etc.). In many cases the poor cannot avoid the higher rate by driving outside the city/county limits

Chicagoian just got back from Seoul.
 

Am looking for a sharp object to slit my wrist. We got on the Blue line from O'Hare and thought it would shake apart. How did Seoul create such and extensive well run and clean system after WWII and the Korean war and we cannot even keep the couple of lines we have in good shape? Depressing.

Chicago is NOT first tier world class when it comes to public transportation. Wish we were really a first class city.

As a Chicagoan just back from Houston:
"Wow, I missed Chicago's public transit."

Comparing Chicago to Seoul is.....well, complicated. The built environments and government structures are so drastically different that comparisons are mostly meaningless and can't transcend the purely aesthetic ("Seoul has cleaner and faster trains! Chicago/US is inferior!"). Better to compare Chicago to say, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, etc. Seoul is so much denser, and auto ownership is so much lower than Chicago, that transit operates on a completely different paradigm.

^jkor,
Marcu was referring to raising the base fare even higher in exchange for better quality service. Since the public operating funds (48% of operations) are totally maxed out, this wouldn't accomplish too much in terms of service quantitysince the farebox recovery ratio is mandated to be about 52%. However, if the state was good for an increasing share, then obviously quality would increase. However, some of the additional fare monies could be spent for badly needed capital improvements.

thanks, viva', now i see.

ho-hum, sb 572 failed. it fell 10 votes short of the needed super-majority. funny how the news about chicago "officially" entered the international olympics race the same day.

the region's downward spiral begins in 13 days

i am really depressed about this, though ms. hamos did allow for this to be voted on again. i guess this still goes to the senate, it just has no chance of making it past blago' now??

OH man!! That sucks! So are these assholes going to actually do anything before the service cuts? Metra and Pace have scheduled cuts as well on the horizon. Metra's cuts totally decimate the weekend schedule. Do we have any hope at this point for a sensible funding plan? Maybe Blago will propose some business tax or something. Good luck getting it passed though. God what a bunch of retards we have in the state government.

Moving in Oct.
 

I live in Dallas, and I'm just up-and-moving to Chicago for no real reason at all, other than I liked the city and wanted a mature transit system. I'm just tired of waiting on Dallas to "get there."

How detrimental will the failure of this bill be to Chicago? It seems like service will still be OK. I haven't heard of any cutbacks on rail lines.

^ Fares will go up and weekend service (especially bus service) will suffer. It's certainly not the end of the world like many would have you believe. No need to spread fear to promote an agenda.

F8ck these state politicians. They're all pathetic. And Blago most certainly won't be getting my vote when he's up for reelection. I may be a hardcore democrat, but there isn't a single thing he could possibly do to earn my vote if he allows this state to completely overlook the CTA.

:previous: Yeah, I'd take Ryan back over Blago in a sec (seriously).

I agree that this is not the end of the world for the CTA. It will be a pain in the ass late at night and on weekends, but this is in no way apocolyptic. It doesn't bode well for the state figuring out transit funding issues, but it is one of many issues the state needs to figure out. It pisses me off incredibly that this (and many other state funding issues) all comes down to dick swinging on the part of Blago, Madigan, and Jones. F'em all.

We're doomed!

No brint, this won't be too drastic if these cuts go through, with the exception of only a couple routes most of these have adequate duplicative service and the fare hikes (to $2) are not unreasonable assuming you get a smart card for payment (Chicago Card). No rail service will be cut, but I'd expect it to get a bit more crowded in the peak periods as riders readjust to a new equilibrium with the reduced bus capacity.



Of course, no one seems to be talking about what happens January 1 when the pension contributions law that Madigan made last year kicks in and CTA has to start contributing something like $150-200million additional per year....even if the sales tax hike doesnt pass, they've got to at least deal with passing the reforms of the pension and health care obligations (and the real estate transfer tax that would help pay for them, and only be in Chicago) so there isn't an implosion by about July 08.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...i_tab01_layout

Yea Mr.Cross, do your part to bring down the whole metro transit infrastructure because your little town of Oswego need to widen its roads.:hell:

Thanks for the reassurance, Viva.

