Doesn't I-80 already connect I-57 to I-65 in that area? Why do they need another interstate connecting those two roads? CTA sure could use that billion dollars now.

A billion dollars for the Illiana Expressway? I want a billion dollars for the CTA! (well preferably more than that).

Perhaps you should do some research before moving. The tax burden in all the nearby states, including the supposedly more conservative Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri, is significantly higher. Illinois can solve much of its own problems and the CTA's problems with some form of pension reform and the implementation of the inevitable income tax increase. I personally think Iowa's tax rates are quite sensible. http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/l...axrate_IA.html

Because 80/94 (the Kingery) is possibly the busiest road in Chicagoland. The congestion ends around the point where the Tri-State splits off in Markham. West of that point, I-80 is pretty lightly traveled. I-57 is under-utilized all around. Redirecting traffic from I-65 onto these roads is a pretty smart move. Will County is banking on developing a heavy industrial presence around the Illiana and I-57.

The idea isn't a bad one overall, since it redistributes traffic more evenly over Chicagoland's road network. Even if the cost is a billion dollars (which isn't THAT much for a whole new road, these days) the cost should be picked up from Federal highway funds and toll revenue on the road itself. This isn't money that can somehow go towards transit.

The only obvious problem is the lack of an interchange at 57 and the Tri-State. A partial interchange is planned by the Tollway, but they're hoping for TIGER funds (ha!). Increased development along the road also virtually guarantees a much higher traffic level along the existing portions of 57, the widening of which is not included in that $1bn figure.

The road is probably justified to relive existing traffic, but it would also provide a convenient justification for the Peotone airport. :koko: Hopefully, the O'Hare project will relieve congestion there to the point where there's no support for a 3rd airport.

I'm assuming the road will be numbered as 157, but they may be able to get permission to use 355 (they plan to connect it to 355 at New Lenox eventually, completing Chicago's 2nd ring road).

I have always wondered about any plans or mention of this missing 355 gap, but have never been able to find anything. Where have you seen this actually mentioned?

Also, regarding usage of the "355" designation before the missing link is completed: Are you thinking that the connecting segments of 57 and 80 would have to be dual-designated with "355" ? Geometrically it would look awkward, but otherwise motorists on 355 would see their highway dead-end and would have to carefully follow signage instructing them to change highways 3 times before finding themselves back on 355 (do "interrupted" interstates exist anywhere?).

On the other hand, eventually when the missing link is completed, both IDOT and many businesses would have to very carefully remove years and years of accumulated signage/references to 355 following a partial route along 57/80 -- this is a recipe for confusion.

So I think giving Illiana "355" before ring road completion is not workable. It would make sense as a derivative of 57 or of 65. I think going off of 65 makes more sense because the Illiana is hoped to eventually extend NE to Valparaiso and Michigan City (assuming major local opposition can be overcome). Maybe it would be 165 -- although then maybe Indianapolis would want to claim that low number for spurs near it -- so maybe the numerically interesting "365" (e.g. "Peotone! Along 365, open 365 days year!"). On the other hand, 365 is too confuseable with 355...

Here's a graphic I found showing the preliminary route, currently NOT included though is anything east of 65. I too was thinking that this really is a continuation of 355 forming an outer beltway all the way from I-65 in Indiana to I-90 after merging with 290.

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/image-a...lianabst2c.gif

According to wikipedia, the new lease of the Indiana Toll Road prohibits another competing toll road from coming within 10 miles of it. I guess its a pretty serious clause, because they later withdrew plans for Illiana to extend thru Valpo and end in Michigan City.

Ciao....
don't let the door hit you in the .....bum

get your facts straight

57 has no auxiliary routes currently. It is the longest interstate in the country that doesn't have any. The only major city along 57 is Chicago. (It links to Memphis, but dead-ends at I-55 150 miles north of Memphis). It makes sense to use a 57 number, and reserve numbers along 65 for growth in Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, Mobile, Montgomery, or Birmingham.

A 355 designation is unlikely without definite plans for the missing segment.

And yes, any extension of the Illiana east of I-65 was FIERCELY opposed by Northern Indiana, which doesn't want to become Chicago sprawl. Mitch Daniels officially canceled any plans for such a highway, which is pretty much pointless anyway...

