Quote:
Originally Posted by VivaLFuego
Guys, no offense, but you really just don't know how it works. You can't bring in some engineers from Madrid and have them make a system for Chicago. The legal environment here is just so drastically different: from a government/legislative standpoint, and especially from a labor (construction pricing) standpoint. The problems with the CTA are not due to uncreative engineers or administrators, but rather, as someone else pointed out, that public transit is just NOT a priority for legislators in this country. High ridership (fare revenue) and high subsidy make the operating environment for European transit agencies completely incomparable to US agencies, and further the priority given to transit projects over there makes the capital construction process much smoother and faster.
|
There are things they do differently that can be done here. Period. There are things they do there that currently can't be done here, but could be done there with the right incentive. Period. There are things done there that won't be done here for a variety of reasons. Period.
I get tired of hearing that "it just won't work here" as an excuse to not even try.
The current failure of funding has little to do with the exorbitant cost of construction public works (not just transit) incur in Chicago. Some of that is due to political factors, some of that is due to the demand for construction services being very high right now, but a significant portion of it is due to things that can be improved through better integration. Things like a lack of coordination between the City and CTA when it came to permits for the Brown Line construction project. Things like zoning and transit not doing enough to account for each other. Things like the workers I saw for the Chicago Brown Line stop sitting in their trucks for hours on end day after day. Dollars add up fast when either project managers plan projects so poorly that men are left with no work to do, or when managers don't task employees properly, or if employees are simply alowed to be lazy (which of those is the explanation in that case, I'm not sure, but those are really the only three reasons I know of for workers to be on perpetual breaks).
Your whine about high subsidy in Europe is also a bit disingenuous since the CTA is nearly 100% subsidized for infrastructure, and probably over 70% subsidized for operations once you get into the real numbers and add back in things like the fact that the City pays for all security related to the CTA (of note, also, is that the public, RTA number of "53%" is PR bullshit - if you don't believe me, read the Auditor General's report from earlier this year).
High ridership is a valid comment, but that partly goes back to the failure of city zoning to support the use of transit by encouraging density nearest the best transit infrastructure. As long as groups like the West Loop association can browbeat an alderman into limiting density in one of the best-served transit areas in the city, transit in this city will never live up to its potential. The inconsistencies created by Aldermanic privilege does as much or more to hurt transit as poor funding does.