CTA Tattler

My guess is that the red line closure is so crews can haulass and get the Sox-35th station in decent order before the baseball season starts in a couple weeks, though this hasn't actually been stated anywhere.

Stinks about the Chicago Cards. The CTA alert expressed a willingness by CTA to pay any overdraught charges or such things if they incurred as a result of this error, which seems like a nice gesture. What vendor was managing these accounts?

Vivalfuego: The Sox-35th station is closing because the CTA is tearing down the entire 33rd St. entrance and associated overhead structure. During rehab operations, it was discovered that the structural steel is all shot to hell and needs to be replaced. The work will not be completed until the fall so the 33rd St. entrance will be out of action for the entire 2006 baseball season.

Bummer...

This is exactly why I didn't sign up for the chicago card plus......I knew they'd screw up something. What are they going to do for those people who got overdraft fees and interest payments? There's more than just refunding the amount.

Why would they even rebuild the 33rd St. entrance? It was built so Sox fans could go to & from the bleacher areas quicker.
Now that the ball mall is on the south side of 35th St. what the dolts at the CTA should have done is build a whole new station on the south side of 35th, with an extra walkway over the southbound Ryan at 36th St.
Plus this station rebuilding on the Ryan line is taking forever, I use the Garfield stop & it seems that nothing has been done in months.

Jeff: Rebuilding the entire station to extend it to the south would be expensive but isn't that bad an idea. Rather than building a walkway at 36th St. though, it would make more sense to extend the station all the way to the 37th St. (there is no 36th St. on either side of teh Dan Ryan). This would allow better access for those leaving/entering Gate 1 and 2 of the Cell. This course of action would scrap the entire existing platform.

Building the station south of 35th would cost at least $20 million but seeing as how the 33rd St. entrance needs to be totally rebuilt anyway, it isn't that bad an idea.

On the overcharging of Pace customers, this shows the disregard of the CTA for suburbanites. First they want to raise suburban taxes, then they charge suburban customers double while letting the pigeons ride for free. :)

Jackonthebus, the problem was caused by Cubic a vendor that BOTH Pace and CTA use. My read is that Pace requested data from Cubic, which Cubic sent to both CTA and Pace. Since the only reason Cubic sends that data to CTA is to debit accounts, what was CTA supposed to do? It was CTA that made the request.

And unless you live in the collar counties, you should be royally torqued off that Cook County exports $100 million each year to run collar county service (see p.5). So either the collar county service should be cut, or they should pay their fair share. In 1983 the suburbs exploited a race-divided City Council to funnel $$$ their way, and the legacy of that crass and offensive act is our current transit system.

Sorry, meant that PACE made the request, not CTA, and their mutual vendor screwed up. Surprise, the media makes CTA out to be the bad guy, playing in to the collar counties' hands that poor black city folks are out to get the rest of us.

The smiley indicated that I was just giving them a humorous hard time.

However, as a resident of a Cook County suburb, I resented CTA's call to raise suburban taxes at the time, because it was clear that they weren't just interested in limiting that to the other counties, but to continue competing with and starving Pace in the Cook County suburbs, by using bogus statistics to claim that they provided most of the suburban service (unlinked trips vs. passenger miles) and thus they, and not Pace was entitled to what the Cook suburbs overpay. Also, the CTA board, which has no suburban representation, was ready to end all bus service in Evanston. However, it appears that whatever will be done with the funding mess won't happen until the 2007 session, and I'm sure that the political fix is already in.

Nudelhead, three points that your second post raises:
CTA sent out the bills.
This was provoked when CTA quit accepting transfers. Will CTA or RTA reimburse Pace for telling its riders to switch to CTA passes (over the $2 million already allocated)?
You seem to bring up race a lot. The last I saw, Mayor Daley, who controls the CTA board, and Frank Kruesi, his man with the CTA, were what John Kass calls "pink guys." As I previously mentioned, there is no suburban representation on the CTA Board, including from the south suburbs, or an integrated suburb like Evanston, which has a Black mayor.

Jack, you're wrong on the facts. The CTA board currently includes two suburban members, both of whom happen to live in the south suburbs.

Who? and from where?

http://transitchicago.com/welcome/overview.html

Zagotta and Panayotovich. both from south suburbs.

I stand somewhat corrected. However, from what I can tell from the web, they are from Lansing and Flossmoor, which do not have CTA service (unless they represent citizens who transfer downtown from the ME or 355). You wouldn't say what suburbs in which they reside or they "represent."

They haven't done much to represent their taxpayers who nudelhead says are having their money exported. But that might be the state legislature's and Auditor General's job. Also, they seemed to vote in lockstep with Mayor Daley's directions on the paratransit fare issue (only Carole Brown said to think about regional cooperation).

Clearly, there isn't anyone who represents suburbs where CTA has significant boardings (which it used to justify its "export" complaints). Last year CTA Spokespeople had the mayors of Oak Park and Evanston begging for support of CTA's formula change plan (under the threat that CTA would pull all local bus service from Evanston), but they don't appoint anyone to the CTA Board.