The 710 in California is sort of an interrupted freeway. It ends in Alhambra, there is a gap through South Pasadena, and then there is a short 710 in Pasadena going into the 210/134 interchange. It's a bit of a different situation though. It wasn't ever planned to be an interrupted freeway, but local opposition stopped construction in South Pasadena in the 1960s. Recently, they've been talking about just tunneling under South Pasadena to complete the freeway.

I should also mention that the most recent election contained a referendum in Northern Indiana on the establishment of an RTA to run the two new South Shore lines to Lowell and Valparaiso. The RTA would have covered Lake, Porter, LaPorte, and St. Joseph counties, and have the power to increase sales taxes up to 0.25%

Lake and LaPorte counties decided not to hold the election, and the other 2 soundly rejected the transit authority at around 80% against. Of course, it's not a major election, and this was the only thing on the ballot, so turnout was only 15% in Porter County (compared to a 66% turnout for the 2008 general election).

^ Brilliant. :koko:

I guess development will just continue to follow the Metra lines on the IL side, while the Indiana suburbs remain economically depressed.

Where does any development follow Metra lines? Is there a noticeable ridge of density along the Metra Electric to University Park? Or even along the South Shore Line? The hottest areas in the most recent boom--Oswego, Plainfield, Yorkville to the southwest or Huntley, Gilberts, Campton Hills to the northwest--are far, far away from Metra lines.

Lol, because they'd rather remain in the same state as Gary? They prefer to be a rotting 2/3 abandoned industrial corridor? Oh well, Indiana is so useless as a state that I think we should just dig the whole state down 100' and let Lake Michigan fill it up with Indianapolis on an Island in the middle. Then we could just use all that dirt to build a mountain range where the far west suburbs are (Auroa and Joliet could become charming "mountain towns" nestled in the valley). Of course we'd have to leave a large causeway in the middle for all of our train lines, highways, and utilities to cross...

^^ They have a point. The highway would probably attract the same kind of industrial development that Will County is seeking, in addition to new residential growth.

The areas of Northern Indiana that opposed the highway were, unsurprisingly, the same that just voted down the creation of an RTA. They're a patchwork of medium-sized towns with little connection to Chicago except maybe for baseball. The areas are not especially depressed, at least by Midwestern standards - Gary and Hammond aside, most of Northwest Indiana is solidly middle class, and has its own culture that is quite distinct from that of Chicagoland. That doesn't mean it won't eventually join Chicagoland more fully - Jersey and Long Island are part of the same metro area, too - but there have to be the economic ties before people realize the benefit of closer infrastructure ties to Chicago.

Because of Lake Michigan, there's a big chokepoint through Chicago, so the central segment of the Illiana (I-57 to I-65) helps to spread that traffic out. But for traffic headed SOUTH or SOUTHWEST from Michigan or Ohio - currently on I-90 or I-94 - I-69 exists to detour Chicago completely. For trucks that must pass through Chicagoland, major overhauls are done on the Kingery in IL, and nearing completion on the Borman in IN.

^For the record, Hammond is in no way as impoverished as Gary and generally speaking a pretty stable middle class town.

Um, yeah. That is because the suburban lands along the railroads began developing 150 years ago. Everything closer in is already built out or close to it, and infill has been occurring as higher-density TOD in many suburban downtowns near to the stations. The cheap and large tracts of land which allow for cheap tract housing are now mostly located beyond the ends of the Metra Lines, or the gaps between them.

There is a noticeable drop off in density away from the South Shore line, in Porter County, just go a couple miles south and your into the farms.

Obviously there are more factors at play. And relatively speaking, yes there is more density and suburban development within 5-10 miles of the UP line. Oswego and Huntley are entierly different markets whose only relevance to Chicago is the periodic use of O'Hare. I'm not su why they were brought up.

For most of the NW Indiana communities still struggling from the manufacturing collapse, their only hope is to somehow transform their economies by linking up to Chicago. Resistence to infrastructure investment that will make these communities good options for suburban Chicago commuting is about the last thing they need.

