Well, the Trib has repeatedly shown itself to be provincial and myopic in my opinion. And I don't understand why - it's better journalism to put things in proper context for people and when you're in the news business you have so much access to so much news and information that to ignore that and write provincially is a sign of either stupidity (and I dont' think the Trib staff is stupid) or just supreme arrogance (which seems to fit better).

Looking around, no newspaper can afford to be arrogant, and I actually think the Trib has been doing better lately - although it may be too little, too late - I guess we'll know soon enough.

The Trib has pretty thoroughly hung its fortunes on attracting conservatives who fled Chicago for the suburbs decades ago and don't remember exactly why but are sure it had something to do with things being screwed up in city government. (The Trib's poster child for this demographic is of course John Kass.) The paper exists to vilify every person and agency that has little to do with the problems Chicago faces and ignore the ones that do. The CTA is an incredibly easy whipping boy because nobody will stand up for it, and reversing course on the CTA now would be awkward for the paper since they've invested so much credibility in ripping it up, so the Trib can go on pretending that it's Chicago's second biggest scourge... next to pitbulls.

^^^ I think they also like to generate CTA stories for the Red Eye, since those stories appeal to that rag's readers. The only time I read the Red Eye is when it has an article about the CTA on the front page.

I'm not sure why we should encourage a system where literally 80% of your fare goes towards people's pensions and not actual infrastructure. The CTA has become a massive 401K and I'm happy the Trib continues to expose that. Not sure why they have to run only positive stories about a system that is totally mismanaged. I mean isn't the whole point to eventually have a world class system here?

^Well, there's the small problem that the state constitution says that public pension systems can't be abrogated. That's why the teachers unions were so adamant about fighting a con-con last fall.

And all of your Chicago property tax levy goes to support pensions and debt service, not wages. So? Pension/retirement benefits are part of the overall compensation offered to an public employee when hired; I'm not sure why the retirement benefits should be considered so distinctly from wages/salaries. Paying into a pension fund is a labor operating expense, too.

...this is not even getting into how most CTA employees saw take-home pay and taxable income decrease over the past several years due to employee benefits contributions more than doubling and the lack of cost-of-living increases due to the repeated doomsdays.

To the extent there is mismanagement/waste/corruption on a large scale ('large scale' meaning significant dollar amounts - a couple cronies at $90k/year, while certainly annoying, hardly bankrupt a public agency with an annual operating budget over $1bn), look to the public pension boards themselves, the management companies they hire, the firms they invest in, and so on.

VivaLFuego, this brings up a good point. Can anyone fill us in on the standard number of years the City and/or the CTA require employees to work before being allowed to collect pensions?

I don't know what it is off the top of my head, but if it is like most public entities, I'm sure it is short. Perhaps the answer is extending the number of years. It seems to me that city jobs pay pretty well, compared to the rest of the market, and that one of the benefits of working for the city/cta was that while you did not necessarily make a ton of cash, the trade off was for an early retirement with good pension. If that is the case, then it seems these employees are getting it good from both sides. Right?

I'm not trying to stir up drama here, just trying to make sense of the 80% going to pensions...:koko:

I'd be with you if the Trib was actually exposing the true cost of the pension system, putting it in context of the entire CTA budget and reporting on the long term costs. They don't. They just complain, call budget shortfalls "doomsdays" and generally provoke the public rather than informing them. Their reporting around transit funding issues is very one dimensional, provocative and biased.

And about those pensions: don't you think that if the CTA/city could, they'd just stop paying into those pension funds? They are a HUGE drain on their budget and I'm sure they'd be glad to use that money for other purposes. Small problem, though: they are legally obligated to keep paying in (as Mr. Downtown pointed out). Until the city, state and unions can work out a feasible long term solution to the pension problem, these issues will persist.

Blaming the CTA for the issue demonstrates a pretty limited understanding of the roots of the problem, IMO.

The truth is, we don't know how FUBAR the operating budget is, because the CTA isn't required to publish its budget particulars.

I agree…blaming the CTA for its pension problem is completely shortsighted. We should blame the newspaper instead!!!

Chicago has no history of city employees being in bed with the unions. I doubt they would ever fathom getting kickbacks for making sure the pension programs are fat and happy!

