CTA Tattler

That isn't a good retort. In fact, it's rather silly and quite irresponsible.

If someone wants to own a car, go through all the costly steps to have it registered and insured, and pay high prices for gas, then why on earth should I cry "unfair" and demand they help keep my CTA fair low? That's absurd!

I don't have a car and I don't drive. I buy a monthly pass at $75.00, which to me would even be worth it at the recently proposed $94.00 because I use it a LOT and it's much cheaper than driving.

We need to start sucking it up and stop crying for others to help us out in life. The same people who bitch about high fares also carry $200.00 iPods and $300.00 cell phones.

Good grief. Bunch of pansies.

I don't make a lot of money. In fact, I barely get by. But I take the responsibility for my own action and I pay my own way. I don't want for drivers to have to pay more so that I pay less. Just the same as me not wanting to pay more so they can pay less.

How about this... we all pay what we need to pay. What a concept!

"If someone wants to own a car, go through all the costly steps to have it registered and insured, and pay high prices for gas, then why on earth should I cry "unfair" and demand they help keep my CTA fair low? That's absurd!"

Everytime someone drives a car instead of using public transportation they cause highway congestion, increase the demand for gasoline, thereby putting upward pressure on its price, and cause air pollution and global warming.
Evertime someone uses public transportation instead of driving, this reduces traffic congestion, reduces the demand for gasoline, thereby helping hold down the increase in the price of gasoline, and adds much less to air pollution and global warming.

The rapid transit system and the Metra electic division tains use no petroleum at all in moving people around. The other Metra trains and the busses use much less than private motor cars.

Therefore use of public transportation instead of driving greatly benefits society and should be encouraged with low fares.

I should also have mentioned that driving increases U.S. dependency on foreign oil while using public transportation reduces is.

The "everybody should be on his own" philosopy of people like Eric is one of society's most serious impediments to achieving efficient, low cost solutions to the problems facing society.

Also calling people 'pansies.' Real grown up there, Eric.

rough crowd today...

I agree with Eric
*hides behind rock*

My own issues with the gas tax idea are that:
a) it takes gas tax money from the state's general revenue fund but does not replace them in some other manner. Ergo, transit is effectively taking money from the same pot that funds education, hospitals, highways, etc. Where's the plan to backfill the money going to transit?
b) the goals of the transit agencies are to encourage the use of transit and get people out of cars. By accomplishing that mission, consumption of gasoline is lowered, and as a result, so is the revenue stream for transit. As a result, transit is working against itself for ridership in exchange for less funding, which of course will result in the need to cut service and raise fares.

Two main flaws with the Cole/Saviano/Watson approach:

-- CTA fares have increased much FASTER than inflation since the last time the state did anything in 1983 (122% vs. 80% inflation).
-- The whole point of a public transit system is that there is a public benefit that accrues to the region as a whole. Red-state cities like Phoenix and Salt Lake City are subsidizing transit operating costs at close to 70-80% because they know through painful experience that it is much cheaper to support transit than the endless cycle of road-building and increased congestion. Of COURSE there are customers who will pay more for transit -- they are usually the ones with the most convenient commutes (1-2 blocks from a station on both ends, few transfers). But if those were the only people using transit (hint: they're not), the fixed costs of capital and drivers would overwhelm the economics of the system and each ride would cost $10-15 instead of the $6-7 all-in cost per linked trip for today's system (all-in costs include capital).

But part of me really hopes the state DOES pass a mandated fare increase, because with people like Cole in charge it will fall most heavily on CTA customers and probably incur a federal civil rights suit. Just as it took Patrick Fitzgerald the feds to start cleaning up corruption in Illinois, it may take the federal courts to clean up the inequity in our transit and schools.

So, let me get this straight: Amid recent reports of highway trust funds and the like being short cash due to decreasing consumption of gas relative to miles traveled as average fuel economy increases, we're proposing to give transit a slice of this revenue source with an ever shrinking base?

Granted, a sales tax on goods (not services) has the same problem, but not to such a great extent.

New-tax aversion to this extent has gotten pretty rediculous. In the end, we'll get, and deserve, what we're willing to pay for.

"Also calling people 'pansies.' Real grown up there, Eric."

Call me different.

"Everytime someone drives a car instead of using public transportation they cause highway congestion, increase the demand for gasoline, thereby putting upward pressure on its price, and cause air pollution and global warming.
Evertime someone uses public transportation instead of driving, this reduces traffic congestion, reduces the demand for gasoline, thereby helping hold down the increase in the price of gasoline, and adds much less to air pollution and global warming."

In essence what you are saying is that we need to punish drivers by taking their money and giving it to those who ride CTA?

I believe that system of government has been tried before...

"If someone wants to own a car, go through all the costly steps to have it registered and insured, and pay high prices for gas, then why on earth should I cry "unfair" and demand they help keep my CTA fair low? That's absurd!"

The cost of driving is already artificially low -- roads are paid for, parking is mostly free except for downtown areas, wars are fought for oil. Drivers don't pay those costs, except very indirectly.

Public transportation users are just asking for an equal share. The whole cost to society in general is cheaper for public transportation that personal cars. Driving is heavily subsidized -- why shouldn't a better, cheaper, more economically and environmentally sensitve mode of transportation get the same subsidy?