Evanston and Desplaines to name 2. Morton Grove has had some development at the metra station and has been looking into further development of that area.

And plowing roads. We are having huge financial problems in Chicago including mass transit. Daley can find NO money for CTA. But has found money to keep cars and transportation moving smoothly this winter. So people waiting for the bus will wait twice as long in the blizzards as last year but car snow plowing, nice warm cars, will stay status quo. Before someone goes off on CTA is a seperate...blah blah. Daley....is the mayor of this city and has by far the most power of anyone in Chicago if not in the state of Illinois. His 1st responsibility is to the citizens of Chicago. So if CTA is broke and his citizens are going to get f@ck over then he needs to lead a battle cry to fix funding once and for all.

Well, keeping the streets clear does help the CTA. Buses can't cant move if the cars in front of them don't move either.

Daley's main priority is running the City of Chicago, not the CTA. Keeping the streets clear is a basic city service.

Yes, CTA is vital to keeping the city moving; but its a separate entity, with separate management and separate taxing power through the RTA. Any money the city could afford to shift towards CTA, probably wouldn't be enough to keep all the service going anyway. $90 Million is a lot of money to come up with in a deep recession. Of course if the state had done their responsibilities, we could of gotten rid of seniors ride free and saved $40 million in next year's operating budget.

I should also mention that the projected construction cost for the Illiana with a basic, 4-lane cross-section is $570 million for 24 miles. Apparently, you can't even build 2 miles of elevated CTA rail for that much (see Orange Line extension).

^That Orange Line price is fully-burdened (planning/design/acquisition/construction management) and in YOE dollars, because that's how the New Starts program requires the costs to be discussed. I would guess the Iliana figure (not being part of New Stars, obviously) is construction only, possibly even in 2009 dollars, to sound more politically palatable.

Nope. The numbers were calculated in YOE 2017 dollars, assuming 3.5% inflation, and include construction and right-of-way costs (but not design, study, or the inevitable legal costs). 4-lane freeways through flat rural areas are really cheap. That's why IL, and the rest of the Midwest, has so many of these roads, connecting every city of moderate importance.

Other, higher cost estimates in the study assume a much bigger road, going up to a massive 16-lane cross-section (8 lanes for cars, 8 for trucks). Of course, there's absolutely no need for that. With no surrounding development for miles and only two planned interchanges, almost all of the traffic will be through traffic - all of it drawn from the 4-lane I-65, which encounters few problems with 4 lanes.

I should stress, though, that since the specific alignment has not been nailed down, or even the specific corridor (INDOT study recommended 3 different, 1000-foot-wide corridors). Because of this, land costs are drawn from rough estimates based on the attractiveness of the land to developers, which directly corresponds to the given corridor's proximity tothe urban fringe. Specifically, the study assumed $60,000 per acre for the northernmost corridor, $40,000 for the middle, and $20,000 for the southernmost. Considering that the IL average price per acre of farmland is $2425, those figures seem reasonable. I'm hoping the northernmost corridor will get chosen... it's best positioned to connect with 355, instead of connecting with the Prairie Parkway like the loony Will County planners want. It's also best-positioned to serve the Peotone airport - the other two corridors are even FURTHER south, if that gives you an idea.

^Thanks for the added info.

In other words, the more useful and less speculative the roadway, the more expensive it is. Which suggests to me the fair comparison would be the cost of laying a new heavy rail right-of-way in the middle of cornfields, rather than in a dense urban environment.

Additional sidenote: the transit project costs also include related fleet expansion costs. Not major in the overall project cost, but each railcar does add a couple mil each.

I confess that I'm a little puzzled about what desire line is served by an Illiana Expressway. I think of most of the through truck traffic as coming from the Ohio Turnpike/Indiana Toll Road and continuing north to Wisconsin or west through Iowa. I just don't see them going south on I-65 for 20 miles, then west on a toll road, then back north on I-57 or a 355 extension.

As stated he is the strongest person in this state politically. The CTA is screwed....and has been screwed since even all his years in office. You are telling me there is NO way Daley could have made changes over the years?
Also, he finally got a great CTA head who made fantastic changes with what he had for the system and Daley took him and put him in the schools. Showing that public transportation is not a priority for him and hasn't ever been. Look at the picture from outside in.....it is because people keep looking at how things are that they still are the way they are what with funding and stuff.