/sarcasm

It varies among the various agencies, each of which have their own employment contracts and retirement plans: City, Police, Fire, Transit, Schools, etc. Generally speaking, you "vest" in the pension, meaning you are eligible to receive pension benefits upon retirement, after between 5-11 years of employment (CTA is 11, FYI). However, with so few years, your pension benefits will be very low. Most pensions max out sometime around 25-35 years of employment, i.e. at that point you will reach the maximum possible percentage rate of your average salary over the final few years of employment (generally in the 65-75% range). Different pensions also have different minimum ages, before which you can't receive any pension benefits. CTA used to have none - but has since been raised to 55 and later I think to 60. Other funds are similar - generally between 55 and 60.

One of the killers for CTA's budget was retiree health benefits, with people qualifying to receive them after a relatively low number of years and getting very generous coverage. This was one of the major things fixed after the most recent doomsday/bailout cycle, with a reduction in retiree health benefits and increased employee contributions to a retiree health care fund - and more years of employment required to qualify.

Other various differences between pensions: I believe the CTA pension has a 6% employee contribution, but CTA employees still pay social security taxes as well. In contrast, Police/Fire/Teachers I think have in the 9-12% employee contribution range, except they don't pay a social security tax (nor will they receive social security benefits). Each one is different due to a series of historical peculiarities. But the generous ~75% of final salary received by Police/Fire/Teachers is important to consider in the context of their having not paid/received social security, as well, in contrast to CTA.

I think Taft hits the main point: these issues, generally, aren't a result of 'management' - 'management' of public agencies simply operate within the parameters set by elected officials. Sometimes the problem is indeed poor management, but sometimes the problem is structural: the result of laws, statutes, regulations, arbitration - that is to say, politics.

Well, in city government you can't get merit-based raises or merit-based bonuses (or bonuses at all...), unreliable/inconsistent cost-of-living raises, and a general expectation that your take-home pay will be somewhat but not drastically less than private sector (perhaps 80%, with the exception of certain professions like Law where you're probably make half or less than your private-sector counterparts). In 'exchange,' historically, public employees could look forward to comfortable retirement and health benefits, and job security. They still have the former, but public sector's aura of job security has basically evaporated over the past decade as almost all Chicago-area public agencies have substantially smaller ranks than they did 5-7 years ago (with the exception of the Federal government)

I'm asking you to take a step back and ask "what CAUSED the pension problem?" You seem very quick to lay this at the feet of the CTA (or the CTA's management), but have you ever stopped to think about how much control the agency or its management has over expenditures such as pensions?

As Viva very effectively laid out above (and I believe you alluded to), politics plays a HUGE part in how these pensions have been setup and how much money the various agencies are REQUIRED to pay into them. Blaming CTA management for an expense they have no control over is just plain silly.

And if you think I'm blaming the papers for any of this, you have serious reading comprehension issues. All I am saying is that the papers rarely get into WHY the CTA has funding issues, focusing on sensationalism like "doomsday scenarios" instead. Such shoddy reporting does little to inform the public about the very real issues facing the CTA (and any other public agency). Can you really argue with that?

In an ear of ever increasing means to extend human life, the defined benefit pension may not be the most appropriate model. Regardless, the real problem with pensions isn't that people have them, it is that pensions allow an organization to accrue unfunded liabilities. I haven't seen benchmarks versus Chicago, but in many places public sector employees are paid far below market. The pension makes up for low cash pay. However, cash pay has to be paid in cash, while pensions can be paid in promised until they come due. This creates an enormous temptation for people to balance budgets by deferring pension contributions. That's the real issue. If the CTA or any other agency properly recognized and funded the true cost of their payroll, pensions would be a non-issue unless the actuarials change materially.

:previous:

I don’t disagree that it is useless to blame the CTA brass now for their obligations set forth decades ago. But I give them zero wiggle room in this mess because they keep the budget details under lock and key and cry about the problem. We fund this train wreck (pun intended) and we deserve to know how the money is spent.

This is definitely something I can get behind. I completely agree local government needs to be more transparent. The CTA has made nominal steps forward in this area, but I'd love to see them pick up the pace.

The CTA has a proposal for filling its budget holes:

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-b...gobusiness.com

Interestingly, Hinz makes mention of the similar problems the MTA is now facing in the column. Take a lesson, Trib!

There is the issue also of the fact that public pensions are allowed to take on an absurd amount of risk in pursuit of higher rates of return. A higher rate of return on investments would of course allow for lower employer and employee contributions and/or better benefits. The problem with chasing high rates of return like 8% is that when the market goes south, you get creamed - I've seen estimates that public pensions in this country collectively lost over $1 trillion in the latest market crash. In the old days, public pensions were required to have the vast majority of their assets in bonds, particularly low-risk government bonds.

