CTA Tattler

Well, since everybody uses the stations as a bathroom, why not make them look like one?

I hate the grey granite style.

So they're going over budget on this (and that's not carpeting is it?) while the top headline to the right says "CTA to detail severe cuts."

The Grand Avenue stop is a pit right now that needs to be cleaned and have elevators installed. It doesn't really need to look like this.

Hurray! With Chicago/State, this station is one of the "front doors" of our city for visitors heading to River North hotels (and Navy Pier) on transit. It really needs the reno. (Hell, I did a backflip when I saw they finally cleaned the gunk out of the light fixtures this year--the platforms got twice as bright).

Although...obvioulsy Clark/Division is getting the shaft on this one (since the money's being partly borrowed from that Red Line station's reno earmark). Maybe they could at least replace the 30-year-old, faded blue entry signage at the tops of the stairs and at least make that station look like it's gotten some attention this decade.

Either way, personally I love the "New Chicago" design CDOT uses. I dig the retro feel of the tiles--slightly deco while not mimicking the style of tilework from east coast subway stations. I think this design ethic will date very well.

I thought this had already been tabled.

Hey, CTA: if you can't afford to keep the trains and buses rolling, don't go buy yourself a new station!

Bill-- The City of Chicago owns the State Street subway, and is paying for the renovations. CTA doesn't have anything to do with this.

About CTA funding, though, I have a friend who works at O'Hare and it's the same deal. No preventative maintenance. They just wait until something breaks and then replace it. Does this have to do with the way capital projects are funded? They're partially paid for by the federal government, so every project needs to have a grant proposal, so every project must need to show some sort of ROI. How do you figure out ROI for maintenance?

I heard two flaggers talking this morning on the Brown Line. They were complaining about the heat over the weekend. But the one guy got paid for 13 hours. Not the first time I've heard them talking about overtime. How is having workers constantly put in extra hours (at time and a half) cost-effective, or safe?

somewhere recently I ran across something about funding (maybe after the bridge collapse in MN). Local municipalities & the states, I think, get some money for these things from the "higher" levels of gov't. Instead of being sensible & using some of it toward upkeep (of anything--roads, public transit, other infrastructure), they go for the big splashy projects--the glamourous things. In the meantime, everything else starts to go.

If they're going to spend this much on a renovation, they could at least do something creative with it. Instead of turning the station into a giant bathroom (I think the first commenter's description is apt). Other countries' gorgeous subway stations put ours to shame.

The important points to remember are:

1. The City owns the subway. CTA just has a franchise to use it. In an indirect sense, this project may have competed against CTA capital projects for Federal funds, but it also competed against capital projects in other cities, too. If it wasn't funded, the chance that the funds would have gone to another city is more likely than the funds going to CTA for some other capital project.

2. There's no mechanisim available to get Federal funds for operating costs. This includes routine maintenance. You want the Federal funds, you have to ask for them for a capital project. And the way things work, capital projects don't happen without Federal funds.

3. When operating funds run short, the first thing to go is routine maintenance. Why not? When the asset needs replacement, you might get Federal funds to help replace it. You won't get Federal funds to fix it. This works in the short-term, but eventually you end up with more capital projects than ever, and what you're saving in maintenance isn't coming back in capital grants.

The answer is that stable funding for operating costs must be found. Stable funding is not depending on farebox revenue for an unreasonable proportion of the budget. It's not a local regressive sales tax. It's not increasing property taxes every time assessments go down. It's not making frequent field trips to Springfield to beg.

The way the most successful transit agencies have done it is employment taxes. Not income taxes. Employment taxes. Employers are taxed directly based on payroll. Thus when more people need to get to work, more funding is available because employment taxes automatically go up.

On another matter brought up, in many cases it is cheaper to pay workers for overtime than it is to hire more people. More people means more benefits to pay. It also means more training costs, more recruiting costs, and, eventually, hire unemployment insurance premiums.

Again, this is a great answer for a short-term need. But when you depend on everyone working overtime year in, year out, eventually it's a problem. Eventually those workers want to reap the benefits of working OT.

Again, it's a problem that stable funding for operating expenses could fix.

Regardless of who owns what, it's absurd to spend money on a pretty station to trains that barely run. Perhaps the city should take an interest in the functionality of the line it franchises out to itself instead of hiding behind some idiot bureaucratic front. Otherwise, this fancy station will be nothing more than a place for tourists to wait and wait and wait while they make plans to go to someone else's city next time.

I wonder if it will be finished by the end of the decade, meaning Dec 31, 2010?
I doubt it, I remember how long rebuilding the Chicago & State station took.

hence the proposed $3.00 fare.

Doomsday, Son of Doomsday, wtf?! I never heard this underfunding garbage 10yrs ago. What gives with all these annual service hikes?

So some Congressman needs a Congressman from Chicago to vote in favor of some bill of his. Mr. Chicago Congressman wants his back scratched if he's going to scratch some one else's back. So what kind of scratch does he ask for? Well, a grant proposal for a subway station just floated into his office, and the first Congressman hasn't promissed any other transit money votes, so he can follow through on his end of the bargain. Next thing you know, the City of Chicago is getting Federal money that they can either turn down, or spend on that subway station.

So there are essentially two choices for the City: Take the money, and use it for the subway station, or turn the money down.

If you're against spending the money on the subway station, then you are against getting the money in the first place. You don't have some third choice of spending the money on something else, no matter how good your idea is. The choices are either take the money, and use it as directed, or don't take the money.

If you're in charge, do you want to go back to the citizens and say, "I decided not to take the money." "Oh, and we don't have any money to maintain the existing station, either."