Do you know if the price tag on monthly pass will increase as well? Or will it just become that much better of a deal?

It will go up from $75 to $84 as published online on the CTA page and many other publications.

Thanks for bringing that up. So the increase for an everyday transit user will go up by about $100 a year. Really not that bad considering the property tax transfer would have likely upped rent by at least that much and would have put Chicago residents at a financial disadvantage.

I can't blame Tom Cross for wanting to tie this into a bigger package. That's just how politics works. He doesn't want to come home having spent 2 weeks (which is something like 10% of the legislative session since they take months off) on something his constituency percieves as effecting only cook county. It's really no different than what any politician would do. Cook county constituents are a little hypocritical on this point.

Perhaps you don't know that Metra and Pace services areas "outside" Cook County. The package that didn't pass was all incompassing for Chicago, Cook and collar counties. So nothing hypocritical taking place in Cook County.

And I would NOT mind helping fund roads in Oswego if they had some sort of transportation master plan. But am feeling that their being republican and pro-growth their answer to all problems is more blacktop. In context the man should be arguing at this point for an extention of Metra from Aurora or a branch shooting off from the Joilet line......not attaching cars.

If one thing...I would make it a Constitutional law that all bills are voted on seperately and only amendments pertaining to subject at hand can be included.

This will all get dealt with the moment Metra has to slash service or having anything less than the most pristine capital assets of any commuter railroad in the country.

I agree. I recently rode MARC in Maryland - no comparison to Metra.

Maybe you've had a different experience than me. I drive in rush hour every single day, morning and afternoon, on the local roads through the north side to/from Evanston and/or Children's Memorial and/or Northwestern Memorial Streeterville from Belmont. Sometimes I take Lincoln/Western, sometimes Ashland, sometimes Lakeshore, this afternoon home I decided to take Western to Foster to Damen and Damen home. I mix things up because I like to see the different neighborhoods and get bored with the same old route everyday. ALL of these routes have been plenty adequate and have ALWAYS been faster than taking mass transit. I'm sorry but this is just the truth.

BTW last time I decided to take the El from my home in Lakeview to Evanston Memorial it took me one hour and 42 minutes door to door. And I live very close to the Belmont stop. I can't even begin to imagine what type of road/weather conditions would be necessary for it to take me that long to drive up there. It takes me about 30 minutes to drive in the morning and 35 minutes in the afternoon. And owning a car already that's paid for and I can use for many other things besides just commuting, it's even cheaper to boot day-to-day (gas to Evanston or Downtown < CTA fare).

Maybe you are in the wrong thread because no one in here insinuated anything close to getting rid of the CTA. How ludicrous would that be. I said it needs to get shaken up, have more accountability to its customers, and Daley needs to step in and get serious about it (to **IMPROVE** it!) but that is the extent of it.

The money has to come from somewhere. Either way tax everyone and redistribute the monies to pay for services, or we charge people for using them. In my opinion, whenever it is realistic and feasible, we should pay for what we use (i.e., city dwellers should not subsidize suburban highways and suburbanites should not subsidize the 77 Belmont Bus). I know many people live in this world where we just need to form a Robin Hood society and have a public pot of money for everything, and this may work with some things, but that type of system for *everything*, which it sounds like you want, is intrinsically inefficient beacuse it requires bureacratic redistribution, politics and then there is the question of whose money is it really and who is accountable for it? Why do you think the CTA is in so much trouble? Mismanagement of *other* people's money and redestribution of your and my wealth in an inefficient manner while giving employees cushy pension plans and benefits that we continue to pay for with the *majority* of our fares.

But you seem to be reading someone else's message because I even specifically stated that things like education, that you mentioned, is not entirely realistic to self-fund and I specifically stated that I wouldn't cut funding for that nor many other government services so I don't know what you are exactly responding to.

So I don't see why this is all even an issue for you. Just drive, since it's so much better for your lifestyle.