From the politician's (short-term) standpoint, everyone wins when you give the fund management contract to the favored fellow promising you 9% annual return: everyone gets their kickback, the employees are promised more benefits for less contributions, the public agency needs less of its operations budget for employer contributions.

Assume (a) everyone lives longer and (b) a realistic and importantly safe rate of return on the fund, and those actuarials change drastically in a way that any politician would throw his own grandmother under the bus in an effort to pawn off the problem on his successors - anything, such as, for example, issue pension obligation bonds, the equivalent of using a bucket to bail out a leaking boat, with the added requirement of eventual mandatory tax increase (or public service reductions) to cover the debt service on the bonds. Again, from the politician's (short-term) standpoint, it's a win-win no-brainer. There are few politicians who take public pension finance seriously, and Mike Madigan deserves some credit in that regard.

Yes, public pensions are a complete disaster, but saying CTA management is inept because such a high portion of the operating budget goes to pensions is completely missing the issue.

8%? Psh that's not how you get creamed. Most CD's and bank accounts greater than $1 million will return 5%-7%, I imagine that a pension fund with $100+ million could easily get an almost risk-free rate in a bank deposit of 8%. The losses in the pension industry were largely in places where a few idiot fund managers were running around looking for 10-15% returns on their money. That is where they got into Credit-default swaps and sub-primes. Those funds that invested in that stuff are SOL.

7-10% is also the expected long term return on investments in the Stock Market depending on the industry. A lot of funds are hurting badly because they invested in very reasonable stocks (GE, Citi, CME, even Oil stocks like BP) which have all lost 40+% of their value in the market crash. These were not bad calls and the funds that lost 30% of their value in the stock market will get that money back when the market recovers, which it will eventually do. Investing in a stock like GE or IBM is not a risky investment if you are in it for the long term like a Pension, this just as investing in real estate is not risky if you are in it for the long run.

Aren't rates running about 3.5% now? Maybe you could have gotten 5-7% some months ago... of course going all in at that point would have required the fund to have a lower RoR target, which have saved the massive losses they took from being too heavily in equities.

Almost every pension fund in recent years has set targets of between 8-9%, I think.

Did anyone bother to stop and question whether this was a reasonable expectation, particularly for a pension fund constitutionally required to pay benefits out every month? If we ignore survivor bias and assume a large investment fund went "all in" when the Dow hit absolute bottom in 1932, they would now be looking at a nominal annual return of... 7%. Absolute bottom. If our fund didn't time their all-in investment so perfectly and went in later in 1932 (while still in the midst of a major depression and asset deflation, mind you) we'd be looking at 6%. Over 70 years, measuring from the market bottom (not from a "long-term trendline"... do that and the RoRs look even worse).

By all means, 8-10% is a reasonable target for the private sector, where risk is necessary for expansion and competition. But for a public retirement fund that must pay monthly benefits in cash, it's ludicrous. And every fund in the country has been doing it for decades now.

Right, and time was, public pensions could only invest in the safest, highest-rated bonds, which included some corporates as well as government. Relatively low percentages were allowed in equities, even for the relatively safe ones. Hindsight is 20/20, but it sure seems foolish to expose yourself to losing 40% of your fund value when you're sending cash out the door every month in benefits, no? A pension fund is not a normal investment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_179279.html

Amtrak To Get $80 Million From Stimulus For Illinois Projects
Associated Press | March 25, 2009 07:36 PM


Amtrak in Illinois will receive $80 million in federal stimulus money to modernize train repair centers as well as to improve security and wheelchair accessibility.

That's according to a statement Wednesday from U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, a longtime advocate of the passenger train service.

The Illinois Democrat says the money is the state's cut of the $1.3 billion set aside for Amtrak in the federal stimulus bill.

Durbin also says federal authorities are allotting $90 million to refurbish train cars for use around the country, including in Illinois.

More than a dozen states, including Illinois, are competing for a piece of a separate $8 billion for high-speed rail in the stimulus bill. That money hasn't yet been allocated.

__

On the Net:

Amtrak summary of individual state projects: http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/ARRA/Amtrak-ARRA_By-State.pdf.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=33476

Region's transportation wish list gets review
By: Paul Merrion March 27, 2009

(Crain's) — Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is in Chicago Friday getting a first-hand look at several items on the region's wish list for the upcoming $500-billion federal transportation bill.

He'll start in Bridgeview, meeting with Illinois Transportation Secretary Gary Hannig, Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Chicago, and other state and local officials. They will discuss the Create project to reduce freight rail bottlenecks and the Central Avenue Bypass, which would connect that road to Narragansett Avenue under railyards in Bedford Park.

...

