focus your efforts on senate bill 572. the above budget does not mean that there will be no money for the cta, though it would have been nice to find 400 million goddam dollars in a $59 billion budget.

write the governor. he backed down on his promise to veto pay increases for government workers including the legislature, tell him that if we can find money for a few hundred select people, we need the money for the 2 million people who take the rta (1.5 of which are on the cta) every weekday.

Link to Below Text, Lake County News-Sun

Senate Bill 572 was crafted in a lengthy bipartisan effort to address public transportation funding shortfalls and the need to finance congestion-easing road improvements in the collar counties.

Introduced by state Rep. Julie Hamos, D-Evanston, and co-sponsored by state Rep. Sid Mathias, R-Buffalo Grove, and Kathy Ryg, D-Vernon Hills, the bill was not passed prior to last week's budget adoption, but officials still hope it will be approved this year.

Senate Bill 572 would provide long-term revenue for public transportation and significant road improvement projects to address traffic congestion.

write julie hamos in support, write madigan to support it, write tom cross, senate republican leader to support it (remember to write top-ranking republicans, they will be needed), and write governor blagojevich, no matter what you think of him.

I don't see it necessary at all. Its not as if the bus takes a long time on LSD to begin with. However, there needs to be some way to put a few bus lanes on Michigan. If you're trying to get to the Loop from say, Foster and Sheridan, it takes 10 minutes on the drive, but 15 minutes to just get to Michigan and Wacker from the Michigan ave exit.

Agreed, LSD usually flows smoothly. Basically there are a few key bottleneck points that should be addressed that don't require a huge bus lane investment. Michigan Ave. is one. The exit to Belmont from LSD NB is another biggie. Foster could also use some work. Otherwise, nothing too big.

Regardless, it's nice to finally see Daley telling CDOT to be mindful and thoughtful of transit concerns.

^ Yeah, while he sits mum on service cuts and fare increases

He has been vocal about the CTA and schools being the most important issues the state had to deal with this year, but that was back in May last I heard about it (i.e. when the state should have been dealing with it).

Though, I am always tempted to snark about Daley's obsession with Chicago being an eco/green-friendly city when for most of his tenure City Hall has showed relatively little interest in promoting and improving public transit, an obvious and much more effective way of addressing green concerns (improving air quality, reducing oil consumption, reducing sprawl, efficient land use etc) as opposed to a few square feet of green roof and some marked bike lanes on Elston Ave.

^ You've gotta wonder if this is simply a generational bias, ie a flaw of his generation that simply turned its back on transit and embraced the auto, and something that he's simply not willing to understand. I'm guessing that Daley has had plenty of 'education' to the contrary from his numerous visits to other cities with better transit system, so in that sense I'm really not sure what gives.

Whatever..

While it is telling that he doesn't seem to ever personally use transit, I think the mindset that's a problem is the idea that transit funding comes from other levels of government, and isn't something within his control. Capital, and until recently, operating money came from Washington thanks to Lipinski and other well-connected congressmen. And the rest came from Springfield. I don't think he wants anyone to discover--much less discuss--the paltry $3 million the city gives to CTA annually. And I don't think he wants anyone to start thinking of TIF as a way to finance transit.

^^^
So the City is only spending $3,000,000 on the State Street Subway station? Wow that is a great deal we are getting!

True?
 

The city only spends 3M? If this is true I have little sympathy for them not getting much from the state. I think it is fair the whole state helps pay but not just pays for it.

^ I think the state should pay for it. Chicago IS Illinois. Where do you think all that tax revenue comes from?

A well-oiled, well-running Chicago is critical to the state, end of story. Otherwise, Illinois is just another Iowa.

The suburbs have an enormous job base and are certainly economically independent, but they are part of the 'Chicago Metro' which I view as one large unit that simply should not be tampered with by the powers-that-be who depend on such tax revenue to run the whole Prarie State.

And lets not forget the hundreds of thousands of well-paid suburban professionals who use Metra every day

RTA (CTA/Metra/Pace) actually get close to nothing from the State budget for operations, rather the state simply authorizes the sales tax (which is only collected in Cook (1%) and the collar counties (.25%) to be directed to the RTA. CTA is only funded out of the portion from Cook County. So people downstate aren't subsidizing CTA a damn bit. Also, the city does pay about $20 million per year for the Chicago police transit detail, as well as the few dozen million they've been spending lately on capital improvements in the downtown subway stops. So it's not like they don't contribute any money, though one can make the argument that its relatively small compared to many other major systems.

