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Transportation
Mayor Richard M. Daley, speaking at the City Club of Chicago, 20071
Nobody invested greater hopes in the Chicago 2016 Olympics than Mayor Daley. By doing all he could to bring the 2016 Summer Games to the city, Mayor Daley also sought to attract the accompanying billion dollars in federal spending that, as estimated by the Chicago 2016 bid group , would be used "to meet the immediate needs of the Games and the long-terms needs of Chicago."2High among those needs is an overhaul of the Chicago public transit system that has fallen into disrepair.In its rose-colored presentation, Chicago 2016 claimed that the L spans "this entire area...giving easy access to dozens of neighborhoods, all the while offering exquisite views along the way."3 On the South Side, where many bus routes were eliminated or "restructured" in the 1970s when businesses there closed or moved to the North or West Side, residents have anything but "easy" access to the transit system.
"A prime example of a transit wasteland is 31st street," wrote a blogger on the CTA Riders site, calling for the city to bring back the 31st Street bus. "There are no east-west buses between 26th street and 35th street and west of Kedzie there is no bus until 47th street. Therefore at best riders must walk more than a half of a mile to catch a bus. This produces a nightmare for transit dependant riders who must hike up to four blocks from every bus stop."4
Safety is another topic of concern for citizens who rely on public transit. Marion Jones of North Kenwood Oakland says, "Buses do not run all that often. There are very few bus shelters. Bus stops are not necessarily in places that are safe. I got mugged when I got off a bus and I was pick-pocketed when I was on a bus here in Chicago."5
As Chicago waited to hear whether it would become the Olympic host city, the future of its public transportation system was up in the air. Now, without the promise of Olympic money, from where will the CTA, Metra, and Pace receive the funds for crucial infrastructure upgrades and expansion, work the Regional Transportation Authority estimated would cost $16 billion over the next five years and $57 billion over the next 30 years?6
Regardless of the loss of the Olympic bid, a sizable investment must be made in Chicago-area public transportation, particularly at a time when rising gasoline prices are resulting in overcrowded trains and buses. If no upgrades are made, Chicago's overall economy will suffer and its reputation as "The City that Works" will change dramatically. According to the civic group Metropolis 2020: "If the system is permitted to decline - that is, if no new money is provided to maintain it - transit ridership will decrease by more than 11.3 percent... Declining transit use will force more people to drive, so traffic congestion will worsen."7
The Urban Mobility Report produced by the Texas Transportation Institute confirmed Metropolis 2020's fears, stating that congestion is a nationwide concern. Nationally, congestion causes commuters to waste a total of 4.2 billion hours on the road, almost equaling one work week, and 2.8 billion gallons of gas, equal to 87.2 billion dollars. Additionally, Brian Imus at Illinois Pirg states that each full size bus in operation would equal the reduction of fifty cars on the road.8
The woes of the CTA cannot be laid on the city alone. Transportation is a regional concern, and it is difficult to separate CTA issues from those in the Regional Transportation Service (RTS). And when matters of freight traffic and high speed railways are taken into account, the federal government is a dominant player as well. The CTA has argued reasonably that its hands have been tied by a 1983 formula in the state legislature that bases funding levels on geographic boundaries, retail spending, and undervalued ridership. A special mass transit committee in the Illinois House found there is "little relationship between the distribution of sales tax revenues and the level of service Pace, Metra and the CTA provide in Chicago, suburban Cook County and the collar counties."9
And even with two recently passed capital spending bills for Chicago-area mass transit totaling $2.7 billion, the first such legislation in a decade, the CTA still suffered from what the Civic Federation in 2008 called "a dire lack of capital funding from the State of Illinois."10
For all that, the CTA has magnified its troubles by providing poor management and enabling a lack of accountability. No amount of finger-pointing by Mayor Daley - at Springfield, at opponents of the big-box stores that would provide sales tax money for transit, at his critics - can distract from the fiasco of the Block 37 project and the decisions that have driven up the pension debt. In order to raise money to patch up holes in the budget, Mayor Daley has gone into the privatization business, leasing Midway Airport to a private operator for $2.5 billion, and, in a swift, secretive, and shocking move, leased the city's parking meters for $1.2 billion over 75 years. Although Mayor Daley had grand intentions, in April 2009 his plan, known as the Midway Airport deal, collapsed due to financial inadequacies, which mainly stemmed from the economic crisis. A consortium of groups in the troubled Citigroup Inc. was unable to borrow the necessary cash to finance the deal.11
The city also began investing in traffic cameras, which netted $44.8 million from ticket penalties in 2008.12 The profits earned from ticket penalties is likely to expand with the promise of several more millions raised from the detection of uninsured motorists and speeders with red-light and surveillance cameras.13
Nevertheless, it is important to note that public transit in Chicago does succeed in functioning well under pressure. When Barack Obama gave his acceptance speech in Grant Park, millions of people traveled in and out of the city on trains and buses without a hitch. The CTA also performs well on the Fourth of July. But special occasions should not mark the only days when enough trains and buses are available. For a city to truly work, public transportation must be available every day of the week, in all sections of the city.