not so fast. senate needs to approve it, too. if they do, i will be absolutely elated. this gives me hope:

Link, Springfield State Journal Register

i know that sullivan, head of the downstate democratic caucus, voted against the measure in the senate last time, and that he will be voting for it this time around, per the article and a call i just placed to his springfield office.

true but the senate is suppose to me more supportative than the house and it passed the house easily it looks.

edit:
when does the senate vote on it?

haha, found this comment:

For once let Cook county solve there own problems instead of robbing down state of funds needed badly elsewere

Ummm, I think this is the entitlement mentality going on.

Taxes are to be only raised in metro Chicago, NOT downstate, and downstate actually gets millions a year from metro Chicago in this bill. Free money, yet they still bitch. Jesus Christ.

Poor transit doesn't just embarrass Cook County, it embarrasses all of Illinois. Some nitwits just don't understand that.

the trib threads on transit stories are bad enough, so i don't even bother with the belligerently ignorant opinions of downstaters on this issue.

as for when the senate vote happens, i have no idea, but i am on tenterhooks. i can't take this anymore, but i've been trying to do whatever i can in terms of calling legislators, the governor and sending out mass emails to my friends and family.

*fingers crossed*

They're voting right now....

Mass-transit crisis averted; lawmakers pass funding bill

Link, Chicago Tribune

phew ...

now i don't have to move heh heh.

julie hamos for sainthood.

Julie Hamos for governor.

Woohoo!

despite blago's best efforts, this thing actually passed. i cannot believe it.

i wish our state had re-call like california so we could kick this douche bag out on his ass.

worst. governor. ever.

What was his plan (aside from the stupid free-for-seniors thing)? Why was there disagreement in the first place?

i actually wrote something to that effect to her office after it passed and before blago nearly screwed the whole thing up. i said i wasn't a constituent (rep greg harris), but she has my email address if she ever needs a volunteer for any of her campaigns.

well, this state did the right thing, finally. reading the trib comments board is staggeringly painful, and i hope it is more to do with franklin's "here comes the orator! with his flood of words and drop of reason," than a representation of the area's intellect. however, in the end, when it came down to it, this state, region and city, did what they should in funding mass transit, which is not a given in this country.

now for that $10B for the rta ...

"close corporate tax loopholes," was his mantra over the summer fall, and i never heard him name one example. of course, one of his babies is the tax break/loophole for film companies that has seen an uptick in movies made here. as hamos said in rebuttal, 'one man's loophole, is another man's business ... development ... opp ..." i don't remember what she said, but it was good.

Left work and just got home to this.

a saying stolen from one of our favorite forumers-sarcasm
bangin

well, halelujahh!

since the "senior" makeup on the CTA probably isn't entirely significant (compared to other age groups), the only immediate pain the CTA will feel from the passing of this bill is zero revenue from them. But if the funding bill already accounted for the loss of the current senior revenue, then fine. and in that case, the only real cost the CTA will see is from a quicker wearing down of their trains and buses. But thats incredibly hard to track down any kind of numbers on.

Overall, the bill having passed, I don't mind seniors riding free, and I don't think anyone else does either. those "against seniors" before the bill was passed were probably just against that aspect because it decreased the likelihood of the bill passing.

uhm, i guess i'll do one of those :banana: things

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/...1/34794577.jpg
Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston), sponsor of the Chicago-area mass-transit funding bill, is congratulated by Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston) after the Illinois House passed the bill that includes free rides for senior citizens. (Tribune photo by Charles Osgood / January 17, 2008)

Link

heh heh, look how relieved she looks.

thank god. i thought it was mighty silent on his part ...

Doomsday averted!

Governor Rod R. Blagojevich today commended the General Assembly for accepting his improvements to a long-term mass transit funding bill that provides free public transportation to Illinois seniors. The CTA, Metra and Pace had planned for drastic service cuts, fare hikes, and layoffs if no solution was passed by Sunday.

http://www.illinois.gov/

jackass.

Don't the free rides for seniors still leave them with a $25 million budget hole from the lost ticket sales?

The Trib mentions that a second bill will come around limiting the eligibility for free rides based on income. So we're shifting from a huge budget hole to a small one with less public and legislative interest.

Yippie!

Now I don't have to worry about having my fabulous transit lifestyle CANNED if I move to Chicago. Great as hell news on so many levels...

FIRST, PRAISE BE THAT THIS DAMN THING PASSED

Second,

Agreed, and I'm a hardcore Democrat.