I have no issue with money being "found" to pay overtime......I have a problem with Daley and his silence for these two decades. It is his city. He is responsible for keeping it running. Since he cannot and has proven he cannot fix CTA with 2 decades then I suggest we get a person in the mayors office who will make such huge attempts to fix long term funding for the CTA.

My frustration is that CTA has been a problem since I have lived here. Not this one issue in particular.

Traffic continuing through Chicago on 80 or 90 won't use the highway, but trucks coming from 80 or 90 and heading to 57 or 65 (which currently use the Kingery/Borman) would. Since the Kingery/Borman have just been expanded, the real benefits of Illiana will occur by reducing congestion at the "system interchanges" of 80/90/94/65, 94/80, and 294/80.

There's also the possibility of induced growth (obviously...) connected with industrial development along the corridor. If the Peotone airport is developed as a cargo airport, that would free up capacity at O'Hare to handle a greater volume of passenger movements. Around Peotone, it would spur the construction of even more industrial operations than the highway alone. Such an operation would undoubtedly require railroad and highway improvements in the area, as well as improvements to bring workers in and out of the area.

Yes, of course. But the usefulness of the northernmost corridor as opposed to the southernmost is significant, while the cost only increases by about $20 million.

And, if we're going to make fair comparisons, is relieving bus congestion at the Midway terminal really a good use of $500 million? You could just build more bus bays south of 59th for a fraction of the cost. The Illiana, on the other hand, would significantly relieve congestion on a highway that sees about 160,000 vehicles/day, projected at almost 200,000 within a decade. I'd rather see Chicago build half of the Mid-City Transitway as light rail or EMU, which is far cheaper than heavy rail and, if designed properly, nearly the same speed and capacity.

Ardecila and Viva, I just have to mention how glad I am we have you guys around. You're Chicago's de facto transportation experts

A couple articles in the Trib.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...,2437492.story
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...3657428.column
I'd be curious to see the calculation here. Looking at 2007 NTD figures:

Rides: 499 million

Operating Funds Expended: $1.118 billion
Op Cost per ride: $2.24
Source of operating funds: 41% system generated, 27% local, 18% state, 10% federal (preventative maintenance capital dollars), 4% other

Capital funds expended: $641m
Cap cost per ride: $1.28
Source of capital funds: 61% local, 3% state, 36% federal

Total cost per ride: $3.52
Non-federal cost per ride (i.e. fares + local taxes): $2.83

So obviously the capital budget has recently increased due to ARRA and the state capital plan, but I still am having trouble figuring out where they are coming up with a $7+ cost per ride figure from. 2009 is on track to have more rides than 2007, and expenditures surely haven't doubled in that time frame.

Wasn't that sort of his point? The fact that keeping the streets clear is considered a basic city service but keeping transit running isn't considered a basic city service represents a bias/subsidy of cars.

I'm pretty sure this violates basic accounting principles. The capital costs need to be spread over the period in which they help generate revenue.

I mean, you could divide CTA's total expenditure for a year by the number of passengers in that year, but since capital expenditures vary widely depending on the year, and the benefits of a capital expenditure last for many years, it's not a reliable indicator of the average cost per rider.

Even to get to $7/ride that would require some years to have capital plans of several billion dollars, which hasn't happened. Even a rolling average annual capital budget (to smooth out the structural fluctuations), including the assorted 'free' New Starts federal money, would unlikely be more than what, about $700m a year over the past several years?

Also, government agencies don't depreciate their capital assets, so I'm not sure precisely which "fundamental accounting principles" of which you speak are at play. A capital expenditure in 2008 is a capital expenditure in 2008, and so on (though one can play games via bonding and push costs into outyears). Perhaps $7/ride is a hypothetical cost per ride if one assumes a fully-funded capital plan to reach a state of good repair, and then calculates capital expenditures on an accrual basis so that a 'capital cost per ride' can be calculated, but I have trouble seeing the political or philosophical benefit in making that sort of argument at this point in time, let alone saying that building the line extensions bumps the cost per ride to over $9.