The fuel efficiency argument only works with full full really full trains and buses the kind no one likes to ride. On your semi vacant 11 am metra into the city the energy efficiency metric is awful. the metric you really should be comparing is passenger miles per net energy use. In that case the sedan with four people beats a bus with 11 people every day of the week.

The real crime is how slow the CTA is. No transportation planner in the last thirty years anywhere in the US has put a price on the commuter's time anywhere near a prevailing wage when making their cost benefit analysis. The cost of your lost time to the CTA is like a penny an hour. DC's and Montreal's systems put ours to shame in terms of speed. Of course DC's system being directly funded from the federal budget and serving a dual purpose as a giant bunker / evacuation system might have something to do with it.

2.69 per gallon of diesel
25.5 m gallons
about 70 M for fuel

Passenger Miles

find me the passenger miles from the 2007 CTA budget I will give an average efficiency rating.

Heavy Rail
29.1 M dollars of electricity
Factoring in the loss in the transmission grid and the passenger miles from heavy rail you should be able to do an apples to apples comparison in terms of efficiency.

"In essence what you are saying is that we need to punish drivers by taking their money and giving it to those who ride CTA?

I believe that system of government has been tried before..."

Yeah, it's called government.

"Yeah, it's called government."

That explains a lot, actually!

"In essence what you are saying is that we need to punish drivers by taking their money and giving it to those who ride CTA? I believe that system of government has been tried before..."

It is a well-established principle of FREE MARKET ECONOMICS that the efficiency of an economy is increased if people are discouraged from engaging in activities that have detrimental effects on the economomy (external costs) by having those activities taxed and people are encouraged to engage in activities that benefit society (external benefits) by being subsidized.
This is not a matter of punishing anyone, but rather of increasing the efficiency of the economy, thereby achieving any given objective at the lowest possible cost. Such policies increase the wealth of society and raise the standard of living.

Make public transit free.

Alex has it right. This idea that we *need* to make public transit more expensive and less attractive just because driving is becoming more expensive and less attractive is just insane.

Driving is helping destroy the planet and (less serious but still important) retard the local economy.

Public transit uses resources in a sustainable way and promotes economic growth.

WHY IN THE WORLD would you want to continue subsidizing driving more than transit? This is just insane!

Thanks Orville, I'm glad to hear I'm not alone. I know I might be part of a younger generation thats looking at this situation differently but I truly wish this country would get its priorities in order.

Its good you brought up the environment, thats one of the main top reasons I believe so highly in public transit and using our cars less. I see driving although convenient is so impractical in the long run (yes, and I'm a bit of a hypocrite. I have a car). If transit was more readily available (such as on a 24 hour basis), unbelievably affordable and actually went to where I needed to go quickly. I could use it more.

I don't even want to get into this gambling idea, it just saddens me that these two options are the best they could at least somewhat agree upon. Its depressing really.

Chewbaccabot,
Your metric is biased in favor of automobiles, because our auto-dependent society has led to greater and greater trip lengths due to low-density development. A more honest metric would simply be energy consumption per trip; a trip is a trip regardless of how long it is.

Nice try, though, I appreciate your sly dishonesty.

If you really care about CTA's passenger-mile stats for your metric, look it up at the NTD.

The passenger miles are suspect when they stop releasing them in their budget stranger things have happened. What I am saying is public transportation efficiency depends on capacity utilized and people cross quote these. Also if you make it faster the internal economic decision that people make drive or bus becomes easier in favor of pt. The reason people don't always take public transportation is because it hardly makes economic sense. Low density growth screws everyone.

I assume you are all assuming that Metra and the CTA buy their power from ComEd's Nuk-u-lar plants, not some gas or coal fired facilities.

Amid all the environmental & economic concerns, I must reiterate Alex's point about the current & future viability of the system as a whole. From just an infrastructure perspective, the busses & trains are in terrible condition. This reflects on the overall reliability of the system, including inflated travel times. While we may like to think of it in terms of "convenience", its much more serious. A good example is the Blue Line from the Loop to O'Hare. A trip that took less then 40 minutes 10 years ago frequently takes over 75 minutes today. Even in heavy rush hour traffic, you have a better chance of budgeting time if you jump in a cab and take the Kennedy. A similar situation prevails each morning on my commute from Lakeview/Uptown to the Loop. If I take a car/taxi & it takes 1/2 the time. And how many times have we all waited 30+ minutes for a bus? Bottom line: whenever time is an issue, the CTA cannot be relied upon. A satisfactory funding structure must address these reliability issues if they ever want the CTA (pace and metra also) to be considered a viable alternative to driving.

Even a nearly empty bus gets better per-person fuel efficiency than the average car.

I don't know the current figure, but back in 2000, the CTA's average CTA bus got a little over 3 miles per gallon in fuel efficiency. Presumably it's better than that now, but for the sake of argument suppose it's the same.

That means if a bus has even 6 people aboard, it is already moving people around at about 20 passenger miles per gallon. That means even a bus with almost nobody on it is getting better fuel efficiency than the typical car driving around a city with one passenger.

And this doesn't take into account the benefitial effect on traffic (and thus everybody's fuel efficiency) of taking a half-dozen cars off the road.

So from an environmental or traffic point of view, even nearly empty buses actually do make sense. So this talk of getting rid of "lightly used" bus lines is just entirely wrong-headed from a public policy point of view.