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Nora is doing a fantastic job as president they should keep her

Well to paraphrase in the meantime.... outside of the Orange changes, the article mentions a set of plans the president came to Springfield with including expansion of the frequent bus network and a plan to make rail lines 8 min headways. Then there's also some stuff we already found in other topics like the Cook County sheriff task force, lower fare ox recovery etc.

Orange line is gonna be the last to get the 7000s. Once Blue is equipped then they start hitting the brown line who in turn will send its 3200s to Midway to start scrapping the 2600s there. Then finally Orange gets them so were probably like 2-3 years away before we see any new cars on the Orange

cta famously dislikes an operationally mixed fleet

Good evening or morning. Just sharing some information on train consists during early AM, middays, evenings, overnights and weekends. Looks like CTA is returning to the pre-Covid 4 cars consists again on the Blue 🔵, Brown 🟤, Green 🟢, Orange 🟠, Purple 🟣 and Red 🔴 lines.

They got rid of the Vontas banner and put it back to the Pace branded bus tracker banner. the bus tracker is currently down and not working.

Not being a planning professional, I didn't completely follow this, but I don't think it has as much to do with how people get to the L or Metra station but how to get denser, more affordable housing near transit. It becomes cheaper if a city doesn't require one parking space per unit. From the description, clearly anything new along the Milwaukee and Dempster Pulse lines would be subject to the law, and maybe that is what the law was modelled on. We'll have to see whether some really-depressed area, like Harvey, gets development, as it is clearly a transit hub.

On the other hand, the transit activists said to cancel the remaining options on the 8350s order and get electrics, but CTA said that was physically impossible. What would you have said now if CTA listened to these Transit "Authorities," and now would have been 400 buses short?

I think they have bigger fish to fry.

So 600-605 have likely run their last miles? For shame, for shame, CTA falling for the snake oil seller's pitch.

In that it is now questionable, it was only supposed to be for off peak hours. The intention wasn't to run max capacity cars during rush hour, nor affect frequency. Your second paragraph may be more to the point, as it is probably safr not to spread sparese riders among 8 cars at 2:00 a.m. BTW, someone noted that there were not any schedule alerts, and the schedule brochures for the L are the prior ones. So the pick may be wholly internal.

A trip to the boneyard confirms 1760 has been retired The shop guys were towing 1914 around to the fuel bay where they started the bus up and left it running in the oil bay for about five minutes.

Well let’s see what happens down the wire following the point of this topic being created. @Mr.NewFlyer1279’s comment made me scroll up knowing I wasn’t tripping as I read everything accurately. If u read the flyer it stated “EFFECTIVE Sunday, 11/2/25”

I guess there's a reason why this thread was renamed "speculative." If CTA is scheduled to go off the fiscal cliff in July, and the NITA Act takes effect in June, there won't be money to implement a growth budget until planning authority is turned over to NITA. CTA just proposed a growth budget only because the RTA told it to.

BE40 600-602 have not run since fall 2023; 603-605 since summer 2024. Only the later ZX5-40 have run this year

I wasn't really surprised that they actually resolved the funding issue. You guys know I've been consistently on record in my belief that they would move to get something done. But what I am surprised by is that they got it done this month. When the news dropped that the overall RTA deficit coming from CTA, Metra and Pace's budgets dropped from $770 million to less $230 million for fiscal 2026, I was virtually certain that it wouldn't be until the regular session in the spring that we got the transit funding crisis behind us. But I am glad to see we got the one big part of it that suburban residents and we city residents were in overall agreement on, the abolishing of RTA and the official establishment of NITA in its place. Hopefully streamlining the responsibility of setting fares and addressing future capital needs among the other three boards brings positive budget impacts as hoped going forward.

Update: I changed this post after finding SB2111 and the following in the Tribune: "As a counterbalance to pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for road work, the bill also included a sharp, 45-cent-per-toll increase on the Illinois Tollway, which one GOP lawmaker said amounted to a 60% increase. The new tollway fares could generate as much as $1 billion annually for roadwork on the tollways that serve about a dozen counties, supporters said." This implies that I-Pass on passenger cars would be irrelevant to the fixed surcharge. Apparently it is it is 45 cents at the usual 0.95/1.90 toll on the Tr-State morth of O'Hare, and also $1.40/$2.80 at the Waukegan Toll Plaza, and the frequent .20/.40 toll on Ill. 390. It appears that tolls became more graduated with open-road tolling. The toll schedule is here, which also reveals that commercial vehicles don't get an I-Pass discount. The fixed increase is irrelevant, as the bill provides and the Trib says: "In addition to the 45-cent-per-toll hike for passenger vehicles on Illinois State Toll Highway Authority roads, the legislation called for increasing tolls for commercial vehicles by 30%. Tolls could continue to increase in subsequent years through inflation-based increases..."

Well,it is Halloween. 🤢

This leaves the following buses which have yet to enter service of any kind (not counting the buses which have seen limited service but are held for training purposes): 8880 8886 8900 8919 8931 8936 8938 8941 8949