The very notion/definition of 'cost per ride' is vague. If one allocates the value of the existing assets and ROW to each rider, ok that would bump the cost, but those are sunk costs. I suppose I just instinctively gravitate towards a marginal cost per rider, since that what's relevant in discussing actual policy options going forward, rather than say assigning a dollar value to the construction of the subway tunnels in the 1940s and extrapolating that out to every ride taken in them ever since.

Sorry to take us off topic, but I was just thinking about something:

Is there a more important mass transit project in the Chicago area than linking downtown with OHare by an express train, if we're trying to prioritize Chicago's central core as a business/job center?

How many corporations based in an office park a mile or two from OHare would have considered locating downtown if downtown/OHare were linked much more efficiently?

I still think it'd be interesting to see them set a $1/fare for everyone, every boarding - no freebies, no transfers. Most people would still pay less for most trips, and I have to believe you'd gain ridership like crazy. Incremental costs on some routes would easily support the added ridership for next to nothing, although it might drive costs higher on others. To be fair, it might be necessary for rail trips to be $2 at rush hour, but I would think this would greatly drive ridership up off-peak.

If you're getting less than $1 per ride anyway, what would they have to lose?

I would bet that you'd actually lose a fair amount of traffic if you killed free transfers. People don't want to pay every time they transfer routes (even if it's just one transfer each way), not to mention that it seems unfair to charge person A traveling 1 mile by bus then 1 mile by rail twice as much as person B travelling 10 miles by rail just because person B had the good fortune to live along the same route as (though farther away from and using more resources) his work. I don't know if you'd pick up enough riders to make up for that loss.

I'm not sure of a better way to do it. Let's say you're building a streetcar line for $120 million, and 40,000 people ride in the first year. Such numbers seem reasonable for a dense Chicago-style city. Your "cost per trip" for that first year is $3000 plus operating and maintenance costs (I dunno, $3?) to form $3003 total. The next year, your cost per rider is only $3.

Using such figures is a gross distortion of the facts, because obviously, spending $3000 of taxpayer money to generate ONE transit trip is absurdly wasteful, and that $3000 will in fact be spread over many transit trips over the useful life of the streetcar line.

Government agencies may not depreciate their assets, but they *still* have to consider the cost of a capital expenditure as providing benefits over a reasonable period of years.

The Tribune's specific numbers may be inaccurate, but their whole concept of calculating some kind of "cost per rider" based on one year's operating and capital spending presents a gravely skewed picture of transit funding.

The CTA obviously has a huge backlog of capital needs that must be taken care of, and these costs lead to CTA spending a reliably large sum on capital needs each year. But these are still one-time costs spent for various improvements throughout the system, and the benefits of the spending extend beyond merely the year in which they were recorded, with the total benefits to the rider only increasing as time goes on due to the system's quality improving.

A perfect example is fleet replacement. Buses have an expected life of 14 years, IIRC, with a major overhaul at 7 and minor repairs at 3.5 and 10.5. So you consider the cost of a bus purchase, per rider, as the total cost divided by the riders who ride those buses over 14 years, not over 1 year.

^That's what I was getting at with using a rolling average annual capital cost that would cover the basic asset replacement cycle, but frankly CTA's annual capital budgets haven't varied too wildly other than being on the low side after Illinois FIRST expired in 2005 while being a bit buoyed by federal New Starts funds since 2001 and later by bond issues.

Of course cost per ride can be a useful metric, but it has to be defined well, just like revenue per ride. (e.g. a more informative breakout of revenue per ride, would be revenue per ride of paying customers, excluding all free riders. For cost, there should be an operating/maintenance cost per ride and a capital cost per ride, the former being tangible and easy to define (allocate the labor and material costs over the year, generally), the latter being much more nebulous and open for debate. In terms of fixed assets, how do you propose to allocate the 'costs' of a 100 year old bus garage, or the 'cost per ride' of having added elevators to Granville station in the early 1980s? In terms of non-fixed assets, how do you propose to allocate the cost of a bus or railcar whose retirement date and service life are unknown? In the private sector, the depreciation period is defined by accounting standards, so the decision is made for you. Ultimately, my point is all you really have to go on as absolute known quantities are actual capital expenditures, which you can control for annual fluctuations via moving average or other such trending techniques. As a CTA asset ages, there is no expense accrued, as there would be the private sector. It just ages - with the money having been spent eons ago.