It's still possible for a recall provision to placed on the 2008 ballot. If that's done, a special election could be called after the election, early 2009, provided that Blag isn't grandfathered.

That's the first tidbit I've seen on funding the seniors, and that's a lot more promissing. There's no reason the baby boomers buying million dollar condos need free rides. Target the funding to the poor where it's most needed.

But if Blago's true to form, he'll probably fight a sensible compromise like that too.

Do we have any idea of the potential upgrades to the transit if we win the olympic bid?

From Chicago's Olympic application:

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/6...cture23my0.png

The short answer is that Olympic bid may, at most, accelerate the progress of the various transportation proposals that are already in the pipeline, that will possibly happen regardless of a successful Olympic bid. R/O/Y Line extensions, Circle Line, STAR line, and the downtown BRT system (apparently when Bush was in town, Daley specifically plugged the Circle Line as an important project, presumably joining in laying the groundwork to get some earmark funding in the next transportation bill).

I haven't heard anything new about the West Loop Transportation Center in a long time (over a year perhaps), which always struck me (in conjunction with the downtown BRT/LRT circulator) as the single most important mega-project in tying the region's transit systems together. Speculation, but it seems possible that with rising construction costs, the project got so absurdly expensive that it's on hold for now. Unless someone from CDOT or Transystems wants to chime in otherwise...

Any Olympic-specific transit service (express buses, typically) would probably be short-term contracted service; the extent of permanent improvements in this regard could be things like bus lanes or signal priority (e.g. down King Drive to connect the Village with the Stadium, something heading west like on Roosevelt to connect to the Aquatic Center, etc.), but at this point that's speculative.

I thought Daley was plugging the Mid-City Line, which is his baby like the Circle Line was Kruesi's.

I don't think any of the proposed projects would make a tremendous impact on Olympic visitors, except the Airport Express. Most Olympic visitors are gonna be flying into O'Hare or Midway, where they are served by the Blue/Orange Lines and America's 2nd-largest taxi fleet, which gets them to their downtown hotels.

The vast majority of the venues are clustered around downtown, so the R/O/Y extensions do little to serve them. The Mid-City line won't serve any concentrations of hotels or businesses and won't go downtown. The Circle Line may help people get from Douglas Park to Lincoln Park, but that's a limited benefit (unless it is extended from the Orange to the South Side Green Line).

The only proposal that would make a big impact on the Games is the Grey Line, and that's not even official. I bet Metra will do some sort of service increase and refurb on the Electric Line, though.

Basically, all of the official proposals are designed to ease commutes and trips for city residents, by allowing better, faster connections and fostering lifestyles that are more transit-oriented. Not many will help Olympic visitors.

.......it's so nice to see this forum finally going back to talking about real transit issues again !! ..........I was so sick of funding discussions ! :yes: :tup:

Here's a question, and this is specifically directed towards some of our more transit-savvy forumers (ahem, Viva :) )

With the newly passed Bill, the RTA has been given more power and oversight over Chicago area transit. What does this mean and how should we expect this to impact transit planning/services over the next few years?

Right. To the extent they are accelerated by the Olympic bid, it would only be because of the diversion of more federal and state capital dollars in the general direction of Chicago.

..

^ Great PR on the part of the CTA. Days after a tax hike to fund operations goes through, they are asking for billions of dollars for infrastructure repairs. They could have at leasted waited a few weeks.

^So when Hilkevitch called to ask about the problem of capital funding, what should the CTA have responded?

It hasn't exactly been a secret that the RTA and CTA have claimed that they need billions to be in a good state of infrastructure health and I warnings have been made even before the operational budget battles really geared up.
It was more a case of a reporter who knows that the transit crises isn't exactly over and just doing a follow up piece to tell an unaware public that there is more drama and debate on where to find revenue likely to come. It wasn't the CTA or RTA that came and held a press conference but the more the public understands what bad shape our systems are in the better.

....just like Metra's great PR of announcing they were going through with an immediate fare hike even if new funds were approved.

It came out over a year ago that the CTA needed $6 billion alone for updating the CTA infrastructure. The article is just reminding Chicagoland area that only part of the problem has been solved. Surprised anyone who every paid attention to Chicago happenings would have forgotten about this fact.

Once Chicago gets the Olymics ( which im sure it will ), youll get the funding neccessary to upgrade most of your trnasit services. Vanouver got the 2010 Winter Olymics and it just got 14 billion dollars for trnasit upgrades, including 1500 new busses which would more than double the amount of busses it has now. ( and thats only covering about 1.5 billion out of 14 billion ).