Truth, please don't tell me next that this still doesn't involve pink people (like the governors, including Ryan, who appoint only with Mayor Daley's concurrence).

Jack, if you want someone else from the suburbs to be appointed to the CTA board, go here. That's the only way, by law, it can happen.

And the last time they changed who's in charge of CTA, this
guy was mayor, and they diluted his power. Tell me again race has nothing to do with it?

But back to the suburbs. The folks in Evanston and Oak Park support transit, I'm more worried about the folks farther out who could use a better education -- though I imagine the Dan Ryan clusterf*** will make it really clear to everyone down thataways.

I already wrote to my state senator and representative (with a copy to Julie Hamos) in support of a proposal described on her site by Tim Martin with regard to restructuring the CTA Board. It has nothing to do with Blago.

Truth,
I admitted I was wrong, but now you are.

Krambles and Peterson, CTA at 45, page 7 describes the composition of the CTA Board, and on page 10 has a history of all appointments from 1945 to 1992. The 4 mayor 3 governor appointee system has been in effect from the start. It was not changed in 1983!
Remembering Harold says that he was elected in 1983. It is questionable whether he was in office for any length of time when the RTA Act was amended to create the service board concept. As noted above, this did not affect the composition of the CTA Board. It did result in the current funding formula.
Regional Transportation Authority v. Illinois Commerce Commission, 118 Ill.App.3d 685, 455 N.E.2d 172, 74 Ill.Dec. 142 (1st Dist., 1983), a court case involving the ICC's or RTA's jurisdiction over carriers, states that the RTA crisis occurred in "1981, [when] as a result of the RTA's inability to meet all of its financial obligations, Suburban and West Towns discontinued bus service." Another case raising the same issue was Regional Transportation Authority v. Burlington Northern Inc., 100 Ill.App.3d 779, 426 N.E.2d 1143, 55 Ill.Dec. 818 (1st Dist., 1981), in which it is noted, "As of January of 1981, because of its financial difficulties, RTA has been unable to meet many of its obligations, including those to Burlington. In early June of 1981, Burlington brought an action against RTA for some $2.4 million in unpaid subsidies accrued as of May 15, 1981." Apparently, the funding crisis that resulted in the 1983 amendments had festered for a couple of years, and it was suburban service that was cut!
Next time, do your research. (You can go to the Daley Center to verify these citations.) And, instead of yelling racism, why don't you and nudelhead do, say, something like get Leslie Hairston, Toni Preckwinkle (or even Jesse Jackson Jr.) elected mayor or Rev. Meeks governor?

According to Bill Vandervoort's Chicago Transit and Railfan (one can question how authoritative it is, but it corroborates the preceding):

West Towns:From 5/29/81 to 8/5/81, West Towns Bus Co. was shut down because of the RTA funding crisis at the time, when the RTA did not have the cash to pay to keep the company operating.
South Suburban Safeway Lines:From 6/1/81 to 6/8/81, South Suburban Safeway Lines was shut down because of the RTA funding crisis at the time, when the RTA did not have the cash to pay to keep the company operating. When service was restored, it was on a limited basis, initially rush hours only. Sunday service was not restored until 4/8/84.

Suburban Transit System:From 6/6/81 to 8/3/81, Suburban Transit System was shut down because of the RTA funding crisis at the time, when the RTA did not have the cash to pay to keep the company operating. After service was restored, Sunday service was finally restored 9/20/87.Sounds like the 1983 RTA Act amendments were a reaction to what was happening when Jane Byrne was the Mayor, not Harold Washington.

Jack, calm down. You are correct that the Mayor has had 4 appointees and the Governor 3 for several decades. But what happened in 1983 was far more subtle -- the General Assembly changed what had been a unilateral mayoral appointment and required City Council confirmation. If you recall, much of Mayor Washington's agenda was thwarted by a white-dominated bloc of 29 Aldermen. The statutory change in 1983 was explicitly designed to prevent the Mayor from replacing the existing CTA board members without consent of that bloc of City Council.

Especially nudelhead, how was that the fault of such "racist" suburbs as Maywood, Phoenix, Robbins, Oak Park, etc., that wanted to keep their bus service? "Truth is relative...." Why don't you tell me who provoked the crisis in 1981? did Jane Byrne then know that Harold Washington would oust her two years later?Also, what does this have to do with the current state of affairs in 2004-2006, when the pink guys named above want the suburbs to raise their taxes to support the city (and I'm sure it is not limited to the collar counties) and dictate the the CTA Board what fares to charge (at least for paratransit)? Why doesn't Mayor Daley put some of the street furniture contract money into the CTA (especially since he had Kruesi threaten to post on CTA vehicles the names of merchants who did not want the advertising shelters in front of their establishments)? Apparently Millenium Park is more important to him than good bus service to the minority community.

Hey, Truth, you might want to check out http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/transit_systems/index.html?s=oldest&query=CHICAGO%20(ILL)&field=geo&match=exact the N.Y. Times summary of this topic. It appears that there was combat between Jane Byrne and Jim Thompson. Harold doesn't get mentioned.