We could get into even more wonkish discussions about allocating future debt service incurred by Huberman's bond issues in 2008, but that's sort of beside the main point: my gripe is more that the Trib's reporting either 1) raises more questions than it answers for savvier folk, or 2) gives a misleading impression of transit economics to the less-savvy.

sidenote: this is not to say I don't favor prioritizing capital investments by maximizing cost efficiency, i.e. maximum rider benefit per dollar spent, which has an implicit per-ride value allocation. However, that's separate from saying it "costs CTA $7 per ride" which most people would interpret to mean that to provide 500 million annual rides requires CTA to spend $3.5billion each year.

But I dont' think you're thinking this through.

Current 1-transfer pricing = $2.25 fare + $.25 transfer = $2.50

My proposed $1 for any boarding 1-transfer trip = $1 first leg + $1 second leg = $2

Who in their right mind is going to whine about saving 20% for that trip? The majority of the cost for the CTA is for boardings. Stations cost a lot to build and staff, bus stops slow trips and have some infrastructure cost and increase wear and tear and fuel use. Why shouldn't every boarding have a higher cost? Especially if two boardings still cost less than one boarding currently does? While maybe one could dither about two vs. one for convenience reasons, there is no rational argument to keep three boardings costing less than one, regardless of how long one boarding might carry you.

Eh... I see no problem having wonkish discussions, especially in the absence of any ACTUAL transit news, and in the wake of a Trib article discussing (and misrepresenting) what are apparently complex funding issues. Of course, I'm pretty sure nobody else cares, so it's basically you just explaining CTA policy to me.

You're right that some capital projects are hard to allocate, but I'm pretty sure CTA has enough detailed ridership data to do a good approximation of the cost per rider - it's the service life of the improvement that's the kicker. Getting a prediction of the service life is possible if you take a statistical approach, but it's definitely not worth the amount of analysis that requires.

soo... tonight I used the bus tracker for the first time. What a brilliant program. I was with a friend and was going to catch a bus to go home. I always just show up whenever and wait for a bus. Tonight I thought I'd use the bustracker. Estimated time of arrival for the next and all to each stop! A map of where the busses are at. So I trusted it and got to the bus stop about 1 minute before it was due to arrive. And guess what, it worked. Otherwise if I just showed up I would have had to wait 12 minutes. What I have been missing out on all this time?

You must own a car? As a public transportation rider for almost 25 years now People who live by public transportation think in a conveyor belt sort of way....not getting from point A to B.

Example.....

Walk to Peterson Target (could take western and peterson bus), pick up item A, hit the Peterson bus to Western to Lawrence and get off at Damen to pick up something at CVS, walk two blocks to Sears pick up the lawn mower crap then hit the Lawrence bus to the broadway bus get off at addison and mow the lawn at Church. No A to B there.

it really is amazing how well it works. EVERY now and then, it doesn't. the bus will be leaving right as you get there. sucks. but far far far superior to the former system of leaving and praying

^^^ Well just to be sure, I always head down about 4 min early for a bus, so I have about a 2 min buffer to get outside and across the street in case the bus is a touch early.

I haven't owned a car in ten years.

Let's break down your trip in current cost for cash fares. Peterson bus to Western ($2.25). Western bus to Lawrence ($.25). Lawrence bus to Damen ($0). Lawrence bus to Broadway ($2.25). Broadway bus to Addison ($.25). TOTAL, assuming all transfers were within their respective 2-hour windows: $5 ($4.50 if you used a card) If you add in the "could take Western and Peterson bus" to get to the Target, your cost jumps to $7.25 ($6.50 if you used a card).

In a land where every boarding costs $1? Five boarding in your trip = $5. Seven boardings, using the "could take Western and Peterson bus" example boosts the cost to $7, saving you $.25 over current cash pricing schemes. It would be a relatively moderate price increase compared to current card fares, but the CTA really should be allowed to raise fares slightly right now anyway, rather than reduce service. Overall, I think this would probably cost most users about the same or only in the range of 5% to 10% more than their monthly costs now.