BTW... Good luck in getting the olympics. :)

I believe Vancouver is in Canada, which is not terribly relevant to predicting what will happen in US politics.

^Understatement of the century, especially if it's concerning transit priorities and funding.

Edit:

I'm a Chicago 2016 booster as much as the next guy, but even I'm not sure we have it in the bag, or are even close to having it in the bag. Our competition is nothing to laugh at.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/transpo...12308.article#

Plasma screens coming to 'L' car near you

January 23, 2008
BY MONIFA THOMAS

The CTA board agreed this morning to add a few features to 406 new L cars the transit agency has ordered — including plasma screens that will flash real-time travel information, seats that are supposed to be stain- and odor-proof and live video feeds that are sent to train operators during emergencies.

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/9...1231440sk8.jpg
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/8...0080123td7.jpg
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/2...0860282fu6.jpg
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/6...0080123gf6.jpg
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/1...0080123go4.jpg
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/6...0080123ji7.jpg

^ uhm.............really?

really??? thats what they're gonna look like?!

Looks like there is a lot less seating in these cars than the current ones. I'm not in favor of anything that reduces seating. I don't want to be stuck standing for the lengthy commute to/from the loop. I want to be able to sit down and read, or sleep, or just relax a bit.

Where the hell are the plasma screens in those renderings?

It doesn't reduce seating. I know it's hard to believe, but aisle-facing seating doesn't reduce seating over the current configurations. I know that seems against common sense, but side-by-side seats are actually very inefficient users of space, with fixed allotments for legroom that are too much for some and not enough for others. Aisle-facing seats have adjustable legroom and invite more people into the car, which increases total capacity considerably without reducing the number of seats.

Besides, a mass transit service needs to put capacity ahead of a rider's ability to sleep or relax. :-)

Believe it or not, the CTA is actually planning for a net increase in the number of seats. According to chicago-l.org, the number of seats will go from 39 to 40 per car on the new cars. The longitudinal seating just brings you closer to other people.

If the existing capacity is fine, then I say keep the transverse seating. Orange, Green, Pink, and Yellow Line trains don't have any sort of problems with capacity; they don't need the extra room. I hope CTA will reassign the 3200-series cars (with transverse seating) to those 4 lines, and then let Blue, Red, Brown, and Purple have the newest 5000-series cars with more capacity, since those 4 lines need it.

i just cant wait for some bum to sprawl himself on 5+ seats

I guess photos are deceiving. The ones posted on here of the new cars look like they have a big decrease in seating. Good to hear that's not the case.

I must say I am VERY surprised to see the CTA propose actual interesting design features for these cars. Especially since the last I heard—and I believe we had a design discussion over it—was that the new cars would look identical to the 3200 series. What is most intriguing to me however is this exterior "pizzazz" that is being considered for the front of the cab car. While I would have preferred this accent molding to be black or perhaps white(iPod anyone?), overall I'm digging it—I'm liking the rounded bottom design more though because the second one looks very similar to the IRT cars running in NY.

I'm just excited that they're trying. This is exactly what I've always complained about. I use this as evidence that the CTA does actually realize that, at least when it comes to the appearance of its rolling stock, that may other world systems have got 'em beat. And while these are essentially a 3200 with a new fancy face and a slicked out interior, that's actually a huge step. Good for the CTA!

Not necessarily, but the contract authorizes a change order to include an industrial design that could potentially lead to a more modern look than a clone of the 3200s, which was the original plan.

in re: seating capacity, the longitudinal seating, while less comfortable for seated riders, opens up ALOT more standing room. And anyone who rides the Brown, Red, or Blue lines in the AM peak knows that CTA trains need all the room they can get to cram people in.

Orange gets some pretty crazy loads (approaching what Brown gets, if only for about a 15-30 minute period) in the PM peak leaving Adams/Wabash, but its still on a pretty long headway (~5 minutes). Regardless, getting a bonus 10-15% increase in capacity is a no-brainer on a full system for which capacity expansion (which would otherwise involve some combination of longer trains or more frequent service) would be cost prohibitive.

Why is there a PATH map above the door of this one?

And why does this rendering look suspiciously like the new PATH cars from the PA website?

http://www.panynj.gov/CommutingTrave.../new_cars.html
http://www.nj.com/hobokennow/index.s..._unveiled.html