RTA reform bill draft; infrastructure investment analysis
The excellent blog Sick Transit Chicago this week published two must reads:
The revised draft of the RTA reform bill
Infrastructure Investment and Lack Thereof
The latter just validates all the complaints here about failing infrastructure and lack of continued investment:
"The report is another sobering study of the failure of the United States to adequately invest in its infrastructure. Note on page 20 of 69 of the report there is a comparison of the 2005 annual operating budgets (in millions) for the public transit systems in three world cities of similar populations and gross domestic product (in millions):
"London: $7,804
"Paris: $4,986
"Chicago: $1,685"
The report also notes that "Chicago alone needs $6 billion to bring its subways into “a state of good repair.”
To be strictly fair, we should put these numbers in on a per capita basis, and it isn't clear how these have been calculated; I'm surprised London comes in far ahead of Paris, for example -- maybe they're including the Channel Tunnel Rail Link or something. But no matter how you cut it, this is a poor showing by Chicago.
However, there's an even more damning statistic not just for the US but specifically for Chicago. It is fairly safe to assume that the numbers are consistent within countries, and on that basis the fact that San Francisco and Washington DC are almost level with Chicago is a real indictment of Illinois' funding of transit and of Chicago and other municpalities' funding of transit.
Posted by: DB | May 17, 2007 at 05:31 PM