---------------------------

How do you connect Central with Narragansett ... aren't they a mile apart?
Wouldn't it make more sense to build an underpass for one of those streets under the railyards (I'm assuming nothing exists there yet) ?

^ of all things you're emphasizing a road connection in the suburbs? I am far more interested in any rail invesment

To be fair, this is hardly a suburb - it's basically adjacent to MDW.

I think the issue must be that the railyard there, one of the few biggest in the world, is about 3 miles long and creates a 3-mile east-west barrier where north-south traffic must go around it. (Again, I could be wrong and maybe there is some sort of way through it currently.) Maybe they feel a need to connect the MDW area to Bedford Park / Burbank. I have no idea though. I too would prefer rail projects (like, in that area, a big Orange Line extension to Toyota Park).

Hardly a suburb. Have you driven around that area? A Central Avenue bypass through that 3-mile long railyard would be great and has been in planning since the 70's. Cicero and Harlem are about as choked as they get.

..

Folks, the CREATE Road projects ARE Rail projects. The are building Road/Rail grade seperations and that is good for rail, including freight, Amtrak, Metra and CTA since buses will be using the underpass.

You have no idea how much congestion the Bedford Park rail yard creates along Cicero and Harlem Avenues. This very much affects the Chicago neighborhoods of Garfield Ridge and Clearing. Take Cicero from 55 south past Midway during rush hour. Its a nightmare. All north-south traffic between those neighborhoods and locations south of Bedford Park have to funnel onto either Harlem or Cicero. Its been a problem now for years. I for one (originally from that area) am very excited at the prospect of the oft talked about Central Ave viaduct finally getting somewhere politically...

Not really in this case, because the "road" does not exist here. This is a new segment that would be built under the rail yard. Both Cicero to the east and Harlem to the west are grade separated as well (overpasses). I agree that this is needed (very needed, Cicero is already six lanes wide and jammed); but I would not call it a CREATE priority project, as it does nothing to improve rail safety and/or efficiency.

I wonder though if the reporter may have not gotten the story right. Connecting Narragansett to Central through the yard does not make a lick of sense. Central should just be punched through, as it is an arterial street on both sides of the yard. Narragansett is a mile further west and is a collector street on both sides of the yard, and is in fact discontinuous to the south (A public park is in the way).

The city has planned for awhile to build an overpass at Central Avenue, and a long-term plan also included one at Narragansett. Building an underpass, however, makes absolutely no sense to me. They would have to tear up every track in one of the nation's biggest and busiest railyards to build something underground. The cost would be massive! :koko:

A far cheaper option would be to build a connector at 75th Street that redirects the SouthWest Service into LaSalle St Station.

Then, you could free up some capacity at Union Station and connect some of the stub tracks, creating 2 new through tracks (the columns of Gateway Center 3 allow this, from what I hear).

You could even revive the Van Buren Street tunnel under the river and turn it into a pedway connecting Union and LaSalle Street Stations - with moving sidewalks, airport style, to allow the trip to be made in minutes.

All this for maybe $200 million, instead of the billions that the West Loop Transportation Center would cost.

ardecila, I suggest looking at this: http://transit.chicago.il.us/

^ About the Central Avenue bypass:

Okay, a couple background facts - from Wikipedia - might help clarify the underpass / overpass issue. Apparently the Belt Railway's Clearing Yard is a "hump classification" yard, which apparently means that all the zillions of parallel tracks merge together into a narrow pinch point at the "hump". A quick look at its satellite photo shows just how pronounced this pattern is. In addition, the "hump" happens to be exactly where Central Avenue's alignment is. This must be an amazing coincidence, and it suggests Central Avenue would need to clear a width of only about 2 or 3 tracks to punch through the railyard.

That makes an underpass no more complicated a feat that burrowing under a Metra line. In addition, there is a control tower that straddles the hump - so sightlines might be quite important in that part of the yard, rendering an overpass highly undesirable. Thus, an underpass. Just my guess though.

As for the Narragansett reference, the reporter must be poor with maps or something.

this city rocks. (as does the internet.)

http://www.beltrailway.com/images/clearingyard.gif

Ah, I see. Regardless, an underpass is still quite expensive compared to a viaduct, and the plan (as far as I know) has always been to build a viaduct. This is how it is referred to in all the IDOT lists and CDOT documents. If an underpass is indeed part of the plan, then the road will probably go over the small tracks to the north and south and then dip underground to cross the main choke point on some crazy curving alignment.

At Narragansett, if something is built there at all, it will doubtless need to be an overpass.

