CTA Tattler

The Trib article forgets to mention that Huberman spoke about how previous CTA practices have compounded this maintenance problem.
Mainly that the CTA would buy hundreds of buses at once instead of have a rational plan to replace a specific percentage every tear so there would be a complete fleet turnover every 12 years or so.

True the CTA would have a lot more cash to work with if funding increased at the same pace as inflation, but what about fares? Had the CTA increased fares as inflation increased (I know, crazy concept), would this crisis even be happening today. I don't know exactly when the fares went to $1.50 but I know it was in the early '90s. By the inflation trend on the chart, fares should have been raised $0.25 about every 4 years or so, and should be about $2.50 today.

The final nail in the coffin will be when the propaganda(holiday) train will operate. Amusement park rides are more important than service.

If the CTA saved 11 million a month, that is 132 million a year. Since the shortfall is only 158 million that leaves a deficit of 26 million. A few million from the state, a few million in fare increases, and maybe a bus route or two is cut. This wouldn't even be a "doomsday" if that bill was passed and the CTA started saving that 11 million! Freaking stupid!

Unindicted Co-Con,
That attitude/statement basically reflects Huberman's (and yours) relative inexperience in transit capital funding. Both methods have been tried, and of course it's cylical: basically, lately CTA has ordered in bunches due to the unpredictability of the amount of capital funds available, so when there's money, you obligate it for the important purchase because you may not have that money in the future. Similarly, buying big orders allows for 1) volume discounts and 2) time discounts. By #2, I mean that even if you place a huge order but stretch the deliveries out over many years, you will pay a substantial premium to the manufacturer for that privelege (i.e. the later buses will cost alot more).

Of course, the downside is that you wind up with situations like this; gaps in procurement and a bunch of old buses. But it's not like it was done this way because everyone in charge before were stupid/incompetent/etc, and that attitude is quite dangerous and annoying.

Already, Huberman probably finds himself saying things he never would have dreamed of a year ago, and that will only intensify in time as the ridiculous reality of CTA's funding situation sets in to his administration.

Viva: Actually it is done through incompetence & stupidity!
They've always ordered big batches of buses.
If you spread out the purchase, you find out if there are problems in the first batch & can have it corrected.
Maybe the idiots at the CTA wouldn't have kept buying those crappy magnetic destination signs that are all broken & faded now!
The window shade roller types were better than that!
It's amazing how so many other agencies manage to spread their purchases out.
That the CTA doesn't do so is the result, not of the availability of capital funds, but of a mindset that demands huge orders.

The way the CTA is run is just plain goofy!
Just call the CTA phone number & be forced to listen to an inane message at the start & all the options in the wrong order!
There are people at the CTA who think they are running a Class ! railroad.
I still remember [30 plus years ago] when they put AAR barcodes on all the L trains.
There are all sorts of silly little wastes of money. Alone, one of them doesn't seem like a lot, but when you add them up, they amount to real money!

Lest we think we're alone in our public transportation outrages, I thought you might enjoy this rant I ran across on the DC system that a lot of folks here hold up as a shining example.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/nov/09/question_for_paul_krugman_why_does_the_dc_metro_suckown

Apparently the feds are as idiotic and inept as our homegrown pols. Well, we knew that already, but sometimes it good to get a reminder. (Sorry in advance if the endless URL proves problematic -- this site sucks when it comes to handling links.

OK, according to the graph, funding has not kept up with inflation since what, 1990? Why are we only hearing about the problem in a public way last 2-3 years when it is a crisis? Where was the person at RTA who was supposed to be watching such trend graphs -- after all, they're the financial oversite agency -- and starting to document the problem and work on a solution before it became a crisis? Who decided to hide the problem by shifting capital funds to operations, making the problems even worse? That was also approved by RTA, right? Have they not been diligent in their financial oversite? Don't forget, for the last 2 years CTA's been getting "de facto" additional 53 million / year since they were absolved of the requirement to provide ADA Paratransit and that was shifted to Pace. That was the original bailout. Also, how is RTA receiving this additional operational funding (bailouts) now without raising fares. With a 50% farebox recovery ratio, by rights they need to come up with 1 additional fare dollar for every dollar of operations funds they get. Even if they do get the solution to the operations funding problem, they still have to come up with the matching farebox revenue.

" OK, according to the graph, funding has not kept up with inflation since what, 1990? Why are we only hearing about the problem in a public way last 2-3 years when it is a crisis? "

Well, it may not have always been front page news, but it was always a known problem that was dealt with in various ways.

In the early days, it was easy to tighten the belt, and get rid of "waste". You streamline office procedures, cut administrative staff, clean the offices less often, use capital funding to install energy saving lightbulbs... lots of things.

You can defer maintenance. You can cut the worst performing routes one at a time. You can increase headways, and decrease hours of operation.

You can get rid of conductors on the trains, and not staff the customer service booths.

You can get real agressive in the cost-cutting measures.... to a point. Eventually you reach the point that it starts costing you more to save than you're getting out of it. What do you do then?

You start cutting to the bone, and it's doomsday.

It's not that no one at the CTA knew what was going on. And it's not that they didn't care. It's just that no one else cared until it reached a crisis point.

The shifting of capital funds to operations is something brand new... unless you count deferring maintenance so long that you can justify a capital expense to fix the problem.

Sometimes things don't get fixed until they turn into a crisis.

