cta budget hearing nov 2006

CTA BUDGET HEARING November 2006
What is CTA’s idea of essential? A $93 million
airport express subway station, under construction,
before the rest of the three-quarter billion, at
least, project is funded? Frank Kruesi said it is, at
an RTA press conference to kick off the big transit
funding drive. The system needs connectivity, he said,
and other cities have airport expresses too. That,
after a lot of flesh-creeping about the system falling
apart.
Much more essential is combining the 11 Lincoln and
37 Sedgwick buses, something I should have thought of.
It is far better than what Frank Kruesi said at a
public meeting a year and a half ago, that he could
not restore the 11 bus downtown without more money,
while a half billion was going into near-by elevated
expansion. And this year we have the old Congress
getting almost a doubling of service and the old
Douglas rerouted over the Lake, as it was a half
century ago during expressway construction. That might
seem inconsistent, but both are quite consistent with
federally funded boondoggles, whether the Ravenswood
expansion or the proposed Circle line, another excuse
for blowing federal funds.
Kruesi also said, six and a half years ago, that the
marginal cost of off-peak service is just about
nothing, as I have reminded everyone at this hearing
ever since, without contradiction. That, after his
presentation on filling the Loop with parking garages
if CTA passengers all drove, and my rejoinder about
nickel-diming off-peak neighborhood service to death,
the service retailers need to generate the sales taxes
that fund CTA operations. Then, apparently, CTA finds
it essential to twice refer to the health of sales tax
revenues on p39 of his budget. When has CTA ever done
anything for retailers? Or about the $6 billion annual
retail sales that leave the city every year, as
Crain’s reported a couple years ago?
And, CTA being so essence oriented, it is presenting
a budget assuming a $110 million bailout from
Springfield. It should look closer to home. That
figure spread over some 400,000 downtown employees
comes to $275 per head, or, divided by 250 business
days, a buck and a bit per round trip. CTA does not
need any new taxes to cover this shortfall. Simply
trim rush hour service to cover it, unless downtown
decides to cough up. Contrary to the negligible
marginal cost of off-peak service, the cost of the
rush is essentially the cost of the system. If the
downtown interests do not think it is worth it, who
else should?
For all the bleating about unity among the agencies,
I have not seen anything in the CTA or Metra budgets
about fare integration, whether Mike Payne’s Gray Line
or something more comprehensive. Two fares for one
ride is not unity from from the riders’ standpoint,
and the electric lines in the city are woefully
underused.
Page 73 lists $2.7 billion in available capital
funding, an additional, unfunded $5.8 billion needed
to get the system in good repair, and $4.2 billion for
expansion. By my arithmetic, not CTA’s, that comes to
$8.5 billion, just for repair. A whole new bus
operation would cost a half billion. Eight billion,
then, just to repair a technology that cannot do
anything now it could not a century ago, when it was
much more fun. And even CTA says it is a bottomless
pit, page 7, almost in so many words.
Transit culture has yet to catch up with car culture
in one important respect. When the repair shop says it
will cost $80,000 to fix the old jalopy, car culture
figures the Mercedes and Lexus dealers will be quite
happy to talk for that kind of moola. Transit culture
takes the Jerry Rubin approach, however, just do it.
Not that it always did. Indeed, third rail rapid
transit and push-pull commuter trains were the transit
Mercedes or Lexus of their day, if a century or half a
century ago. That was under private cost/benefit
comparison, something lost under something-for-nothing
state and federal funding. If transit projects were
funded by land value capture instead, there would be
something akin to private cost/benefit comparison and
new technology, instead of pork barrel boondoggling
and excuses to spend federal moola.
William F. Wendt, Jr.