(The Associated Press circulated the following article on April 11.)
CHICAGO — They’re as ubiquitous here as skyscrapers and hot dog joints: the elevated trains that screech and rumble along century-old tracks through downtown and the city’s far-flung neighborhoods, taking workers to their jobs and tourists to Wrigley Field.
But a $55 million budget gap has turned the Chicago Transit Authority’s fabled “L” system and its fleet of 2,000 buses into an “endangered species,” the authority claims.
Officials at the nation’s second-largest transit system say they will have to eliminate routes, raise fares or both unless the Legislature provides more money. In signs and recorded announcements on trains and buses, they are urging their 1.5 million daily riders to “Prevent service cuts. Voice your support.”
Across the nation, big-city transit agencies have been facing similar challenges. Systems in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have recently raised fares, cut service or sought more state funding as budget deficits have grown.
One reason is that sales tax revenues — which help fund many systems, including Chicago’s — have dwindled in recent years as the economy slowed, according to Rose Sheridan, spokeswoman for the American Public Transportation Association.
And states are less willing to earmark more money for public transit as they face their own budget problems. Illinois’ projected deficit for 2006 exceeds $1 billion.
Without more public funding, many transit agencies have few options but to increase fares or cut services, said Alan Horowitz, a transportation engineer and urban planner at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
“A lot of people think these transit agencies are bloated, but as a whole they are used to doing a lot with very little,” he said.
One of the city’s proposals is to increase fares from $1.75 to $2.50, which would make its 1.5 million daily riders pay the highest base fare of any large transit system in the nation.
Other proposals would end overnight train service, stranding people like night shift janitor Otis Kensey, who leaves his shift at a manufacturer north of Chicago just in time to catch a 1:06 a.m. train to his South Side home.
“If they cut off the Red Line at 1 a.m., I’m stuck,” Kensey said.
At a transit board hearing last week, dozens of upset riders said authority executives should cut their own pay or find ways to trim administrative costs rather than hitting the riders with service cuts and higher fares.
The board is scheduled to adopt a worst-case plan at its meeting Wednesday. Its apocalyptic warnings might not stir much sympathy in the state capital, though.
“The CTA can’t just turn to Springfield and say, ‘Find us X amount of dollars or we’re going to make draconian cuts,”’ said Republican state Rep. Brent Hassert, who represents the Chicago suburb of Romeoville.
Lawmakers in other states have responded differently. Pennsylvania legislators recently voted to divert $68 million in federal highway money to fund cash-strapped transit systems in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. New York’s state budget funnels more sales tax dollars to subways and buses.
Chicago Transit Authority Chairwoman Carole Brown says Chicago gets shortchanged by a funding formula that divides sales tax revenue among it and the suburban rail and bus systems. As suburban populations have boomed, the authority’s share of the region’s transit tax dollars has dropped from 71 percent in 1980 to 59 percent last year.
Adding to its troubles, the agency is taking heat for a series of missteps in planning the largest capital project in its history: a $530 million upgrade of the Brown Line, a heavily traveled route connecting the city’s downtown “Loop” business district to the Northwest Side.
Transit officials in January said they would have to close some stations along the line for a year or more during construction, backtracking on a promise to leave them open. Businesses and community groups have criticized the reversal, while some transit planners and civic leaders are questioning the project’s merits altogether.
Others have said the authority should borrow from its capital budget to help fill its operating shortfall.
Brown calls that bad fiscal policy. She says the suggestion to scrap the upgrade of the 100-year-old line is symptomatic of the shortsighted view of mass-transit spending nationally.
“Transit agencies all around the country are faced with these same issues,” Brown said. “The problem is simple. It’s a lack of investment in public transit.”