Yeah. That's what should happen instead of building the station. (BTW... The first people who'd call for your head would be the trades unions who wouldn't get the jobs, with the contractors not far behind. Turning down that money means a lot of lost jobs. Good jobs lost.)

The way things work suck. But the fundimental principle is that when you are offered money, you seldom turn it down, even if you have many, many better deserving ways to spend it than what is demanded.

If someone gave you $75,000, and told you that you have to buy a sports car with it, you buy the sports car even if you don't have a parking space for it.

Look around some of the suburban areas, and notice the bus stop bays on roads where buses don't run, or only run once or twice a day. This is just on a bigger scale. It really doesn't matter if the trains were to stop running all together. No one is going to turn down the money.

"But there are so many better things to spend the money on..." is irrelevant. That's simply not a choice.

The artist renditions are always so nice looking, but then 6 months go by and and it looks like total crap.

Not like it is the CTA's fault, they really do try... but... bah

They need to redo the outside stations more like the Davis Purple Line stop... then again, that is in Evanston

"Doomsday, Son of Doomsday, wtf?! I never heard this underfunding garbage 10yrs ago. What gives with all these annual service hikes? "

Wow, you must have really been stoned out of your gourd if you didn't notice anything going on around 1997, when owl service was eliminated on the Lake, Englewood, Jackson Park, Evanston, and Douglas branches, as well as on 24 bus routes, 15 bus routes were eliminated, and most other bus routes had their frequency cut.

Well, it seems that Rusty is one of the few people here that seems to "get it".
Yeah, the funding mechanisms suck, but we have to take whatever were offered, whether its what we need most urgently or not.

And again, as Rusty points out, this is money going to the City of chicago, NOT the CTA.

Get that through your heads, people.

Okay, now my rant gets kinda ugly.
And kinda not entirely topical to this thread.
Turn back if you're "sensitive."

As far as the increased fares, i can't wait for it to happen.
Do i really want to pay more? No.
But i want the CTA to become financially solvent as soon as possible, and our government is obviously failing us.

The CTA went without a fare increase for around TEN YEARS.
That's ridiculous.

Who do i blame?
The tired-assed community activists boo-hooing every time the "working poor" might have to pay another penny for something that they use.
Screw that.
Stop buying lottery tickets, flaming hot Cheetos and fake "bling", assholes.

To my co-workers who complain about a fare increase even thought they're several pay grades above me: bring your lunch to work once a week instead of spending ten bucks a day (plus your $3-$4 Starbucks every damn morning).
Better yet, get a monthly pass, dickweeds.
Y'all can certainly afford it. What the hell is wrong with you?
Again, assholes.

Are there some truly needy out there that wont be able to find that quarter?
Sadly, yes.
Maybe about a half-percent of the bitchers.
But why should the entire system suffer because a tiny, tiny minority can't afford the increase?

I'm far from rich; i'm not even middle-class.
But just about anyone can dig up and extra quarter for a bus ride.
If the CTA had been raising fares a little bit at least every two years, i'd bet they would be in MUCH better financial shape.
So now we'll have to dig up a couple of quarters.
Great job, assholes.

Lost ridership because of the increases? Bullshit.
Most people will squak about it and then just buck up and realize that public transit is STILL their best bet.

And to those that that leave....good riddance.
Assholes.

Geez, and i'm not even a Republican.

The trouble with fare hikes is they really don't raise much revenue. If you raise the fare too high, ridership goes down, and you end up with a net loss. The problem is that even if you manage to hit the sweet spot that maximizes your net, you really didn't gain much -- and a chunk of that gain goes to reprinting, resigning, and reprograming.

But things have gotten so bad that I think the CTA is proposing a fare increase just so they can reduce ridership demands. It's backassward supply and demand: Kill your demand so your supply will go further.

A stable mass transit system is necessary for a stable economy. The best way to fund a transit system is primarily through employment taxes. Forget about the farebox. You aren't going to save the system through the farebox. But you could kill the system with the farebox.

Rusty,

I argee and disagree with your comment.

I would agree with you that the best way to get the majority of funding is through taxes. Not only employment taxes, though.
Little bites everywhere. After all, employment tax (head tax) can also discourage business from being in the city. It was a determining factor in my old company leaving for the suburbs. And i think a tax that fell on businesses only would have a difficult time passing, especially with the Republicans.

However i disagree about "forgetting about the farebox". They forgot about the fare box for so long that it became what i would consider a major contributor to the mess we see today. Before transit gets any more funding, i think some (statwide) politicians want to see a bit more contributed by the people that actually use the service (though we ALL know that everyone benefits from it).

I don't like that these morons can't wrap their heads around that fact, but that attitude is what we have to deal with.

As far as a tiny bit of lost ridership, yes, probably so.
But just like paying taxes, most of us blow a bunch of smoke about it and eventually just pay up.

Most of us don't pick up and move to another county because of taxes. Most of us won't stop using CTA.

For the "working poor": Maybe a few less lottery tickets, fattening snack foods and cigarettes would offset a fare increase. You don't need any of them.

For the yuppies: Maybe a smaller size Starbucks latte or one less cocktail at happy hour would be your priority. You do realize that one less cocktail per week would pay for a 50-cent fare increase on 14 trips! So maybe you can tone down reliving your former frat days at your local Wrigleyville pub and stop whining.

For everyone else: What's worse? A 50-cent fare increase, or the alternative...which would be paying $4/gal of gas (if you even own a car), driving through miles of congestion and paying $20/day to park it.

Suddenly, a fare increase isn't such hellbound torture, is it? Have some priorities, people!