The only time state money comes into play is on the large capital spending side, where of course the Chicago region subsidizes downstate (and in a broader sense, Illinois and most other blue states subsidize the sparsely-populated red states in the hinterland)

ah ha.
 

Viva thanks for clearing that up, I was having trouble grasping how so little could have come from the populace of Chicago.

To anyone who knows a lot about how everything is funded, do you have any plans that you know or thought of that would be an effective way to fund the RTA and the CTA? I'm very interested in this issue, and as a Metra user, a little concerned..
Thanks

I believe state income tax is the fairest tax and most related to ability to pay and to the employment that relies on good public transportation and urban density. The problem is, I doubt that the state constitution allows the income tax to be different for Chicago, Cook County, and Downstate in the same way that sales taxes can vary. Locally collected income taxes are not nearly as efficient, and I think are forbidden by the current constitution.

Regular sales taxes are regressive and unrelated to transit (they're largely from car dealers and big box stores, which benefit little from transit). Gas taxes appeal to carhaters because they have a strong element of "punishing the sinner." But a closer look shows that they are terribly regressive and unfair to blue-collar workers who don't have the luxury of working in convenient office buildings near the train terminals.

The Georgists like to posit the single land tax as the answer to all questions, but I think their view of what creates land value (transportation access) is hopelessly one-dimensional and mired in the 19th century. Land value is today determined far more by proximity to rich people than proximity to transportation, which is fairly ubiquitous in the automobile age.

Here's two of those sparsely-populated "red states" us "blue state" folk are supporten...http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/imag...s/rolleyes.gif

http://www.saddlemt.com/Florida%20St...e%20Magnet.jpg

Population: 18,000,000

http://www.saddlemt.com/Pennsylvania...e%20Magnet.jpg

Population: 12,500,000

Rant:
The whole red state/blue state identity thing is one of the more dishonorable developments in American political history and I don't think most of the public who loves to label entire states as backward, right wing, intolerant, xenophobic or whatever don't realize the notion they are putting forth: that of a broken, selfish and polarized country.

pennsylvania went blue the last two elections. also, cal, ny and il, 3 of the 5 most populous states went blue in the last two elections. add pa, and it is 4 of the top 6 most populous states. what is your argument, and do you really want to compare per capita incomes of blue states to red states??

have at it, friend.

edit for help, friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Househo...ncome_by_state

have you ever really travelled the u.s.?? really?? the difference is evident the moment you cross over to kentucky or missouri. once you get to alabama, where my liberal mother is from, but where her neo-con family and "spiritual cousins" live, the more conspicuous the difference. hell, just spot the difference on the california and nevada sides of tahoe.

sorry to harp on an off-topic post, but the ignorance of people like busy bee (not even bothering to double-check that pa went blue in '00 and '04 -- and, uh hum, fla in '00, too, natch) pisses me right off, mate, to quote mike skinner.

un-united country?? sorry, but your post is so silly i have to come back to that line. what makes this country great is that it is and always will be an "un-united" country.

anyways, off to the off-topic forum, dittohead.

Polarized is a word that more accurately describes my sentiment. It really was just a reactionary post. At this point I hope someone will just move or delete it so it won't get picked apart by people like yourself.http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/images/smilies/tup.gif

^ Busy Bee,

In fairness, my post did specifically mention the Red States in the hinterland.....implying the likes of Wyoming, Nevada, Montana, Alaska, etc. Texas and Florida would generally be excluded from this generalization. But I don't think a single blue state gets consistently substantially more transportation money than it pays in, most of them are donor states (I'll have to find the exact stats to be sure though).

Iowa (a swing state) also falls under the category of being subsidized by the rest of us, though they still swing because both Democrats and Republicans generally fall all over eachother to see who can propose the biggest farm subsidy (the recent one that just passed was about $40 billion

My broader point is that Reds/Republicans are often just fine and dandy with subsidization, which they often rail against, as long as it is them or their interests being subsidized; this is relevent to the local discussion because of DuPage county, who gets much transit service provided than they pay to RTA in sales taxes, and subsequently demand that the suburbs get over 50% of any additional transit operating funds despite CTA providing 80% of the transit rides in the region.

Could the RTA ever agree to a funding formula that allocated $3.00 per boarding plus $0.15 per passenger-mile (or whatever)? The idea would be to get past the ceaseless feuding over more rides vs. longer rides and instead feud about where to get the money in the first place.