Good discussion for big CTA - regional transit questions
 

http://www.innovatenow.us/wdkm_in/wc...aaron_renn.pdf

A friend of the forum gives his solutions to CTA growth.

Thanks for noticing. Please keep in mind that is a response to a brief and I wanted to win. So the ideas are not 100% my own program, though I do support many of them.

from bvic post in the general

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3418/...371b58e5_o.jpg

all of those have completion schedules of... 2016 (except the clinton subway)

^ I think that puts to rest the looney 'circle line'. And supports the Clinton Subway as the preferred development for the CCAP agency.

That’s really the most detail I’ve seen on the Clinton subway line…and it would be huge for the West Loop. Right now, I don’t even bother doing anything in the West Loop area simply because it’s a pain in the ass to get to from the Lincoln Park/Lakeview area.

As I outlined a few pages back, federal stimulus money is going to (at least) further studies on the circle line (or portions thereof). I don't think that this particular publication says ANYTHING about whether the circle line will be built or the political support of the project in general.

Sorry to disappoint, but this "looney" idea is still in play, so far as I can tell. Personally, I'm not so disappointed. :)

circle line is later in the document when they talk about the chicago as a whole, that's just the center core of the city.

8 Halsted

Oh I'm all too familiar with the #8 bus. The problem is that if you're off the brown line, what do you do? Ride the train to Belmont, huff it 2 blocks to Halsted, and then hop on the #8 for the 50 stops through LP? I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Well youre ideas on the Western and Cicero BRT and other E/W BRT are sound. All in all an enjoyable read with some well founded concepts. thanks

You ride it to Washington/Wells and catch any bus westbound on Madison. How hard is that?

People, Chicago's is an integrated system. Has been since 1948. You're supposed to use the trains and the bus in combination. That's why they're shown on the same map. The train gets you across town; the bus gets you right to the door.

Yeah, options abound for getting from the North Side to the West Loop. Aside from the zillions of buses, if you're a train snob there's the Clinton Green/Pink stop and the Clinton and Halsted Blue stops. From the Brown Line, transfer to Pink at Washington/Wells or to Blue at LaSalle, from the Red, transfer to Green at State/Lake or to Blue at Jackson. Not a very hard trip.

^ Didn't you get the memo?

Buses SUCK. They are a shitty way to get around any major city, and I"m pretty sure from the horror stories I've heard that Chicago is no exception.

Why not increase rail options in getting around town?

25 minutes, from Addison to Washington/Wells. Then another bus ride...That's at least 45 minutes on average, to go 4 miles. Yeah, I'll stick to River North, Lakeview, and LP.

This is of course all theoretical. We have a car, so if we need to go, we drive. But the point of this is to be an alternate to driving. If you really want to increase ridership, you have to focus on the people that don't need to ride. Your captive market is already on the trains and buses.

That's complete BS TUP. I don't know how much experience you have with it, but I find the bus system in Chicago to be much faster than the train in most cases if you know what you are doing, especially now that you can see when the next bus is coming on Bustracker.

I'm sorry but who in their right mind takes the Red Line downtown when there is a plethora of wonderful express buses down LSD. The only reason I ever take the El is inclimate weather or rush hour, both of which make the certainty of using Buses go down.

In fact, the best way to get to the west loop from Lakeview is simple if you are going between 6am and 9am and coming back between 3:30pm and 6:30pm on a weekday. The 134, 135, and 136 buses go express from Arlington, Belmont, and Irving Park to Columbus and Wacker and end up on Franklin. These buses are extremely conveinent and take less than 15 min in some cases... When traveling during off-peak hours, simply take the 146 from Belmont express to Michigan and transfer to any Westbound bus through the loop, that will get you there in less than 30 min every time...

If you know how to use the bus in this city you can get from anywhere on the northside to anywhere within about 3 miles of the loop in less than 30 min, you just have to be smart...

oops, this is obviously in response to two posts up.

How exactly would one make traveling to the West Loop easier? The Monroe subway, I guess, but the thing is you would still have to transfer downtown no matter what. It sounds like your main complaint is having to transfer downtown to get from one place to another, and that isn't changing anytime soon.

Chicago is really big and there are a whole lot of possible trips. Without a subway system as complete as the bus system, how would you expect a trip between two neighborhoods without a direct train link not to take a long time? Most places in the city have much, much worse transit access than Lakeview and the West Loop.

TUP, taking the bus from the Loop to the West Loop is ridiculously easy, the buses come constantly, and the ride is really short. I don't like buses either, but for connecting two areas that close, complaining about having to take the bus is just whining.