If there was an identified structural problem with funding since 1990, the agencies involved would know that the problem could never be solved through belt tightening. A lot "waste" (deferred maintenance? cleaning) would be known to not be actual waste, just cutting corners enough to get by without embarrassing any political sponsors -- which brings us to where we are now needing 6 billion in capital funding to be in good repair. IDOTs SFY08 capital appropriation for all transit all over the state is $540 million dollars -- we need 6 billion for CTA? -- that's about 10 years worth of all the state transit capital appropriations? 10 years of Federal formula capital funding for CTA totals also 2.2 billion dollars. In light of all that, I guess that means more bonding (borrowing), but we we've got tons of bonds outstanding already that we're paying interest on. From RTA's annual report we've go about 2.3 billion in outstanding bonds now? I added up in the budget book, and RTA's going to pay $129 million in INTEREST in 2008. I don't know if the state is paying interest on any additional bonds sold for transit (like through Illinois First, which still has plenty outstanding) I think the happiest people be the bond brokers and banks. Maybe we should try the asking for debt forgiveness like a third world country. The hole we're digging for ourselves seems to get only deeper. Finally, we're spending 200 billion on the IRAQ war THIS YEAR approaching a trillion dollars total, and SAFETEA-LU authorized 244 billion over 5 years-- so you tell me where our priorities are now.

Sorry, 244 billion is the highway bill, add 52.6 billion for transit makint it
it 297 billion for highway and transit together.

I can't help but think of the very pretty upgrades to the Ravenswood station done over the past couple of years. Can we safely say that the CTA/RTA is through spending money on "ornamentation" and will now concentrate its' monies on necessities only?

I remember what's his face, the "person" with the cigar, you know, the arrogant one, telling us, "Too late, the money has already been committed to the project, we can't back out now",despite the fact of crumbling infrastructure and equipment needs and the yearly doomsday prophecies. That kind of crap has to end. I hope RTA is reading this, because I tell you, people will tolerate stuff like this no longer. Look for a great article in the Reader about the Ravenswood line funding and the RTA's foot shuffling.

It's waaay time for more employers in metro Chicago and outlying areas to start staggering shifts so the riding public can better deal with insanities of the system. Also, more employers should be looking towards alternatives to getting their employees to work, like being more receptive to car or bus rentals, bicycles, and anything else that can be brainstormed. Do you know what kills me? I stand up on the platform on the Blue Line at 90-94 entrance and see 150-200 cars with only one person riding in them. This is stupid for so many reasons, and if gas becomes more expensive than it always is (like "rest of the world" prices), this has to cease. But I also think we can't totally depend on the RTA for the answers either.

I'm worried big time about something else, and that is activity on the fault lines in recent months. That bridge collapse in MN, a couple of other collapses further south: there is no question that something is going on, and with the age of the infrastructure in this city this worries me. So far I think we've been fairly okay, but I wonder if things will remain that way. I also wonder if the RTA is even thinking about this at this time.

Right on, Rusty. Ask for debt forgiveness. All kinds of obscene scenarios are coursing through my mind, but I'll spare you all.
:)

Isn't deferring maintenance to maintain cash flow also called "disinvestment?"

NoGiftsPlease:

SB572 provides increased funding for the RTA but (temporarily) exempts some of the funding from having to be matched by fare collections.

This is an important topic to raise, though. The mandatory 50% farebox recovery is a crippling requirement in the long run. It's basically a guarantee that the system will always be underfunded. The ratio in most other places is lower (i.e., more funding per dollar of fares) and it needs to be lower here, too.

A 50% farebox recovery would likely be crippling, but even that statement is misleading. Under RTA's way of measuring, CTA is above 50%, I think Metra's about 50% and Pace is about 40% -- thus, systemwide we're at 50% and right where we want to be. How can that be, you say, because then we wouldn't have a problem -- we cover 50% of operations by fares and the other 50% comes from sales tax and there's no shortfall? Under a more "rigorous" measurement system --the auditor general's report says "the percent of operating expenses covered by fare revenues fell from 43% in 1985 to 35% in 2005." Why the difference? Because the actual RTA accounting is "system generated revenue" which includes advertising and I don't know what else, and the operating costs exclude a lot of costs under our system. The 50% recovery requirement sounds onerous, but if we measure what we're actually doing, we're not that bad off. But it would help to be honest about it. Look at the wikipedia entry for farebox recovery--it has a table of recovery rates worldwide.

NoGifts, I think you mean to say that the recovery ratios are actually *lower*. The fact that other revenues (advertising, etc.) are getting matched by the state means that fares make up a lower (not higher) fraction of overall revenue.

But in any event, looking at it that way doesn't change things much. If you want to be precise about it: the CTA's 2008 proposed budget forecasts that the CTA will have gotten just under 43% of its revenue from fares, and just under 50% from "public funding" during 2007.

50% is too low.

Actually, CTA fares have gone up WAY more than inflation. And the reason the RTA didn't raise this issue 18 years ago when the problem became acute is that it is dominated by suburban Republicans who loved the fact that Metra fares TRAILED inflation significantly.

The other thing about fares going up with "inflation" is that the inflation we usually talk about is measured in a "market basket" sense -- based on the costs specific group of consumer goods. The mix if things transportation depends on is much different than the mix consumers perceive. The cost of providing the service is based on what goes into providing transportation, while we kind of think the fares should be based on consumer inflation. Those two rates are likely quite different, and I'd like to see a graph of transportation inflation vs. consumer inflation.

From the news ticker:

"Comparing the Chicago Transit Authority to "a brother that you can't control," Kane County Board member Bill Wyatt railed on the agency for bleeding funds at the expense of its suburban "siblings," Metra and Pace.

"People in the suburbs, in my opinion, need to know that Pace is not the problem. Metra is not the problem. The problem's in the city of Chicago," Wyatt, an Aurora Republican, said at Tuesday's Kane County Board meeting.

Wyatt's comments came after representatives of Metra commuter rail and Pace suburban bus described the fare hikes and service cuts that would be implemented unless state funding comes through. "
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=76903&src=5

Wow, so the CTA is at fault for Metra and Pace's budget issues?