If you're going to criticize an idea, at least come up with counter-examples that actually support your critique. Your example actually supports my assertion that $1/ride pricing wouldn't cost average full-fare riders much more than they currently pay. Some trips would cost more, many trips would cost less, and many more trips would become attractive because of the pricing. Plus, it wouldn't be all bad for those who really work transfers, because for a 1-transfer trip, their costs would actually be lower AND they wouldn't have the stress of trying to meet a 2-hour window on trips where using that first transfer will come close to the cutoff. 2-transfer trips will cost more, but 20% more for 2-transfer trips really isn't outrageous considering the cost reduction for short or well-aligned trips.

^I'm intrigued by your idea concept.

No, because CTA is not owned by the City of Chicago, but streets are. The city has an obligation to maintain them, and the citizenry gets really pissed when they are not cleared in the winter. Last winter would be a prime example, as Mayor Daley ordered the department of Streets and Sanitation to not clear most streets during snowfall, but wait until the storm has passed in order to save money for the bleak budget outlook in 2009. People went ballistic, I remember watching a 1+ hour bitch fest on CLTV in which people called in to just complain about difficulties in getting around. And as mentioned, if the traffic can't move on snow clogged streets; neither can buses which provide 2/3 of the transit trips.

Yes, running transit is essential to keeping the city moving; but its under the purview of CTA, not City of Chicago. However, the city does provide some subsidy to the agency:
-$3 million per year in operational funds
-~$22 million per year in security services provided by the Chicago Police Department.
-Chicago Department of Transportation is rebuilding all subway stations in the state street subway, and is spending $67 million on the rebuild of Grand/State. CDOT is responsible for stations on the Milwaukee-Dearborn-Congress subway on the blue line and downtown stations on the elevated structure.
-TIF money has been used and is being sought for capitol improvements on the system. The new station at Morgan/Lake was supposed to use them before grant money was found. The new ties and running rail on the Lake and Wabash legs of the Loop were partially funded by the Central Loop TIF.

-The city's Real Estate Transfer tax funnels money into the CTA pension fund.

Could more money flow from the city towards CTA?
Generally, I would like to see that happen. More TIF funds should be used for capitol improvements, but I don't know if they can be legally used to subsidize operations. I honestly do not know of any other revenue sources that the city could use to fund operational expenses of the CTA in a time when the city is facing a massive deficit and is cutting back its own services.

Has Mayor Daley traditionally been a bit too quiet on transit issues? Generally, yes; and I understand the animosity towards him because of that. In the past though he has stood up for the agency in the midnight hour of budget crises.

I myself have been car free four nearly four years, and have been a daily transit user for 8 years. I rely on this service like many other people for every trip I make that cannot be completed on foot or bike.


Generally, every transit agency in the nation is feeling the same pressure in this recession, and have had funding issues before the economy went off a cliff. Phoenix and Pittsburgh for example have made massive system wide cuts. Granted, Chicago is much greater caliber of a city then those two, but we have been doing pretty well in not slashing service. And the service reductions proposed really aren't too bad at all. Yes, it sucks that we have to make any reductions at all, but this will be tolerable to the majority of the population. And quite frankly, in the long run it will save the agency some money by running fuller buses in the off-peak, maintaining a pension fund for fewer employees, and maintaining one less bus garage. The Archer Garage is quite large could be sold to a developer or a business.

Its fantastic. It was the biggest factor as to why I purchased an iPhone, because I can create application buttons for my most used bus stops and pull them up when I am on the train or leaving home and determine the best place to board a bus, make a transfer or just jump in a cab. It has been a major time saver.

Boston, 500,000 people, gives the MBTA $75 million a year vs. Chicago, 3 million people, the above bolded.

I don't know about how many corporations would be based downtown rather than O'Hare... Many of them have offices in both places, like CareerBuilder, but the convention business definitely takes a hit. And any express service to O'Hare that doesn't include McCormick would be a travesty.

haha that was my first thought. Time to stop getting the free phones.